Book Club

[landho]

Chapter 18

Laughed at this:

I countered by inquiring whether she would still want to marry me if my father's maternal grandfather had been, say, a Turk. [Charlotte Haze] said it did not matter a bit; but that if she ever found out that I did not believe in Our Christian God, she would commit suicide. She said it so solemnly that it gave me the creeps.

and at this (which Clopek already noted but is definitely worth repeating):

And when, by means of the pitifully ardent, naïvely lascivious caresses, she of the noble nipple and massive thigh prepared me for the performance of my nightly duty, it was still a nymphet's scent that in despair I tried to pick up, as I bayed through the undergrowth of dark decaying forests.

HH again raises the question of the truthfulness of the text. He lies to the society columnist of the Ramsdale Journal and then tells Charlotte "that society columns should contain a shimmer of errors." (The idea that falsehoods should be perpetuated is interesting.)

[landho]

Chapter 19

interesting as we get deeper into part 2, my thoughts on father figures denying the sexual activities really come into play

"...(Lolita, with an incestuous thrill, I had grown to regard as my child)..."

Chapter 20

Note that in all the previous instances in which it's mentioned, "Hourglass Lake" is erroneously written as "Our Glass Lake"--a misunderstanding on HH's, but more importantly, it shows that what is written can be amended and shown to be wrong later on by the text itself (much like HH's contempt for Charlotte Haze). In this manner, the book unfolds temporally in a strange, disconcerting manner; it's very difficult to get a firm grasp on the novel's center, so to speak. It may also underscore the novel's unrevised status. (It's supposed to be the first draft of a work written by a man who died while in prison, after all.)

Also, again, HH refers to Lolita as his "daughter": "...(this I take to note only because my daughter's skin did the same when she felt that way...)."

[broneck]

I'm not going to mince any words here: that passage confuses me. (re: chapter 18)

Part 2 Spoilers

I'm not sure exactly what he's trying to say (I'm somewhat certain he's lamenting about the horrible way in which he treated poor Charlotte throughout the initial course of their getting to know each other, but that certainly does not go hand in hand with his tears of joy following the accident resluting in her death).

By the dissonance between narrator and character, you're referring to the gap between what he says vs. what he actually does?

[broneck]

So guys, I love the ongoing discussion as we read the novel, but I'm wondering if we should set some kind of goals (will be added to first page) for each book we read. Soemthing we want to conclude about / ask / answer for each book. Come up with some ideas for kindof a framework of what this thread should be, beyond simply hashing ideas. Just a though, let me know.

[landho]

I'm not going to mince any words here: that passage confuses me. (re: chapter 18)

HH's just trying to keep Lolita in mind so he can stay aroused while performing his marital duties. It's hilarious to think of Charlotte Haze's vag as the "undergrowth of dark decaying forests."

By the dissonance between narrator and character, you're referring to the gap between what he says vs. what he actually does?

I meant that HH as he is portraying himself (scheming, desperate, opportunistic, maniacal, contemptuous) is different from the HH who is writing in prison (reflective, regretful, [trying to appear] truthful).

So guys, I love the ongoing discussion as we read the novel, but I'm wondering if we should set some kind of goals (will be added to first page) for each book we read. Soemthing we want to conclude about / ask / answer for each book. Come up with some ideas for kindof a framework of what this thread should be, beyond simply hashing ideas. Just a though, let me know.

This could be really good. I think a lot of us are making very good time on this novel, so we will have time to talk about broader themes, etc., though. But this could be helpful on future books; it's difficult, however, to come up with goals on books that no one has yet read. Something to keep in mind.

