The Annotated Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, with preface, introduction and notes by Alfred Appel, Jr. This is the lead posting for a collaborative and critical reading of the novel.
My first exposure to critical reading was college and I remember it well. We were to sit in class and read Gerontium by T. S. Eliot. At the end of the first class we might have gotten through the first page and it was the most labor I had put into a single printed page. And so begins the first challenge: reading the introduction when you want to read the book. The next challenge is to maintain a cohesive mental picture of the story while making excursions into the notes.
The notes are enlightening but I wish I had a separate compartment in my brain were I could store these notes so that when I closed the compartment I had no knowledge of them. This is the difficulty I have with critical reading of annotated books. I’ll get over it.
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I’m still “slogging through the front matter” (I believe those were your words) . . . but have also started the story, proper. I agree there is a place for annotated texts; they may not be the best for a first reading. And I believe this is the first reading of Lolita for both of us. I don’t even recall having seen the entire movie, the James Mason version; I have a vague recollection of parts of it. The Jeremy Irons version I know I’ve not seen. So,
It is my first reading as well. The paperback had been present in my library (apparently in the indefinite “to-read” queue) but slipped away during my last move. I have not seen either movie.
I agree that the way to manage annotated stories is to read them twice; the first for personal experience and the second for shared study. I have already muddied the waters and I confess that there are many allusions that escape me entirely.
Within the bounds of narrative theory, distinction is drawn–by some–among the real, flesh-and-blood author, an implied author, and the narrator of a “story.” In part, the distinction between real and implied author was developed to account for apparent (un)reliability issues that surface in a voice that is not the narrator’s and which is not representative of what readers might know about the real author (this approach casts doubt on the Intentional Fallacy, in a way; I will provide you with a copy of the paper in which Wimsatt and Beardsley put forth and defend their notion of the Intentional Fallacy). Whether Humbert Humbert (HH, hereafter) is “reliable” or not, as a narrator, we can look at later. Such decisions should be made after completing the read. What interests me here, now, is whether or not there are
I will grant that Nabokov is dodgy enough to do this but I am not picking it up. What is interesting to me is that HH presents a straight story — not a confession for there is no request for absolution nor an attempt at justification for his immoral actions. If indeed while sitting in jail his lawyer requested he write this diary, it had better not be given to the prosecutor. I can’t call HH a pure storyteller because he occasionally breaks that narrative wall and talks directly to me, the reader, in a way that presumes I understand and am at peace with his purposes.
Perhaps his narrative is too reliable? (I hope that brings a smile.) Here we have HH, sinner and monster, telling his tale of accomplishment on the road while distracting us with a commentary of kitsch in rural America. HH lives in fear of getting caught and isn’t conflicted at all.
From a completely different direction, a crossword puzzle I worked recently had “Lolitas” as the answer for the clue, “teases”. I was offended by this. Lolita is a tease, yes, but she is also a pre-pubescent twelve year old. To epitomize her as a tease diminishes HH’s responsibility. Do you think Nabokov was prescient enough to know that this might happen to Lo-leet-ah but calling a child molester a Humbert would most likely not catch on?
At the end of Part Two, Chapter 9, p192, Nabokov ends the paragraph with a seeming non sequitur:
Did you read this as I did? It seems to be a comment on Mona Dahl, who in this context HH suspects is being pimped on him by Lolita, and that he is describing her as something unpleasant that is brightly presented in a disturbing fashion. After going over it twice I marked the spot for a return at a more lucid moment.
It is this sort of thing that slows me down with Nabokov. He is an efficient writer whose narrative always seems purposeful. At the end of this chapter I am left wondering if HH just got distracted by a random thought about some stairwell. In a way that is good: it makes me think and it can be interesting to work out. It can also be highly distracting.
I received Eyeless in Gaza the other day but have not started it. If I find it interesting I will have to buy the book since the inter-library loan requires that I return it in too short a time to read it thoroughly. I will probably give it a taste in the next few days. The process requires that you pick a specific edition from a specific library and the one I got happened to be an old paperback that had been repaired with hard covers. It is a good repair job but, to me, the advantage of library loans is that you can read a good edition without spending the money.
