Lolita (Paperback)

by Vladimir Nabokov (Author) "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins..." (more)
Key Phrases: enchanted hunters, Dolores Haze, New York, Humbert Humbert (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.

Playfully perverse in form as well as content, riddled with puns and literary allusions, Nabokov's 1955 novel is a hymn to the Russian-born author's delight in his adopted language. Indeed, readers who want to probe all of its allusive nooks and crannies will need to consult the annotated edition. Lolita is undoubtedly, brazenly erotic, but the eroticism springs less from the "frail honey-hued shoulders ... the silky supple bare back" of little Lo than it does from the wantonly gorgeous prose that Humbert uses to recount his forbidden passion:

She was musical and apple-sweet ... Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice ... and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock.

Much has been made of Lolita as metaphor, perhaps because the love affair at its heart is so troubling. Humbert represents the formal, educated Old World of Europe, while Lolita is America: ripening, beautiful, but not too bright and a little vulgar. Nabokov delights in exploring the intercourse between these cultures, and the passages where Humbert describes the suburbs and strip malls and motels of postwar America are filled with both attraction and repulsion, "those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads." Yet however tempting the novel's symbolism may be, its chief delight--and power--lies in the character of Humbert Humbert. He, at least as he tells it, is no seedy skulker, no twisted destroyer of innocence. Instead, Nabokov's celebrated mouthpiece is erudite and witty, even at his most depraved. Humbert can't help it--linguistic jouissance is as important to him as the satisfaction of his arrested libido. --Simon Leake

Review
"The only convincing love story of our century." --Vanity Fair

"Lolita blazes with a perversity of a most original kind. For Mr. Nabokov has distilled from his shocking material hundred-proof intellectual farce . . . Lolita seems an assertion of the power of the comic spirit to wrest delight and truth from the most outlandish materials. It is one of the funniest serious novels I have ever read; and the vision of its abominable hero, who never deludes or excuses himself, brings into grotesque relief the cant, the vulgarity, and the hypocritical conventions that pervade the human comedy." --Atlantic Monthly

"Intensely lyrical and wildly funny." --Time

"The conjunction of a sense of humor with a sense of horror [results in] satire of a very special kind, in which vice or folly is regarded not so much with scorn as with profound dismay and a measure of tragic sympathy . . . The reciprocal flow of irony gives to both the characters and their surroundings the peculiar intensity of significance that attends the highest art." --The New Yorker

"Lolita is an authentic work of art which compels our immediate response and serious reflection--a revealing and indispensable comedy of horrors." --San Francisco Chronicle


From the Hardcover edition. -- Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (March 13, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679723161
• ISBN-13: 978-0679723165
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (440 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,330 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

95 of 103 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I, on my part, was as naive as only a pervert can be.", December 10, 2003

By	anomie - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

I have no real excuse for not reading "Lolita" before this late date. It's certainly a book that crops up in conversation a great deal. I watched the James Mason film version of the book years ago--perhaps that's what put me off. I recently watched the Jeremy Irons version and loved it. I suppose part of me asked why myself why I'd want to read a book that is essentially the ramblings of a middle-aged pervert. Anyway, I decided that I'd procrastinated long enough, and it was time to get serious and find out what all the fuss is about.

The story is narrated by middle-aged Humbert Humbert. He's a pedophile--although he's tried denying it, tried disguising it, and tried channeling his baser instincts, but as luck would have it, Humbert finds himself as the lodger at the home of a buxom, lonely widow, Charlotte Haze and 12-year-old daughter, Lolita. Humbert doesn't particularly even like Lolita--he actually finds her rather dull, but she becomes a vessel for the fantasies left by Humbert's unfulfilled first love affair.

Due to the subject matter, the book was, at times, rather difficult to read, and it is a tribute to Nabokov's skill as a writer that I was gripped by this story. Humbert Humbert is at his most 'human' (introspective) during his pre- and post-Lolita phases. Once Humbert crosses the boundaries of ethical behaviour and begins a physical relationship with Lolita, there is no going back. At times, Humbert congratulates himself for his cleverness and calls himself a "magician," and then at other times, Humbert seems to realize how despicable he truly is. Unfortunately, the occasional flash of insight is too pale and fleeting to release Humbert from his obsession with his "nymphet" and so Humbert accepts his enslavement and ultimate fate. As the novel develops, Humbert relates his seduction of Lolita and his subsequent relationship towards the child. His manipulative behaviour with Lolita was nauseating, and he acknowledges that Lolita has "absolutely nowhere else to go." Humbert keeps it that way--and turns Lolita into his personal prostitute. Vain, selfish Humbert is a despicable character and at no point did I feel one iota of sympathy for the man. His ability to focus solely on his destructive, obsessive needs is chilling. And yet while I despised the character of Humbert, the story was compelling. How did Nabokov manage this? The brilliant ending of the novel is a triumph of literature, and the words gave me goose bumps. "Lolita" is one of the best books I have ever read--displacedhuman.

63 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars porn, poetry and pyrotechnical language, October 5, 1999

By A Customer

If you've only heard of "Lolita" from its reputation as being "pornographic", you are in for a surprise when you read it. Yes, it involves a lecherous, middle aged man chasing after a 12 year old "nymphet". Yes, it is deeply disturbing and makes one queasy at times. It is also a brilliant, funny, witty, literary rollercoaster which will delight you and dazzle you with the beauty of language. Nabakov can make words jump through hoops you never even knew existed, while he explores the dark realms of obsession and longing.