[broneck]

Chapter 17

HH's delineates his monstrous plans after reading Charlotte's love letter, but then he clarifies:

It is with a great effort of will that in this memoir I have managed to tune my style to the tone of the journal that I kept when Mrs. Haze was to me but an obstacle. That journal of mine is no more; but I have considered it my artistic duty to preserve its intonations no matter how false and brutal they seem to me now. Fortunately, my story has reached a point where I can cease insulting poor Charlotte for the sake of retrospective versimilitude.

this is the passage to which i was referring (The language isn't holding me back from the humour, Ilove her hairy old pooter referred to as an undergrowth of decay)

[landho]

this is the passage to which i was referring (The language isn't holding me back from the humour, Ilove her hairy old pooter referred to as an undergrowth of decay)

Oh, I'm sorry; you wrote re chapter 18, which is why I was a little confused.

I think that section in chapter 17 ("It is with great effort...versimilitude") is very important. What HH is saying is that the way in which he is portraying both Charlotte Haze and his thoughts and feelings toward her are not congruent with his feelings toward her now. Back then, he saw her as a frumpy, "handsome" but not attractive woman who was simply a means to an end. At the time of the writing, however, he does not feel that way and he regrets that he felt and behaved in that manner. But in an attempt to faithfully re-create the mood, the timbre, and the scene, he has tried to express his original feelings toward Charlotte as they occurred at that time.

I think this is of great import because it shows that dissonance that I mentioned before; it signifies that HH was at one time a monster and if he did not cease being one in the last moments of his life, at the very least he became a repentant monster.

(Sorry if this isn't as clear as I intend it--I have a pressing assignment that needs doing! If you have any more questions, I will try to clarify and elucidate further when I can.)

[broneck]

nono, that's excellent. . .i was beginning to gather the pieces, but that's certainly helped clarify.

[dolly]

Part 2, Chapter 9:

"I spoke French to [Eva Rosen] (much to Lo's disgust)....Unfortunately, despite "that French kid's uncle" being "a millionaire," Lo dropped Eva for some reason before I had time to enjoy in my modest way her fragrant presence in the Humbert open house."

There is another mention of Lo feeling ill-will toward any of her friends whom HH shows even a slight interest in...but when I think about how he writes of her crying at night, and how he has to buy her things in order to get sexual favours, it comes across as though Lo is playing some sort of game with him, and in a lot of ways is a very adult [read: gold digger who is secretly adoring of the guy] take toward their "relationship"...what do you guys think about Lo's feelings toward HH? They seem very mixed, and I'm finding it confusing.

"...your face deliberately twitching in imitation of my tic nerveux."

I liked this...I can really picture HH as having a nervous tick. It just seems like one little thing about him that's a bit off to the public eye, because other than that I get the impression that he is a quite charming man.

[landho]

Part 2, Chapter 9:

"I spoke French to [Eva Rosen] (much to Lo's disgust)....Unfortunately, despite "that French kid's uncle" being "a millionaire," Lo dropped Eva for some reason before I had time to enjoy in my modest way her fragrant presence in the Humbert open house."

There is another mention of Lo feeling ill-will toward any of her friends whom HH shows even a slight interest in...but when I think about how he writes of her crying at night, and how he has to buy her things in order to get sexual favours, it comes across as though Lo is playing some sort of game with him, and in a lot of ways is a very adult [read: gold digger who is secretly adoring of the guy] take toward their "relationship"...what do you guys think about Lo's feelings toward HH? They seem very mixed, and I'm finding it confusing.

"...your face deliberately twitching in imitation of my tic nerveux."

I liked this...I can really picture HH as having a nervous tick. It just seems like one little thing about him that's a bit off to the public eye, because other than that I get the impression that he is a quite charming man.

Yes, wanted to mention that things weren't as black and white as maybe it seemed when you and Clopek were decrying HH at first....

Also, HH mentioned his nervous tic in part 1, chapter 18: "Humbert's face might twitch with neuralgia, but in her eyes it vied in beauty and animation with the sun and shadows of leaves rippling on the white refrigerator." I wondered whether any of the people who react to HH kind of oddly do so on account of his nervous tic and also how prominent it was.

