Would anyone care to discuss Nabokov's "Lolita" ?

[bobthedrummer]

Some of the threads about the Super Bowl Half-Time Show are extremely ridiculous IMO.

There is nothing funny about sexual assault, but what we all saw was a performance, a very crude and offensive one perhaps, but then I keep hearing all the RW holier than thou crap about how they had to cover their children's eyes and whatnot to protect them from seeing a female breast with something on the nipple.

Well, this isn't a sex thread this is about a banned book, "Lolita".
I was about 13 when I read it so I didn't get much out of it then.
When I saw the Kubrick flick with James Mason, Shelly Winters, Peter Sellers, Sue Lyon I only perceived parts of it.

Today, I really think that Nabokov was spot on about a lot of things about America in that banned book.

Anyone want to talk about themes from "Lolita"?

[Dookus]

1. Alas, I haven't read it...

but I'd love to.

I've seen both the Kubrick and Lyne film versions, though. Found them both fascinating.

[bobthedrummer]

6. The Kubrick film had the casting

absolutely great performances from all.

The only thing I didn't enjoy about the Lyne film was the casting of Melanie Griffith, I thought she was terrible in that role.

[maggrwaggr]

9. The Adrian Lyne version was TERRIBLE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE

the guy just didn't get the tone. The tone is DARKLY FUNNY.

He made it all serious and sexy. God it sucked. Made me want to take a shower just from watching part of it.

The whole point of that book is that it's NOT sexy. Not to anybody but Humbert.

[K8-EEE]

22. Couldn't Bear To Watch That One...

Melanie Griffith in the Shelly Winters role, SHUD-DER!

[bobthedrummer]

24. A cinematic moment of great disaster

that just about ruined it all IMHO.

[maggrwaggr]

2. great book. Sick, funny, dark, dazzling

Why don't you throw out what you think are the themes and how that relates to the superbowl cheese-fest.

[bobthedrummer]

10. The outcry over the Super Bowl show and some of the threads here

got me thinking about how we used to ban books.
Since sexuality is part of this controversy I started this thread about a great banned book.

[roughsatori]

14. Janet's boob was not about sexuality, it was about a sales pitch

for her next CD due to be released in march. It was a completely sterile imitation of sexuality. "Lolita" is a stellar book, and worlds apart from the aging pop-star, silicone enhanced, staged teat flash.

[K8-EEE]

23. Oddly Un-Sexy

Haven't really heard any guys going, oh Janet is so hot.

She's just TOO fake. Not only the boobs but everything. Her face is looking definitely Jacksonian....a couple of procedures too many.

[asjr]

3. I read it ages ago

but frankly I can't remember enough of it to have a conversation. I saw the movie also but was not impressed. A lot gets left out when they make a movie of a book.

[kixot]

4. Nabokov's most accessible book, IMHO.

His prose is amazing. You can tell that English wasn't his first language (Russian; or second, German; or third, French; but FOURTH!) because he uses is like no one before or since. He had a way of making a sentence so delicate, so beautiful in structure and subtlety that you had to just pause and breathe after reading it - only to read it over and over until the words gelled together into the most complex and sophisticated thought your mind had digested in as long as you could remember. Only Henry James, Thomas Hardy, and Marcel Proust compare - and I've only read Proust in translation.

"Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their nature, which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose designate as "nymphets." (from Lolita)

I have yet to penetrate his "Pale Fire", a massive work that reads partly as an epic poem and partly as a fictional literary critique of the poem. Brilliant writer. He was pretty miffed when the Nobel went to Alexander Solzenitzen. I think that was the one prize Nabokov wanted more than any other and the one he never got. For good reason, I think, his works were monumental, but in style, not scope. Just my opinion.

[K8-EEE]

21. The Lead Guy Had Two First Names

I always thought that was odd!

Maybe Woody Allen should do a version of this...oh wait he already DID!

He and Soon Yi are as weird as Jacko and just like him, babies descend on them out of nowhere. She never looked pregnant nor did they ever discuss adoption with anybody, all the sudden they're walking around with a baby stroller.

[Dennis Quaranta]

5. Lolita Isn't Banned

New York Public Library has a copy available in each of 39 branches. There's nothing in it that would get it banned. Humbert Humbert is not presented sympathetically.

[Dookus]

7. No, not banned NOW...

but it was banned in many places when it first came out.

[bobthedrummer]

8. "Lolita" was banned in the USA for awhile in the late 50's or early 60's.