Let’s start with HH as “a pure storyteller.” I would suggest that, in the best tradition of oral recitation of story, HH is a pure storyteller and one indication of that is his direct confrontation of his interlocutors (readers, listeners, what have you). Consider for example the direct address to readers made by Henry Fielding in Tom Jones, or Defoe in Robinson Crusoe, or Swift in Gulliver’s Travels. Nabokov is, in some ways emulating and nodding toward those authors of “confessions” or personal histories. Even his opening gambit—the Foreword ostensibly “written” by HH’s attending psychiatrist—is a nod to such works as Crusoe, The Turn of the Screw, and Castle Otranto, among many other narratives that have “fallen into the hands” of some other presenter. Storytellers (oral or written) can be seen as using the direct contact with the reader as a means of testing attention to the story, confirming understanding, and encouraging shared perceptions; the first two are more relevant to oral storytelling, but the last works for either case and is heavily exploited by our “friend” HH. Considering narratives from a purely rhetorical perspective—rhetorical in the Aristotelian sense rather than the pejorative sense it has obtained—authors/narrators are trying to “convince” their readers of something. No presentation of story is without a rhetorical intent—and that brings us back to the “Intentional Fallacy.” What sort of argument is HH making? He clearly is making some sort of argument, else why appeal to his reader(s)? Why ask us to remember with him, for instance, when he uses such phrases as “we who are in the know” (p18, about one full page into part I, chapter 5) or “the reader who knows the ropes” (p25, about one full page from the end of part I, chapter 6)? These are rhetorical devices, much like his use of the second person pronouns “you” and “we” to engage us/the reader in his web of argument. The “distractions” you mention are also a part of this. It is descriptive material which we recognize and subliminally assign to a shared experience with HH. It serves to make us more “sympathetic,” even against our wishes.
The notion that HH is “too reliable” as a narrator is an intriguing one (and it did raise a smile). When I think of someone who is too reliable I start to question not only their reliability but also my prior judgment of them. In my work I routinely encounter (as I am sure you have) persons who fairly drip credibility; everyone defers to them, accords to them knowledge and experience commensurate with the way they comport themselves, not necessarily consistent with how they actually perform in the working environment. These “too reliable” persons are usually, sooner or later, at the root of some sort of debacle which arises exactly because their apparent reliability leads everyone down the wrong path. Relating this to HH—and to his rhetorical intent—what path is he leading us down?
I will scan for you and email some pages from a recent text I read on why we read narratives and the relation of those reasons to “theory of mind.” The author, Lisa Zunshine, is a narrative theorist with a cognitivist bent. After you get and read the pages, perhaps we can weave those ideas into this thread of the discussion.
What “Lolita” (fictional girl, story, and real-life manifestations) has become in terms of a tease—or, as my MW Collegiate Dictionary says, “a precociously seductive girl”—is (I believe) a consequence of how the public responded to the reviews of the book in media (how many people really READ the book, rather than just the reviews?) and to Kubrick’s original film (for which Nabokov helped write the screenplay). That you were offended by the reduction of Lolita, the “person,” to a mere psycho-physical response to youthful beauty may well be an indication that Nabokov/HH is reaching “you.”
I’ll move on to the apparent non sequitur later today . . . time for some reading.
It is quarter to eight in the evening of November 5. I have just finished reading Lolita. It is the first novel in a long while that I have not walked away from at the end thinking it could have ended better, that is, more skillfully. Nabokov, like Conrad, ocassionally takes my breath away.
Now, I have both versions of the film set aside to view this week. Rented both yesterday against the possibility of finishing the book today. But, it is a little late to think of watching a film critically. And I have yet to put my thoughts together on the apparent non sequitur of the ruby block amidst the clear ones. Tomorrow . . .