[broneck]

In blatant terms, HH has seriously and irreparably fucked Lo up. This is a situation we can view outside of the context of the narration and probably infer what's really happening...a girl who is of an age far too young to cope with the gravity of being in such a twisted sexual relationship, is in turn becoming (sexually, and psychologically, if not physically) damaged goods. She cries herself to sleep at night because she is motherless, and dependant on someone she certainly (by this point) knows is manipulative and sexually perverted...she is loved by no one, and the only person who shows her love is HH, but his love is fickle (he flirts with her girlfriends, other "nymphets", showing us how little Lo really means to him as a person).

At the same time, the emotional bond that comes from having a sexual relationship with someone has also taken its hold on Dolly...so of course, when she sees him flirting with her girlfriends, she's getting slapped thrice

1 - the only person who "loves" her in the world (we know her teachers and most acquaintances find her insufferable) shows his true colors...this realization obviously causes her horrible emotional pain

2 - she is dependant on someone who sees her as a means to and end, which she also realizes (hence, hoarding money to try and one day escape...maybe), and might even draw a conclusion that one day his interest will wane, and he'll find another Lolita to take her place

3 - a person that, in some twisted way, she actually loves back (let's not forget her initial crushes on him, their closeness, her running back to give him a kiss as she's being shipped off to camp) doesn't really care.

she's a sea of turmoil and mixed emotion, and is completely incapable of dealing with such things at so young an age.

[landho]

Spoiler

Don't forget though, that HH claimed that she was much more sexually experienced than he was and that it was she who seduced him.

Will try to elaborate more when I catch up with you clowns...!

[broneck]

I'm not suggesting that he deflowered her (although he confessed to picking up a few whores in his day...plus he was married, i struggle to believe he was experienced that she), but Lo only told us of one lover....and there's certainly a difference between sleeping with someone and never seeing them again, and having an ongoing sexual relationship over the course of a year.

[landho]

Part 1, Chapter 20

Does anyone else find HH's plea on behalf of sex offenders to be weirdly pathetic and disgusting?

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet.

Also, HH's use of pseudonyms sometimes borders on the bizarrely transparent: in Ramsdale, Jean Farlow (from actress Jean Harlow) and the Chatfields and the McCoos (from the feuding families the Hatfields and the McCoys).

[dolly]

Part 1, Chapter 20

Does anyone else find HH's plea on behalf of sex offenders to be weirdly pathetic and disgusting?

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet.

Also, HH's use of pseudonyms sometimes borders on the bizarrely transparent: in Ramsdale, Jean Farlow (from actress Jean Harlow) and the Chatfields and the McCoos (from the feuding families the Hatfields and the McCoys).

I found that passage very interesting too (i think I may have mentioned part of it earlier, I don't remember)...The casual nature of his description of them, and the act of "little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation" really demonstrates how he finds his relationship with Dolly completely legitimate, and not the least bit immoral.

PART 2, CH 20:

I find it interesting how HH goes on for several pages describing the pleasure he gets from watching Lolita play tennis. Why do you guys think Nabokov goes on for so long about tennis? The only relation I can think of is the whole thing about "playing doubles", and how when HH goes upstairs to take a phone call, the fat balding man becomes Lolita's partner. Foreshadowing? I don't really know...

PART 2, CH 22:

Firstly, I noticed yet another instance of HH dismissing the authority of doctors:

"Dr. Blue, whose learning, no doubt, was infinitely inferior to his reputation..."

Also,

[landho]

Chapter 26

The shortest chapter in the book is also one of the most emotionally honest--maybe the only emotionally honest section in part 1. HH writes,

This daily headache in the opaque air of this tombal jail is disturbing, but I must persevere. Have written more than a hundred pages and have not gotten anywhere yet. My calender is getting confused. This must have been around August 15, 1947. Don't think I can go on.

So: a weird and rare glimpse into HH's being. Elsewhere, he is detached, playful, ironic, but there are weird strains of melancholy that seep through his words. Here, he is fairly explicit about his condition and his feelings regarding his condition.

