Distinguished Nabokov expert Brian Boyd (Photo: University of Auckland)<\/p>\n
For some Lolita is a harmful work of depraved filth; for others, a literary masterpiece by a genius. For some, it offers something in between.<\/p>\n
What are the arguments for and against Lolita?\u00a0<\/p>\n
First, a brief summary of the plot (there are, by nature, spoilers ahead): the novel is a fictional memoir written in prison by a man awaiting trial. He relates his immigration from France to America, his infatuation with girls and his relationship with his 12-year-old stepdaughter, Dolores, who he kidnaps, controls and repeatedly abuses both sexually and psychologically. Huge spoiler: everyone dies, including the author Humbert Humbert (a pseudonym), who suffers a fatal heart attack in prison. The novel opens with a satirical, fictionalised forward written by \u201cJohn Ray, Jr., Ph.D\u201d, editor of books on psychology, who says that Humbert\u2019s account may become famous in psychiatry circles as a case study in abnormal behaviour. At the end of the book, Humbert says that if he was his own sentencing judge he\u2019d jail himself for at least 35 years for rape.<\/p>\n
Against Lolita<\/p>\n
\u201cCan\u2019t do it. Vile. Offensive. Obscene. DNF.\u201d \u2013 Goodreads review (one star), 2014<\/p>\n
It is easy to see why some readers fear and loathe Lolita. Reddit and Goodreads offer portals into years and years of heated debates \u2013 demands that this \u201cdisgusting\u201d novel be removed from \u201cclassic literature lists\u201d and responses that censorship is fruitless and that it\u2019s a novel about how paedophiles move through society rationalising their predatory behaviours.\u00a0<\/p>\n
From the beginning Lolita was seen as a \u201ctime bomb\u201d (Nabokov\u2019s own words). The manuscript was rejected by British and American publishers (\u201cWe would all go to jail if the thing were published,\u201d said a representative of Viking) before it was picked up by French press Olympia. Lolita was banned in France and the UK\u2019s Home Office prevented it from being imported after the editor of the Sunday Express called it \u201csheer unrestrained pornography\u201d.\u00a0 It\u2019s been banned, at various times, from Australia, Austria, Belgium, the UK and, in 1959, New Zealand. The high court ruled the book indecent \u201cfor having an undue emphasis on sex that would corrupt the reader\u201d. (In 1964 Lolita was found not indecent by the Indecent Publications Tribunal and copies became available in New Zealand.)<\/p>\n
First editions of Lolita, published in two volumes by Olympia Press.<\/p>\n
While some arguments against Lolita boil down to an objection to the content, there are robust critical takedowns. Literary haters include Kingsley Amis, who wrote in The Spectator in 1959<\/a> that Lolita was \u201cbad as a work of art, that is, and morally bad \u2014 though certainly not obscene or pornographic\u201d. A scan of the many thousands of one-star reviews on Goodreads reveals that some readers found Lolita boring, overly wordy, \u201ccrap\u201d, and, for some, bemusingly devoid of pornography, the mode of Humbert Humbert being that of euphemism, linguistic obfuscation and denial.<\/p>\n Feminist criticism of Lolita points out that the novel silences the victim. It is told entirely (other than the foreword) in Humbert\u2019s voice so it\u2019s only his memory of Lolita that readers access. Humbert himself describes how he names and renames her: \u201cShe was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.\u201d<\/p>\n In an essay titled \u201cAgainst Lolita\u201d, Roxana Robinson argues<\/a> that while Nabokov is an undisputed master of the English language (his third, after Russian and French), Lolita is not his masterpiece because it champions contempt over compassion. Robinson posits that the paedophilia story masks what Nabokov is really up to: contempt for America. Nabokov was forced into permanent exile from his native Russia in 1919 after the communist revolution, then again from France by the second world war. \u201cContempt is the most serious element in this mocking, ironic, satirical narrative; it\u2019s the one emotion that comes directly from Nabokov\u2019s heart,\u201d writes Robinson. \u201cExiled from a country that no longer exists, terminally embittered, grieving and resentful, Nabokov reviles an undeserving America, his unintended refuge.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a thesis to be written about the evolution of cover designs for Lolita over time. Some (mostly the earlier) designs encourage a reading of the book as a love story \u2013 like the cover on the top left in the below image. The juxtaposition of the photograph of a child\u2019s crooked legs and the puff quote from Vanity Fair that reads \u201cThe only convincing love story of our century\u201d is extraordinarily disturbing. More recent cover designs have focused less on the representation of the sexualised minor and more on abstract images (and we praise them for this).