Chronicles of a Procrastinating Novelist Volume 31: Lolita Review
***SPOILERS*** Gag. And now for anyone interested in a deeper, spoiler ridden discussion. As an English major/ writing graduate student, my academic career was peppered with opinions of Lolita. It’s a masterpiece! It’s overrated. It’s a must read for all literature students! Be a rebel an skip the gross, misogynistic, pedophile book. It features the world’s best anit-hero! Only feminists understand how screwed up this book is. And now I’m living in the #MeToo era. With all these exhortations in the back of my head, I finally gave in to the audio book version read by Jeremy Irons. My resultant impression, after the rollercoaster of revulsion that was listening to the entirety, is that Lolita is wildly over-interpreted. It’s neither complex, nor dismissible as a one-dimensional fantasy of a pervert. It’s neither genius, nor trash. It’s neither an unmissable read, nor something to avoid if one is curious. Lolita is a well written depiction of a preferential pedophile and his realistically complicated victim. I realize I’ve already lost the members of the pro-Humbert/Lolita is a seductress camp, but hear me out. Put aside the charm of Jeremy’s acting in the narration, the persuasiveness of Humbert’s logic and explanations, consider that the toxic and disturbed are excellent at rationalization and wordplay, and remember that psychology encourages us to ignore their words. Focus instead on Humbert’s actions. He is attracted to girls between nine and thirteen, exactly that age group, and within it, a specific physicality, and this is consistent before and after he meets Lolita. This is a preference, which is consistent with the definition of a preferential predator. He marries Lolita’s mother so he’ll have permanent access to the child. He considers murdering said mother when she states she intends to send Lolita to boarding school, thus eliminating his access. He drugs Lolita with the intent to fondle her. Though their first intercourse is consensual, he later bargains with her for sex, and restricts her actions and movements to control her access to boys or any authority who might discover their relationship. Finally, he shoots a perceived rival who enables Lolita’s escape from his custody. It doesn’t matter how likable Nobokov makes the guy, and he does, these are the actions of a predator, not a love sick victim of seduction. If this list of behaviors were describing a random stranger and not the protagonist of a classic work of literature, they’d be considered textbook FBI definition of a predator. As for Lolita, the fact she at 12 initiates she and Humbert’s first intercourse does not make her a seductress or negate her status as a victim. She’s a 12 year old in the first stages of puberty, curious about her sexuality, and self-aware. She’s aware of her effect on certain men, thus her potential for power over them. Much as it offends the puritains among us, this is not an implausible depiction of a female. And since the exercise of power is a human drive, the idea she would want to test her power is not implausible or unrealistic. However, what her initial consent does not justify is exploitation by an older man, two years of kidnapping, manipulation, and control on Humbert’s part. Sure, she does some manipulating back, but the underlying fact is she’s 12. She’s a minor. He’s the one in the position of power who is abusing it. When it comes to the book’s status as genius, the grounds are still thin. It is beautifully, skillfully written. That Nobokov avoids writing crudely, salaciously, or smuttily and still manages to make the story cringe-worthily compelling is impressive, but it’s not genius. It’s just good story telling and good character work. That Humbert is likeable and human despite his monstrous actions is no grand feat of genius either. He’s a realistically drawn human. So is Lolita, as unlikably as she is depicted. Is it uncomfortable to think the predator can be likeable and the prey unlikable? Yes. But discomfort doesn’t invalidate their positions. It just prevents them from being unrealistic caricatures. It’s impossible to read Lolita post #MeToo without the issue of consent and its portrayal in the text to continue to haunt the reader. Age of consent, its malleability, retractability, manipulability, all of these factors are on display in this faintly stomach turning work. I’d be curious to read a take by a thoughtful person who read and liked the text pre- #MeToo, whose re-reading it post might find their view of the text altered or affected. As for me, I cannot find the book worthy of the divisiveness and controversy it has garnered in the decades since its publication. I have the benefit of modern behavioral science and an enlightening socio-cultural movement to inform this opinion, but I stand by it. Lolita isn’t overrated; it’s just overhyped.