Okay . . . the apparent non sequitur. Clearly, in terms of classical logic and philosophical argument, this aside to the reader—not unlike a player on a stage stepping out of character for a moment and addressing the audience—is not a non sequitur. Or . . . is it? Is Humbert, in a backhanded (no intended reference to tennis) way, completing some sort of one-sided rhetorical argument here? An argument, as you suggest, that he was “strangely disturbed” [N’s words put in the mouth of H] by his suspicion (keeping in mind, now, Lisa Zunshine’s argument) that Mona Dahl was (as you put it) “being pimped on him by Lolita”? In more contemporary terms, a non sequitur has become “a statement (as a response) that does not follow logically from or is not clearly related to anything previously said,” as my MW Collegiate Dictionary has it. This also appears to apply to the situation. On the surface, the aside seems to NOT follow logically from everything else that went before, unless you [the reader] are cueing off of something that was placed there in the symbolic realm for the “implied reader” by the “implied author.”
I think you’ve hit on an important and relevant point to this “discussion” when you say, “He [Nabokov] is an efficient writer whose narrative always seems purposeful” (my emphases). This is one of the reasons I raised the spectre of the Intentional Fallacy: is it reasonable to presume/assume that Nabokov purposefully places just such apparent non sequiturs at strategic locations in the text? I believe so; he was known to “toy” with both his texts and his readers. And, “real” authors do struggle over what they write; all you need do is look at manuscripts and galley-proofs to see the working and reworking of a text to say just the right thing at the right place in the text. I cannot remember who said it, but there is a statement about film-making (or maybe storytelling) that I heard applied to literary texts [and I am paraphrasing]: don’t introduce a gun early in the story unless you intend to use it later, or something like that. There is a great example of this principle in Spartacus (just watched it again the other evening): as the gladiator/slaves are about to be herded into the kitchen to be fed, the head guard picks up a meat cleaver and shows it to one of the slave/cooks and says, “What did I tell you about leaving these lying around?” (or some such thing), and then he whacks it into one of the supporting posts in the kitchen; later in the film, one of the gladiator/slaves grabs it out of the post during the revolt and uses it to kill a guard; it would have been more “poetic” had it been the guard that found it and drew our attention to it who was killed.
So, where is this going? Your reading of that one textual aside (and it can be applied to many others throughout the text) seems appropriate. There is sufficient textual evidence to support an argument that this aside is somehow a symbolic (re)presentation and (re)evaluation of the Mona-moment. After all, the only point of view we do have throughout the text—no matter how many times he tries to convince us otherwise—is Humbert’s. We have only his reading of Mona’s behavior [“ ‘Do tell me about Ball Zack, sir. Is he really that good?’ She moved up so close to my chair that I made out through lotions and creams her uninteresting skin scent.”] and Lolita’s potential motives/motivations, which are grounded in his reading of his interpretation of Mona’s behavior.
Consider the above, now, in terms of something Humbert “says” at the opening of the book [in my edition it is on page 13, at the opening of chapter 3] which caught my attention:
Which kind of “visual memory” is H’s story as (re)constructed here, “under observation”?
At the end of the novel, characters can be put to rest and I can finally put Humbert comfortably outside my mind for a while. He was really starting to irritate me. A writer who has the artistry to irritate is a good writer. The subject matter becomes secondary, other than to provide a colorful and provocative foundation on which Nabokov can play his parlor games. Reading Lolita was time well spent.
I want to explore The Intentional Fallacy later but I am troubled by this: is HH truly an unreliable narrator? I know Zunshine and Hitchins favor HH as unreliable but I find him merely corrupt. In Midnight’s Children, Rushdie’s narrator would make a claim and give you no reason not to believe it, only to revoke it out of hand (“remember what I told you on page 33? I was just kidding.”) later in the story. A classic unreliable narrator. HH is a damaged adult, sexually preying on a 12-year old girl. I would not expect his account to be an accurate historical outline of events — it is after all HH’s rewrite of those events from memory. There are digressions, puns, excursions, and events out of order, but HH as narrator never misled me the way Saleem Sinai did.