<\/p>\n \u201cthis was my first boyfriend\u2019s favorite book \ud83d\ude2d\ud83d\ude2d literally the biggest red flag \ud83d\udea9\u201d \u2013 Goodreads in 2024<\/p>\n First, we have to deal with the fact that Lolita has problematic fans, which is why we find ourselves debating, yet again, the merits of this novel. In the same way that a dog-eared copy of JD Salinger\u2019s The Catcher in the Rye on the shelves of a suspected assassin is a damning artefact, so owning a copy of Lolita is ill advised for a suspected paedophile. It has been reported (though not confirmed) that Epstein kept a copy of Lolita, singularly, on his bedside table. We know he owned a first edition of the novel. Among the Epstein files are photos of a young woman, or girl, with Lolita\u2019s opening lines penned onto her skin (the novel begins: \u201cLolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.\u201d) We also know that 43 days before his arrest in 2019, he ordered The Annotated Lolita for his Kindle. His private plane was called The Lolita Express.<\/p>\n While Epstein may have overlooked Nabokov\u2019s satire (more on that below) and was potentially duped by Humbert\u2019s self-narration, the irony is, some would argue, that Lolita is not on the paedophile Humbert\u2019s side. It\u2019s on Dolores\u2019s. What fans like Epstein tend to do is wilfully misread the novel to suit their own fantasies and actions (FYI, if you find in Humbert a kindred spirit and you get a rise out of arguing that the book is in fact a treatise about the nature of love despite age gaps, then you are the problem). In short: they get it wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n The question we could be tempted to ask is: does the fact that Epstein loved Lolita mean everyday readers can\u2019t like it, too?\u00a0<\/p>\n No.\u00a0<\/p>\n Plenty of relatively sane people are Nabokov fans and find plenty to like about Lolita. In 1955 Graeme Green was willing to put himself on the line<\/a> to defend the novel against censorship; and in 1958, critic Donald Malcolm wrote<\/a> in the New Yorker: \u201cThe special class of satire to which \u2018Lolita\u2019 belongs is small but select, and Mr. Nabokov has produced one of its finest examples.\u201d In 1959, the Manchester Guardian published a less enthused but nevertheless affirming review<\/a>, summarised in this paragraph: \u201cThose who wish to know what the \u2018Lolita\u2019 row is about had better read the book rather than the denunciations of it. They may not like the book; it is certainly not to everyone\u2019s taste. Although it is written with exceptional economy and force, its subject is an abnormal and perverted man: and to some people he and the portrayal of him will be too repellent for pleasure. But others will find the narration extremely funny and the satire sharp, if bitter. What few who approach \u2018Lolita\u2019 unprejudiced are likely to find is that it deserves the strictures of obscenity now being cast upon it.\u201d<\/p>\n Since those early reviews, for every one person who\u2019d love to throw Lolita in the bin you\u2019ll find 10 more who will champion it (there are 37,218 one-star reviews to 326,229 five-star reviews on Goodreads). The majority of the pro-Lolita reviews are responding to the novel\u2019s tragicomic tone, its satire and its style.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike his father, Martin Amis was a fan:<\/a> \u201cIn a sense Lolita is too great for its own good. It rushes up on the reader like a recreational drug more powerful than any yet discovered or devised. In common with its narrator, it is both irresistible and unforgivable.\u201d And, later in the defence: \u201cLolita is a cruel book about cruelty.\u201d Amis reminds the reader that Humbert is, potentially, an unreliable narrator \u2013 we only ever have his words from which to construct an idea of Lolita, the site upon which the cruelty plays out. He also reminds us that what is left at the end of the novel is ruin: ruin of the abuser, ruin of the abused. For Amis, the novel is a study of tyranny.\u00a0<\/p>\n If you\u2019d rather not take the word of yet another white guy (the alternative title to Lolita is The Confession of a White Widowed Male), Boyd points us to V<\/a>anessa Springora\u2019s memoir <\/a>about her own abuse at the hands of Gabriel Matzneff when she was 14 years old. \u201cI don\u2019t think that Lolita is even remotely an apology for pedophilia. Quite the contrary: it\u2019s the strongest possible denunciation of it \u2013 the most compelling ever written on the subject.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\nCover designs for Lolita over the years show how the novel was marketed. Some of them may cause you to wrap your hands around your head and silently scream.
\nFor Lolita<\/p>\nVladimir Nabokov in 1960, in Rome to work on the screenplay of Lolita (Photo: Keystone\/Getty Images via WikiCommons.)<\/p>\n