Chapter 27

We get an intimation here that Lolita isn't as innocent as perhaps HH, ironically, portrayed her earlier. When Lolita tells HH that she has been "revoltingly unfaithful" to him, she is not just speaking nonsense; in fact, she's speaking quite literally. She's quite flirtatious and open with him--when he asks her why she thinks he has stopped caring for her, she glibly replies, "Well, you haven't kissed me yet, have you?"; she describes herself as a "[j]uvenile delickwent, but frank and fetching"; and then she says that she is "a friend to male animals" and "absolutely filthy in thought, word and deed."

And then, in the throes of sleep, Lolita murmurs, "I've been such a disgusting girl."

Funnily enough, although Nabokov and HH are such anti-Freudians, it can be said that Lolita is a textbook case of someone with an Elektra complex.

HH refers to the bellhop as "Uncle Tom." Unsure what to make of this, other than HH's odd irreverence. (Notice that on the same page, he makes it clear that he is not Jewish--" 'The name,' I said coldly, 'is not Humberg and not Humbug, but Herbert, I mean, Humbert....' "--and secured a room thusly. Perhaps a smidge of antisemitism on the part of the innkeeper?)

The fact that the hotel-room number is the same as the street address of the Haze residence in Ramsdale could be chalked to a flagging memory on HH's part, but then in his recollection Lolita remarks on the coincidence ("Say, it's our house number"), so it's probably just that.

Some of the names mentioned by Dr. John Ray and in Who's Who in the Limelight and on the back of Lolita's incomplete map pop up again and again throughout the text. They've done so before, but they become more and more significant as the novel goes on. (Of course, Nabokov does a sly job of throwing us red herrings, too.) I think this is best discussed at the end of the novel, as it's something that encompasses the novel in its totality rather than just a small part.

[landho]

Chapter 28

HH explicitly regrets his affair with Lolita: "And my only regret today is that I did not quietly deposit key '342' at the office, and leave the town, the country, the continent, the hemisphere,--indeed, the globe--that very same night."

How do you feel about HH's claim that Lolita was no innocent and that she was already a debauched girl when he made his move on her?

[T]he sensualist in me...had no objection to some depravity in his prey...I should have understood that Lolita

already

proved to be something quite different from innocent Annabel, and that nymphean evil breathing through every pore of the fey child that I had prepared for my secret delectation, would make the secrecy impossible, and the delectation lethal.

Chapter 29

One of the most important passages in the book:

I had thought that months, perhaps years, would elapse before I dared to reveal myself to Dolores Haze, but by six she was wide awake and by six fifteen we were technically lovers. I am going to tell you something very strange: it was she who seduced me.

We see that HH is not wholly culpable and that Lolita is not wholly ignorant--at least according to HH.

HH dreams of possessing Lolita and ends up with a prize beyond his wildest dreams. Lolita, despite her "experience," treats sex as little more than a novelty or just another activity: "She saw the stark act merely as part of a youngster's furtive world, unknown to adults." (Also, Lolita describes sex as "sort of fun" and "fine for the complexion" in chapter 32.)

But HH himself claims that sex was never his goal--something that will resound louder as the novel progresses. "I am not concerned with so-called 'sex' at all," HH writes. "Anybody can imagine those elements of animality. A greater endeavor lures me on: to fix once for all the perilous magic of nymphets."

[landho]

Part 1, Chapter 32

Lolita engaged in "sapphic diversions" with Elizabeth Talbot when she was 11. This was her first sexual encounter (as related to HH).

The sweater that Lolita reports missing in chapter 18 was almost certainly lost while engaging in sexual antics in the forest with Barbara Burke and Charlie Holmes.

Of course, the question that is of tantamount importance is, how debauched was Lolita when HH first had his way with her? HH wants us to believe that she was already sexually experienced, but of course something that's done for fun and diversion is much different from something that's done to satisfy the gross sexual longings of an adult. There is nothing innocent or frivolous about HH's relationship with Lolita; he realizes this, of course:

This is a lone child, an absolute waif, with whom a heavy-limbed, foul-smelling adult had had strenuous intercourse three times that very morning. Whether or not the realization of a lifelong dream had surpassed all expectation, it had, in a sense, overshot its mark--and plunged into a nightmare. I had been careless, stupid, and ignoble.

