Dec 28, 2024

Lolita

book so good, you don't understand it.

Don't expect much. Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita^[1] one of those novels which you have to read again and again and again and still you won't get everything. This was my first read, and I hope to read it again.

The plot is suggestive of the sexual, but it is not about sex at all. It's about the debilitating and crippling compulsion, the moral and ethical lapses, the limit to which one can go. It is about choices, and it's very psychiatric.

Nabokov's writing relies on tacit knowledge; you have to know a lot about literature and history beforehand to understand better, which I absolutely did not. The dense wording and obscure imagery makes it a bit difficult to read, which is why I had to read it with an audiobook (read by Jeremy Irons). There are almost 150 pages of extra notes in the end which elaborates on most of the allusions and metaphors, and I didn't read them; you have to save something for the future, no?

Even though the language is difficult, it is very thorough. It is not a "brick"- it does have life, humor and substance. I think the convolution reflects the nature of the protagonist himself. One cannot, in simple terms, can ever put down the right feelings in any other style.

Nabokov says that this book doesn't really have a moral, and I think I disagree. But perhaps that is because literary critics are not satisfied easily (it is an identity which I seem to have acquired of late and take silent pride to, but don't want to say it out loud).

I might not understand the point of this book but these words come to my mind: mania, impulse, man, captivity, cancer.

Footnotes