On the non sequitur: I have misused the term. The description of the glazed glass in the window is allegedly disassociated with the text before it in the paragraph but it is not an issue of logic. Upon further investigation you find it may be associated. Sticky notes are required to keep score. It is a Nabokovian device designed to keep the attention of his poor readers.
And since you told your story about Spartacus I have to tell mine. When Charlotte Haze is run over after discovering Humbert’s act of marrying her only to get closer to Lolita, I could not get this old George Carlin joke out of my mind (completely paraphrased):
George answering phone: “Hello?”
“This is Mary. We met at a party, oh, four to six weeks ago?”
“Mary.”
“You said I was a real good sport?”
“Ri-ight. Mary.”
“Well, I’m pregnant and I’m going to kill myself.”
“Say, Mary, you are a good sport.”
HH didn’t spend too much time grieving, did he? But wait, there’s more. Remember that I bought a used edition of Lolita on-line? My purchase had notes and highlights which were disappointing at first but entertaining later. The notes were less than enlightening; the most common one being “Irony!!” written diagonally in the margins (pencil, unsharpened, large font). It got entertaining later because I realized the previous reader stopped noting the irony (wouldn’t you?). I suspect he had reached his irony quota or stopped reading.
I am sending to you, this evening, two scans from texts on narrative theory concerning “reliability.” The “one page” scan by Booth is considered by most narratologists as THE definition on which all others are based. It is from his book The Rhetoric of Fiction. This short, one page introduction to the concept is merely a taste of what is further elaborated upon in at least two of the following chapters. It is a book worth reading. The other, by Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan is a good, straightforward discussion of the topic with examples to assist her readers. This scan is from her text Narrative Fiction.
I do not disagree with you. Saleem Sinai and Humbert Humbert, while both “classic” first-person narrators and—in a sense—spinning the same sort of yarn (though the subject matter is not), are radically different in the manner in which their (un)reliability is made manifest to the reader. Saleem is VERY “up front” with his untrustworthiness; by the end of Midnight’s Children there was nothing Saleem could have said that I would have believed without some form of independently corroborating evidence. Not that Saleem was a “bad” person or a bad storyteller; rather, most of what he had told us was shown to be false, so why should we believe anything else he has to say? Humbert, on the other hand, is a “bad” person despite his initial efforts to convince us otherwise, and he KNOWS it. Yet, he is trying to convince us otherwise. And, for some not particularly perceptive readers—perhaps the implied readers of his “confession”—he comes very close to succeeding. Why does he NOT succeed with his more perceptive readers? Why does it take until the end of the “confession” before less perceptive readers are fed up with him? Is it because this intermediate figure, the implied author which is not Nabokov and not Humbert yet part of both and then some, provides little clues and cues that the perceptive reader plays off against Humbert’s telling? I think so. Rimmon-Kenan does a fairly good job of distinguishing between the two types of unreliable narrators Saleem and Humbert appear to be.
Your recollection of Carlin’s joke is very good. In fact, it aligns well with the way I remember it. And I can see how it fits well into possible readings of Charlotte’s “accident.” Nabokov would probably have laughed out loud at the connection were you to have told him.
I truly love buying used books and finding myself interacting with the comments of prior readers. Marginalia is an intriguing topic unto itself (see H.J. Jackson’s book, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books). That your prior reader recognized irony—though apparently tiring of it—is at least one mark in his/her favor. Use of pencil is another. But heavy pencil marks with an unsharpened pencil in block letters . . . THAT is criminal. Compound that with the fact that there is only the one word: IRONY, and you have the readerly equivalent of a Neanderthal.
On the other hand, as Rimmon-Kenan points out, irony is—though not necessary or sufficient—a marker of unreliability somewhere in the narrative.
It is very early Saturday morning, a consequence of waking at 0430 to go to work. The bacon is already in the pan; the coffee is hot and rich. And I have just re-read the entire thread (catching and correcting one or two of my more egregious typos).
