ENGLISH (Lolita) / ITALIANOAfter dusty years in my bookshelf, finally I decided to read "Lolita". I am blown away by this Vladimir Nabokov's work, ironic and dramatic at the same time. I am not shocked, nor I have found those disastrous tones of an announced tragedy that I was expecting from this book. Indeed Nabokov tells us that this work:"... brings along no moral. For me a work of fiction exists only if it gives me what I frankly shall call aesthetic pleasure."The main character, Humbert, de...

Astoundingly beautiful prose, a self-aware psychotic narrator who is both unapologetic and yet disgusted by his crime...so many themes in this book, so much symmetry (342). Humbert Humbert knows he is both brilliant and insanely obsessed with pre-pubescent girls. He tortures his psychiatrists "cunningly leading them on; never letting them see [he] knew every trick of the trade" (P. 34). He becomes a lodger with Ms. Haze, a widow, and sees his nymphet in her yard, "a blue sea-wave swelled under [...

Now, this is going to be embarrassing to admit.As we all should know, reading and enjoying a book is largely about interpretation. People are not the same and we all view things differently; one individual might see a relationship in a book as "passionate" while another could see it as "damaging". When characters make bad decisions, some will view it as stupidity and others will view it as an accurate representation of humanity's imperfections. Not only that, but time often changes the way one p...

Nymph. Nymphet. Nymphetiquette. Nymphology. Nymphism. I will never think of 12 year old girls the same way. There’s a stain on my brain. The power of this book is that it’s creepy and taboo, but the pedophilia and incest is so damn plausible. There’s a criminal, upsetting proclivity of the subject matter, but the whole thing is oiled with reason--SAY IT AINT SO. It’s deviant, queer, puerile, and yet ever so human, darkly human, perverted in the corner.Lolita lingers in my mind, like an accidenta...

LUST AND LEPIDOPTERY(Legend of a Licentious Logophile) 1. Libidinous linguist lusts after landlady's lass.2. Lecherous lodger weds lovelorn landlady.3. Landlady loses life.4. Lascivious lewd looks after little Lolita.5. Lubricious Lolita loves licking lollipops lambitively.6. Licentious lecturer loves Lolita louchely.7. Lechery lands lusty lamister in legal limbo.8. Lachrymose libertine languishes in lockup.

Nabokov often writes his novels in the perspective of detestable villains. You never like them, you're never supposed to like them, and Nabokov doesn't like them either. He slaps them around and humiliates them. And in the end, they pay the price for their sins. Readers never seem to realize this. They become immersed in the psychology of the book and feel defiled by it all. Instead, they should sit back and watch the bastards suffer. The stories are written in their own view so that makes the p...

Between the CoversAfter re-reading "Lolita", I asked my local bookseller if she'd ever read it.She replied firmly, “No…and I’m not going to either. He’s a paedophile.”A bit taken aback, I enquired further, “Who? The author or the character?”Fortunately, she replied, “The character.”For me, this exchange showed how much “Lolita” can still sharply divide opinion, even within lovers of fiction.This wasn’t the conversation I had been hoping for.I had read “Lolita” in a couple of days, less time than...

Update: 06/07/2020Having just finished A Dark Vanessa, a book I rated 5 stars I am even more certain of my hatred of this book. Any book where the reader is forced to feel empathy for a pedophile just doesn’t do it for me. You can call me narrow minded if you like but if it were up to me they would all be castrated and set on fire and I would feel no sadness about it. Go read A Dark Vanessa for a fantastic portrayal of an abusive relationship between a girl and a grown man. Not this shit. P.s I’...

Other formerly shocking novels of previous centuries have lost their power, batteries quite flat (Madame Bovary, Ulysses, Lady Chatterly’s Lover) – we love them still but we wince no more, we may be quite amused at the idea that this word or that idea was not allowed in polite society – we may, indeed, be vastly amused at the very idea of polite society because society is just not very polite at all these days. But uniquely, Lolita, this great and appalling novel, only gets more shocking and mor...