But he does not absolve himself of any guilt, and in fact it seems as if he can barely help himself:

And let me be quite frank: somewhere at the bottom of that dark turmoil I felt the writhing of desire again, so monstrous was my appetite for that miserable nymphet. Mingled with the pangs of guilt was the agonizing thought that her mood might prevent me from making love to her again as soon as I found a nice country road where to park in peace

.

Part 1, Chapter 33

One of the saddest things I've ever read:

At the hotel we had separate rooms, but in the middle of the night she came sobbing into mine, and we made it up very gently. You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.

[landho]

Part 2, Chapter 1

HH's long monologue in which he uses to rationalize and psychologically and emotionally terrorize Lolita is both hilarious and nauseating. (Can you imagine talking to a girl like Lolita by saying, "In former times, when I was still your dream male, you swooned to records of the number one throb-and-sob idol of your coevals"? I laughed out loud.)

But note also how the narrative tone had shifted; where part 1 became intricately detailed, going so far at one point in chapter 12 as to re-create HH's daily journal and also to relate in agonizing detail HH's molestation of Lolita.

And I can't help but think of Clopek when I read,

[T]his is not

too

clear I am afraid, Clarence [HH's lawyer], but I did not keep any note, and have at my disposal only an atrociously crippled tour book in three volumes, almost a symbol of my past, in which to check these recollections.

But keep in mind also that that year (August 1947 to August 1948) may have passed in a blur, criss-crossing the country from one motel to another, various landmarks being little more than a carrot held before Lolita, little more than yet another excuse for HH to have his way with her. It would make sense, though, that the memories of HH's first encounters with Lolita are so indelibly marked in his mind and his latter ones are remembered so incidentally--who remembers the fortieth time you've had sex with the same person?

[chido31]

count me in

[landho]

I remember when I first read the book, the transition between parts 1 and 2 really jarred me, if simply because part 1 was filled with sexual tension almost overtly erotic while part 2 started off with a panoramic of America. It's quite a joke that Nabokov plays on us--he gets us to think that the novel will become almost pornographic, but instead the sex is treated matter-of-factly and hardly plays an (explicit) role at all.

[MordechaiAdler]

Count me in for the next round.

[dolly]

Chapter 26

HH refers to the bellhop as "Uncle Tom." Unsure what to make of this, other than HH's odd irreverence. (Notice that on the same page, he makes it clear that he is not Jewish--" 'The name,' I said coldly, 'is not Humberg and not Humbug, but Herbert, I mean, Humbert....' "--and secured a room thusly. Perhaps a smidge of antisemitism on the part of the innkeeper?)

I didn't really think of this, "Uncle Tom" was a common slang/name of the time for an "obedient" black person who was devoted to serving white men. It's kind of interesting, however, that he is European and uses this term, because from my understanding it's an American slang.

Part 1, Chapter 32

The sweater that Lolita reports missing in chapter 18 was almost certainly lost while engaging in sexual antics in the forest with Barbara Burke and Charlie Holmes.

Oh i never made this connection! Very clever.

SOMEWHERE IN THE 270/280 PAGE MARK:

I'm really wondering if HH truly loves Lolita. Because when he goes to visit her at her little shack, where she is pregnant, smoking, and with an uninspired husband, he tries to convince her to come home with him. But the way it's worded, and how he makes reference to sexual encounters and her beauty, etc etc. it all just seems as though he's twisted himself into loving her childish mannerisms simply because he is so very attracted to her physical assets.

[landho]

Part 2, Chapter 2

(I was frequently interrupted while writing this, so sorry if it seems disjointed.)

Like I said, when I first read Lolita, the transition to part 2 really jarred me, if only because it subverted the expectations raised by part 1. Chapters 1 and 2 of part 2 are little more than a panoramic view of America, most of it occurring almost in list form--matter-of-fact, precise, with the barest of details, almost as if the places that HH and Lolita visited were little more than catalog entries. In fact, that's what actually were, both figuratively and literally: they stayed very briefly at each location, which was noted in HH's tour book (and in catalog form in HH's memoirs, which constitute the bulk of Lolita).

