Lolita is alarming, no matter where you read it.
Reading it on a crowded train only adds to the discomfort.
Imagine, a train packed with seemingly respectable, tired people trekking home from work, and trying to read this passage:
"A normal man given a group photograph of school girls or Girl Scouts and asked to point out the comeliest one will not necessarily choose the nymphet among them. You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at one, by ineffable signs - the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate - the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power." [pg17]Nabokov explains the obsession is rooted is the loss of a lover the main character had when he was young. But "the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since - until at last, twenty-four years later, I broke her spell by incarnating her in another." [pg15].
Great. He ruins my train ride home, the purity of childhood, and even reincarnation.
1 comment:
My feelings toward Hum the Hummer are mixed. You know he's vile, impossibly pretentious, but can almost like him. Have you ever read a book whose narrator you couldn't stand? I have. Want to know which?
And what's funny is that I had Lolita with me today as well. Although I couldn't read it because I was too tired to read anything.
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