BTW, welcome to DU!
:hi:

[Memekiller]

11. One of my favorite books...

A brilliant read. And very funny, actually. In a sick, twisted way.

[bicentennial_baby]

12. My favorite book of all time!

Alas, I had 2 hrs of sleep last night and must crash after 11 hours of classes. I will bookmark this thread and come back tommorrow. Great topic!

[roughsatori]

13. I read the entire book aloud to a someone I was dating

It took about a full week of long dates. Read out loud the humor came across much more clearly. We laughed so much it was amazing. I've read the book silently as well.

Underneath there is a huge sadness in Humbert Humbert. The snap-shot vignettes of the USA remind me of the essays by Henry Miller in "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare" in that the particulars of the American condition that they portray resonate with a similar tone.

I always felt the ending was flawed. But Nabokov's skill with English is beautiful to behold, as if he collected English vocabulary words along with his meticulously displayed butterflies.

Pale Fire is very good too. I don't like his poems, but they are better then the boring Joseph Brodsky (who IMHO should have stuck to his native Russian). Oh, I liked "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight" even better than Pale Fire.

[bobthedrummer]

16. I've heard of alternative endings. The one I'm familiar with

has Humbert dying in prison and Lolita dying on Christmas eve giving birth. I don't recall if the baby died too.

[TreasonousBastard]

15. It's been so long...

that I can't remember much of it at all.

Just the cigarette butts aimlessly drifting in the toilet bowl that seem to have summed up Humbert's life. Perhaps your life, or mine.

What was the Woody Allen movie?

No he didn't do Lolita, but he sure owed a lot to it.

[bobthedrummer]

17. Actually Humbert was a popular and reasonably successful

middle-class guy with demons of his own.

[Doctor_J]

18. After seeing Lost In Translation

Saturday night, then finding out that Ms. Johannsen is only 19, I think I should stay out of dicussions about middle-aged men lusting for teens ;-)

[bobthedrummer]

19. I find that the nymphets are just as primal despite their age

at least as presented in the book, they are not innocent either.
That is where Clair Quilty and Vivian Darkbloom's underground pornography ring hidden in the fine arts finds their "stars" IMO.

Imagine the power of a nymphet over a middle-aged man, that is the dark part of the story IMO. Tragic, shocking and doomed. That is how Humbert seems to present it, it was the bewitchment of the nymphet to blame, solid denial of the contents of his own messed-up soul.

[Westegg]

20. Nurse that tooth...

"Lolita"---a great book. And Nabokov a brilliant writer. (As someone else here said, I too am attempting to get through "Pale Fire." I love the writing but it's so dense...). "Lolita's an epic look at America through the eyes of a foreigner (Humbert Humbert, yet Nabokov himself, too). It certainly predicts our modern-day obsession with youthful sexuality as a forbidden-fruit aspect of commercial capitalism (15-year-old runway models done up in semi-bondage gear, 16-year-old pop stars showing skin and writhing suggestively while they poutily proclaim their "innocence." Etc.) This is self-flagellating American Puritanism at its "best."

Our country is obsessed, quite unhealthily, with sex. We go nuts because Janet Jackson bares (most of) her nipple for a couple seconds, but no one seems capable of figuring out how to stop sex-spams featuring women orally copulating horses from invading the email boxes of our ten-year-old sons and daughters.

As I recall, Nabokov orginally wanted to burn the manuscript, but his wife stopped him. Not because he was "ashamed" of his work, but because he feared it would be misunderstood. And it was, initially, by many. It was also banned for a time (as were "Ulysees" and many other great books.

I also recall that Nabokov's orginal draft of the screenplay for Kubrick came in at about 400 pages, and that he had mixed feelings about the final film.

[Westegg]

25. Well, hell...

I seem to have killed this subject. Was it something I said? Or just the way I said it...

[bobthedrummer]

26. It's just a pause due to the high amount of traffic lately in The Lounge.

I should go dig out my copy of "Lolita" too, we can post some of the passages of this banned work.

[Westegg]

27. bobthedrummer!

I'd almost given you up for dead! By all means, let's post excerpts from this great book. I shall commence as follows:

"In our hallway, ablaze with welcoming lights, my Lolita peeled off her sweater, shook her gemmed hair, stretched towards me two bare arms, raised one knee:
"'Carry me upstairs, please. I feel sort of romantic to-night.'"

[bobthedrummer]

28. Well that snippet almost took out this thread.

No one posted anything about this banned work after you posted from it. I'm not sure what that means, because I know that you and I aren't the only readers that like "Lolita".

Let's see what happens today.