This time, I read chapter 2 of part 2 with great pleasure; it is a mosaic, a montage of not only HH and Lolita's travels but also of postwar America. If we read this chapter carefully (which I admit that I didn't do the first times I read the novel), a lot is revealed about HH and Lolita's relationship.

*

Lolita seems to be a willing but disaffected captive, criss-crossing America with HH and reacting to these "carrots" that HH dangles in front of her with typical adolescent (or near-adolescent) ennui:

• the tour book says that children will walk through Magnolia Garden "drinking in beauty that can change a life"--" 'Not mine,' said grim Lo";
  
• HH sees a color photo of the hotel his father once owned, to which Lolita replies, "So what?";
  
• Lolita describes a cave filled with "pink and lilac formations" as "too prehistoric for words"

And sadly, Lolita also reacts with heartbreaking desperation when she sees a family that she recognizes, yearning to establish contact of any kind with the life she once knew:

Lo, in a hot, happy, wild, intense, hopeful, hopeless whisper--"Look, the McCrystals, please, let's talk to them, please"--let's talk to them, reader!--"please I'll do anything you want, oh, please..."

HH describes the arguments they had, and in the wistful and nostalgic prose, we get the sense that HH knows that these are the twilight days of their relationship: he can keep her a prisoner only so long; she will grow older and will no longer be a nymphet (he notes in part 2, chapter 3, that in the intervening year "she had added two inches to her stature and eight pounds to her weight"); her interest in these so-called adventures is waning and was already precariously thin to begin with; and she is no simpleton--she sees through his ruse (in Utah, Lolita asked, "à propos de rien, how long did [HH] think that [they] were going to live in stuffy cabins, doing filthy things together and never behaving like ordinary people?").

And it was during this time that HH grew jealous of Lolita, her fraternizing with other boys, and he suspects that it is his affair with her that awakened a sort of palpable sexuality in her, one that others could detect:

Owing perhaps to constant amorous exercise, she radiated, despite her very childish appearance, some special languorous glow which threw garage fellows, hotel pages, vacationists, goons in luxurious cars, maroon morons near blued pools, into fits of concupiscence which might have tickled my pride, had it not incensed my jealousy.

*

Despite Lolita's sexual precociousness and curiosity, she seems to have grown quite weary of sex with HH:

There she would be, a typical kid picking her nose while engrossed in the lighter sections of the newspaper, as indifferent to my ecstasy as if it were something she had sat upon, a shoe, a doll, the handle of a tennis racket, and was too indolent to remove.

And the sex seems to have grown rougher and more violent over time: "What cat has scratched you?" a woman asks HH, seeing the aftereffects of his and Lo's sexual escapades. HH also describes a situation in which he "loved too loudly" and aroused the curiosity of an elder gentleman whose room was next to HH and Lo's. He talks about letting Lolita go to a library or a rose garden "after a particularly violent morning in bed," which almost suggests rape. And he would use sex as a bargaining chip: "How sweet it was to bring that coffee to her, and then deny it until she had done her morning duty."

But through it all, HH is still convinced that, despite whatever wrongdoing he did, he still tried his best to be good to Lolita. (Notice the difference in tone, though, between the first and second halves of chapter 2, in which HH is regretful and wistful and then almost gloating with regard to his affair with Lolita.) "I itemize these sunny nothings," he writes, "mainly to prove to the judges that I did everything in my power to give my Lolita a really good time."

And one last thing: I was very curious about the tennis coach, whom HH describes as "a famous coach, a husky, wrinkled old-timer, with a harem of ball boys...[who] made me recall that, thirty years before, I had seen him in Cannes demolish the great Gobbert!" I did a little research, and I found out that Nabokov told Alfred Appel in an interview that the coach was Bill Tilden, considered the greatest tennis player of the first half of the twentieth century (and better at tennis than Babe Ruth was at baseball!) and the most influential player in the history of the game. He was caught having an affair with a fourteen-year-old boy and then later on with picking up a sixteen-year-old boy and making advances on him. A funny but apt cameo in Lolita.