I insist the world know how much I loved my Lolita, this Lolita, pale and polluted, and big with another’s child, but still gray-eyed, still sooty-lashed, still auburn and almond, still Carmencita, still mine. From prison, the confessions of Humbert Humbert, a 40- year old man with a weakness for 'nymphets', budding sirens 'between nine and fourteen', reach us. Looking for shelter in a sleepy American town, he discovers 12-year-old Dolores Haze - Lolita. To be able to stay near her, Humbert m

I feel like a mental midget in trying to explain my feelings about this book. I struggle to understand why it is considered such a classic piece of literature. Am I jaded by my own time? Have I heard too often the world "lolita" used in modern contexts to refer to young girls who are attractive to adult men who should know better? I had to delve into some literary criticism in order to help me understand, and I think what Lolita tries to do is tell a disguting story about a disgusting man using

I wasn't even going to write a review of Lolita after finishing it, because, honestly, how many reviews does this classic need? That is, until I started pocking around and reading what others have to say about it. Many reactions to this book are puzzling to me. In this world of Jerry Sanduskys and such, there are still people who find this "erotic," who in the end feel some kind of compassion toward the narrator, who think that Lolita was the one who seduced and manipulated poor Humbert? Well, I...

Pushing the boundaries of what acceptable literature can actually be, Lolita is very much a piece of art. For many years I kept hearing about this book, the content sounding disturbing and perhaps even slightly fascinating. It’s a book that’s central theme is one of the darkest elements of mankind: paedophilia. And although such a thing is beyond revolting, it is used to tell the tale of a very lost and very lonely man. Humbert is a man to be pitied, pitied because he actually exists. A child in...

Lolita, Vladimir NabokovLolita is a 1955 novel written by Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humbert is obsessed with a 12-year-old girl, Dolores Haze, with whom he becomes sexually involved after he becomes her stepfather. Lolita is his private nickname for Dolores. The novel was originally written in English and first published in

Probably everyone recalls that iconic movie poster with a blond teenager peering above her heart-shaped sunglasses, a red lollipop on the tip of her tongue. This picture is directly inspired by a line in Nabokov’s novel, where middle-aged Humbert-Humbert sees “his Lolita” for the very first time. What follows is a tender, sad, and seemingly chaste love story between a man in his forties and (in his own words) a nymphette.Lolita is a novel in the form of a confession. It is unclear throughout H.H...

An old friend used to say that "Ulysses" was a good book to read but not a good book to "read". After reading "Lolita" I understand what he meant.Nabokov was a man obsessed with word games and this book is crammed cover to cover with many brilliant examples. Language delighted the man and that certainly comes across. What makes this acheivement even more amazing was that English was his third or fourth language. It is mind blowing that he or anyone could write so fluidly in a "foreign" tongue. I...

I once represented a man who had been accused of statutory rape and sexual exploitation of a minor. I did it because it is my job and I fundamentally believe that everyone, no matter how heinous the crime alleged, deserves a fair trial.That said, it was the single most unpleasant experience of my legal career and high in the running for most unpleasant all time.In popular culture we are inundated with scenes of crime and violence, we live in a morally relative landscape where “to each his own” i...

I read this book seven months ago, and this is the first time I have so much as typed a word of a review for it.To be fair, I am horribly behind on reviews absolutely all of the time. As I write, I have 31 in my backlog. I am approximately two or three months behind at any point. I’m lucky if I write one for every two books I read. And yet this manages to be a new low.Honestly, I don’t want to review this book. I don’t want to think critically about it. Really, I don’t want to think about it at

You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go. This is a book I kind of hated and kind of loved, and when I first started writing this review, I did not know how to evaluate it. So I went through the reviews, and I realized what I wanted to say: it honestly amazes me that anyone is able to read this as a romance. It's quite clear that this is not meant to be a romance. even ignoring that it's quite literally about a twelve year old and a thirty-seven year old, it is made SO clear tha

*Ranked as one of the Top 100 Fiction of the 20th Century*I’m not quite sure how to put this in words. Hell, I’m not sure what I intend to say, so this is going to be ugly. If you want to sit in on this exercise be my guest, you’ve probably got more important things to do, such as organizing your cassette tapes and LPs before shoving them in a box destined for the attic, believe me, your time will be better spent, especially when you take that stroll down memory lane and consider how killer it w...