I hate lolita myself, but it's more due to not enjoying Nabokov's style and the queasy feeling of reading Humbert try to justify his every action to himself, and describing her seduction when she is just being a normal young girl. It's supposed to be horrifying.
Still, I see it's literary value, even if I dislike it. Like Tess of the D'urbervilles, another book I hate because it feels awful watching her slow motion destruction at the hands of every man who used her and condemned her for being used. A very good book, makes you feel things, and I hate it because I was made to read it 4 times in uni. Once was enough!
Well it is supposed to be horrifying because Humbert is an unreliable narrator. It's a great depiction of how predators always victimise themselves and justify their actions. Also afaik Nabokov was a victim of pedophilia himself.
Exactly. I see it's value and I see how well it's written, but I just didn't enjoy it, and I think Nabokov would be satisfied with that reading, since I don't think we as the audience are supposed to enjoy it. it's supposed to make us feel every bit of the queazy uncomfortable feeling of poor Dolores being victimized as Humbert tries to justify himself.
It's uncomfortable and horrifying in turns, like I said above. It's value is in the horror of it, an honest and awful depiction of how monsters think and justify themselves.
So yeah, I don't like it, but I don't think we are supposed to like it, I think that's the point. It's monstrous what he does, and we are supposed to feel that awful weight of his actions.
We did! It was university, so every time we finished a novel or short story we had a discussion class where we debated various points of view and backed them up with in text examples. It went with our lectures on the history and background of the author's and genres we studied. That class was contemporary literature, and we read some wild books! Nabokov we had as our second author on the syllabus, given lolita was published in 1955 and an early example of contemporary literature pushing boundaries in a post WW2 world.
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u/LillyAmongTheThorns 11d ago
I hate lolita myself, but it's more due to not enjoying Nabokov's style and the queasy feeling of reading Humbert try to justify his every action to himself, and describing her seduction when she is just being a normal young girl. It's supposed to be horrifying.
Still, I see it's literary value, even if I dislike it. Like Tess of the D'urbervilles, another book I hate because it feels awful watching her slow motion destruction at the hands of every man who used her and condemned her for being used. A very good book, makes you feel things, and I hate it because I was made to read it 4 times in uni. Once was enough!