The narrator, Humbert Humbert, is a fascinating construction. As readers, we find ourselves simultaneously repelled by his actions and sympathetic to his yearning. We are utterly charmed by his wit, intelligence and verbal acrobatics, sometimes to the point where we lost sight of what he's doing to his object of desire, Lolita.

I would suggest that all readers reaquaint themselves with the concept of the "unreliable narrator" before they sink into Humbert's hypnotic web of logic. When you find yourself sympathizing with Hum about Lolita's "cruelties", try to remember that you are seeing everything through his twisted and self-serving lens. Humbert has rationalized his behavior so deeply and reports it to us so entertainingly, that we find ourselves accepting his interpretations of people and events at face value. However, we must remember that Hum is capable of the most monsterous of deceptions (note how long it takes him to inform Lolita of her mother's demise), and of self deceptions. Read between the lines. Question his reading of events. Pay attention when his reporting is at odds with his interpretations of them. As one example, Humbert tells us that he was seduced by Lolita, giving us the impression that she was sexually mature and a willing partner. Contrast that with his throwaway mentioning of her "performing" for him in exchange for treats, and watching television as he took his pleasure in her. And don't ignore Lolita sobbing each night, as he seems to do.

Nabokov has created a connundrum for us as readers. He uses the most glorious tricks and delights of the English language to tell his tale of self-deception and rationalization masquerading as "love". Look beyond the circus to the grime beneath it, and appreciate the mastery that gives us both.

297 of 339 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still Controversial, November 11, 2000

By	Paul McGrath (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a magnificent book in many ways, most of which have been commented on--often brilliantly--by Amazon reviewers. I would therefore like to restrict my comments to the morality of the book, and to those who to this day view the book with outrage. Even those who admire the book somehow feel compelled to comment that they are "disturbed" by it. Why is this? Let us first examine the novel itself.

As everybody knows, it is the story of Humbert Humbert, a full-grown, adult male--not an old man--who seduces a compliant twelve-year old girl, and then goes on to have a year or so long "affair" with her. I put the term "affair" in quotation marks, because it probably isn't appropriate to describe a sexual relationship between a full grown male and a female child in such terms. Is it safe to say that most rational human beings disapprove of such relationships? It is certainly safe to say that Nabakov--and his narrator--know that such relationships are wrong. This is important. The tale is not only told in the context of a moral universe, it is also told by a character who is in acceptance of a moral universe. Oh, he makes a comment here and there about some medieval king marrying his twelve year old cousin, but clearly, his heart isn't in it. He knows that he is a monster, a "brute."

Indeed, his goal was never to have sex with a conscious Lolita to begin with. His goal initially was only to fondle her after drugging her to induce sleep; she was never to know what he was doing. Of course this is also reprehensible, but clearly it shows a conscience at work. A conscience motivated in part by fear, to be sure, but also a conscience for the welfare--at least early on--of this little girl. Conscience is not normally a factor in purely prurient forms of entertainment.

Following this encounter, he takes Lolita on a journey across, around, and through the United States, living in hotel rooms, and buying clothes and food on the move. Toward the end of this, we find one of the most moving paragraphs in literature: "And so we rolled East . . . We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour-books, old tires, and her sobs in the night--every night, every night--the moment I feigned sleep." The narrator's revelation of such anguish on the part of his victim clearly works against the argument that this novel was merely intended to be pornographic.

Humbert makes it clear that he loves his Lolita. There can be no mistake about this. He loves the way she moves. He loves the down on her arm. He loves her grace on the tennis court. He loves the way she flicks her head at him when looking up from a book. He loves her toes, her shoes, her name. He describes her in beautiful, poignant, poetic language, memorable and moving in every respect. Indeed the English language has rarely been used so wonderfully. But nowhere in this book does he describe in such terms or any other terms her sexual characteristics, or comment at length or in glaring detail his physical relations with her.

Finally, there is no effort to sugar-coat the effect of all of this on Lolita herself. We learn that after she left Humbert, she entered into a series of tawdry sexual escapades--still at too young an age--with a debased playwright. We last see her in her late teens, married to a bumpkin, and living in a clapboard shack surrounded by weeds.

Obviously, to anybody who has bothered to read this book, the presentation of the subject matter is not what is objectionable. Therefore, what apparently disturbs most people is the subject matter itself. But why? Why doesn't the latest grisly serial-killer-of-the-month novel inspire such protest? (Has there ever been a time in the history of the world in which so many novels have been written about serial killers?) Why not the barely-disguised soft-porn trash by Danielle Steele or Jackie Collins? Or the latest Anne Rice gore fest? While Lolita is not really a morality tale, it certainly doesn't glorify its subject matter the way novels such as these do.

So what is it? I think that with Lolita Nabakov has perhaps unconsciously touched a nerve. We, as humans, are rational creatures. We know what is right, and we have set rules for ourselves to follow. Everybody agrees that murder is wrong. But sexual mores have changed and continue to change in our affluent Western societies. Abortion has become legal, which gives women more sexual freedom. Homosexuality has become acceptable, which allows men more sexual freedom. Prostitution and pornography are rampant. Without discussing the morality of any of this, our society is now in rapidly changing and uncharted territory. Perhaps the objection to Lolita is from those who look at the book, and wonder how far we are going to go.