In my last remark, above, I might have hit upon a means of identifying that ellusive/illusive “implied author”: IRONY!
One form of textual irony is the “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” of the implied author toward the reader regarding some “shared” insight not available to the characters in the story, including the ostensible narrator. So, if we can find ironic bits (a magnet might help) that we cannot “source tag” to HH, or to Nabokov, maybe there we will have caught scent of the implied author. Then from the tone, flavor, tenor of his/her sense of irony we can perhaps characterize him/her.
Both movies, the 1962 Stanley Kubrick version and the 1998 Adrian Lyne version, are worth watching. Nabokov wrote the screenplay for the Kubrick version. Kubrick apparently did not use it as written, but made several changes, not all of which were to Nabokov’s liking. The film is decidedly comedic. Several times I found myself laughing out loud. The movie opens with Humbert at Quilty’s mansion, hunting him down. Peter Sellers, as Quilty, appears out from under a sheet draped over a chair. There are several jokes made in reference to Spartacus and a parody of a tennis game in the form of ping pong. Sellers passes through various disguises/personae (a precursor to his Strangelove transitions) and in the process gives Quilty a really smarmy quality. There is a marvelous “three stooges” moment when the cot is delivered to the room at The Enchanted Hunter (recall in the book it never materializes). The storyline is pretty much the same; all of the major elements are there. Some of the characters are compressed into one another and some story elements from the text are altered so as to give a different feel to the story. The ending leaves open the possibility that Lolita lives happily ever after.
For the Lyne version, Nabokov “shares” writing credit with a screen writer named Stephen Schiff (who has not done much else) for good reason: it is very “faithful” to the text. It started life as a Showtime production on cable television. Anthony Lane (The New Yorker) called the Lyne version “the most graceful failure” to adapt Nabokov to film, seeing all efforts at adaptation of Nabokov as doomed to failure. He referred to the Kubrick version as an assault on the novel. Interesting, seeing as how Nabokov was involved. Lyne’s version starts, as did Kubrick’s, with the end of the novel, but in Lyne’s case we meet Humbert staring off into space, blood spatters on his face, driving an old Woody station wagon down a country road on a foggy morning weaving back and forth across the road—voice over gives us his thoughts; he is holding a bobby pin in his bloodied hand and the (equally bloodied) gun is on the passenger’s seat. Right away we are given a “soft” and wounded image of Humbert. Our sympathy for him grows from there. The actual murderous event is put off until the end of the film.
Humbert is portrayed somewhat sympathetically in both films. But, James Mason’s Humbert is clearly a “bad” person. You can see it in his reaction to Charlotte’s finding the diary and in his reaction to the “accident.” Jeremy Irons’ Humbert is less “bad” than pitiable. He is seen not as a pedophile but as a man who never outgrew his shattered love affair from age 14 (remember Annabel Lee died of typhus shortly after they met). Lolita provides him the opportunity to recover lost time (shades of Proust); and, at one point, just before killing Quilty, he calls her his “salvation.” You get the feeling that the only reasons he (Irons) could be considered a pedophile are grounded in the legal definitions of his adopted country and the puritanical mind set of his neighbors (Kubrick does something interesting with this notion with the “Farlows,” Jean and John, who let slip now and again that they are liberal minded about sex and partner swapping, though not overtly). Mason is clearly a “dirty old man,” from his manners and mannerisms in speech to the way he leers at the girls at the camp when he retrieves Lo.
The two Quiltys are as different as night and day. Peter Sellers, in all of his dra-medic glory, brings to the story a warped and twisted psychopath who happens to be a playwright. Frank Langella is merely a jaded (possibly impotent) libertine who happens to write plays. Both are excellent in their own created characters. Shelley Winters and Melanie Griffith as Charlotte Haze . . . I think Shelley has it, hands down. Sue Lyon and Dominique Swain as Lolita . . . the former, while clearly well suited to the role, in retrospect seems wooden and plodding when compared to the latter.
Let me know if you get the opportunity to watch either of the films (or both).