[landho]

SOMEWHERE IN THE 270/280 PAGE MARK:

I'm really wondering if HH truly loves Lolita. Because when he goes to visit her at her little shack, where she is pregnant, smoking, and with an uninspired husband, he tries to convince her to come home with him. But the way it's worded, and how he makes reference to sexual encounters and her beauty, etc etc. it all just seems as though he's twisted himself into loving her childish mannerisms simply because he is so very attracted to her physical assets.

I think this is very important to discuss. Please remember to bring it up when I get close to this section! I am also very interested to see what Clopek has to say about this.

[dolly]

WELL, I'm all done! I absolutely LOVED it, and I'm pretty picky about books. I can definitely see this one sticking with me for a long, long time.

Actually, I was reading the globe & mail the other day, and Lolita is on their top 100 books list:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20051125.bkglobe100/BNStory/SpecialEvents/

Looking forward to our overall discussion! Great book choice clopek

[landho]

Bumping this thread--been busy so I haven't had time to join in any discussions or post any notes.

Has anyone other than Clopek, Dolly, cjbreed, or me been reading Lolita?!

Part 2, Chapter 3

HH wondered the very thing that Clopek wondered:

I now think it was a great mistake to move east again and have her go to that private school in Beardsley, instead of somehow scrambling across the Mexican border while the scrambling was good so as to lie low for a couple of years in subtropical bliss....

At which point he then enters into a ridiculous and disturbing fantasy in which Lolita would become less attractive to him because of her physical maturation but he would marry her nonetheless and have a child with her who would grow up to be a nymphet and also to be taken advantage of just as Lolita was and also to have a child with his own daughter, who would also be taken advantage of.

Of course, that is not as disturbing as something very similar occurring in real life.

And through it all, as Clopek mentioned, HH has some weird fatherly instincts: "In the days of that wild journey of ours, I doubted not that as father to Lolita the First I was a ridiculous failure." But I think he is a bit delusional: "I did my best," HH writes. But even HH knows the perverse parody of a relationship that he and Lolita have and that it may crack at any moment under all the strain; "Was, perhaps, guilty locomotion instrumental in vitiating our powers of impersonation?" he wonders.

But the entire year was wasted--nothing more than a pretense of a journey across America. Sightseeing and following around the recommendations from some second-rate tour book is no way to understand anything, let alone America. HH knows, this, of course, albeit he realized it only in retrospect:

We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tired, and her sobs in the night--every night, every night--the moment I feigned sleep.

One question to ask is, if HH were intent on justifying his actions to us, why would he include a phrase such as the one above (about Lo sobbing every night) to close our chapter 3, which clearly paints him as a monster who did irreparable harm to a young girl?

[landho]

Part 2, Chapter 7

Although HH claimed in part 1, chapter 29, that it was Lolita who seduced HH, she seems to have gotten tired of this arrangement by now. "If her share in the ardors she kindled had never amounted to much," HH writes, "neither had pure lucre ever come to the fore."

So Lolita was just curious before and now is using her sexuality (and HH's perversions) for monetary leverage, it seems.

Does anyone detect a note of tenderness and wistfulness amidst HH's desperation?

[sircheesecake]

I might join in for round 2. Lolita just seems too out there and dark for my current depressive state.

[habia]

ok, I haven't finished yet. Barely halfway but going pretty quickly now.

One line I just came upon and think is great:

"My habit of being silent when displeasured, or, more exactly, the cold and scaly quality of my displeasured silence, used to frighten Valeria out of her wits." p.94

ha! how pompous! What overly dramatic, self aggrandizing rephrasing! "cold and scaly quality"

I love how thoroughly Nabakov communicates the obsessions of Humbert. With himself and Lolita.

is everyone else reading the version with an introduction by Amis?