BLURB

REVIEW

All right. I admit it: this is my favourite book.

I'm going to give you/myself some space to get over this revelation.













I'd like to add that this translation is even sexier than I ever thought it could be, especially the notes. So alive! And calming. Wonderful.

One of my favorite books. I love the fact that this book can be viewed from different angles: political(anti communism), (love story), fantasy, etc.
A MUST read. You won't regret it.

All right. I admit it: this is my favourite book.

I'm going to give you/myself some space to get over this revelation.













I'd like to add that this translation is even sexier than I ever thought it could be, especially the notes. So alive! And calming. Wonderful.

It had such great reviews, and was supposed to be amazing, but I couldn't get into this book as much as I felt I should have. Some of the individual chapters were interesting, but they didn't fit into a story that I was particularly interested in, or felt compelled by.
I seem to have read a series of these "beautiful" books that have highly symbolic characters and story lines that don't mean much to me. The characters in this book were so abstract, and I didn't understand the role of several of them.
Interesting, though, I had no idea the Czech soldiers played a role in the Russian Revolution, or the existence of the castrate groups. Some of the conflicting groups in this book felt a bit over the top.
Took me a long time to read.

Usually I hate reading books with 'international best seller' plastered all over the front (I know I'm a snob), but I just didn't care with this one. It is so beautiful, so cruel, so slow - you get to see every side of a moment with complete lucidity throughout. My only main gripe is that I think it was over-egging the pudding a bit to have the cannibal AND the castrate AND the communists - had the communists not been in it it still would have served as an ample reflection of the horrors of that kind of extremism. But, still, amazing amazing. So well-written. So affecting.

I'm not sure how I escaped without having had to read this in high school or college. However, like many so-called classics, I find that I'm glad I waited until I was in my 30s to read it. How could I have ever have appreciated the pain and uncertainty of Raskolnikov while I was myself living through the pain and uncertainty of youth?

I suspect that he would have horrified and frustrated me when I was younger (just like he does now), but I doubt I would have recognized myself in him. That is, in fact, what makes me cringe in horror about him ... that he is so normal and so like me when I was a youth. (Except for the killing part, of course - ha ha.)

What can I say? I have never cried so much for a book in my life. I was wary when I started: as with all classics, I was concerned that those who praised it only did so because everyone else does and always has, and that I'd find myself disillusioned and disappointed by the end of the first page ... but that didn't happen. And even though I knew all along Anna was going to die (how amazing an experience would it be to read this for the first time not knowing? I wonder if it's even possible to do that these days) I couldn't believe it until it was too late ... I was entirely swept up by every misery, every concern. I adore how Tolstoy weaves debate into dialogue, how this book became not just a story, not just an examination of the unbearable discomfort of being experienced by all, but also a treasurebox of ideas, momentarily relieving me from the tragedy and getting me to think about all sorts. And I don't think I've ever been so delighted as I was with Kitty and Levin's wedding and the fumbling with the rings, or the proposal; never so wrenched as during Nikolai's death, until Anna's breakdown and having to watch and feel her hurtling to her end. This is incoherent and I don't care - I am utterly overwhelmed by this amazing, amazing book. I almost feel as though it would be disrespectful to exhibit any level of composure at this stage.

What can I say? I have never cried so much for a book in my life. I was wary when I started: as with all classics, I was concerned that those who praised it only did so because everyone else does and always has, and that I'd find myself disillusioned and disappointed by the end of the first page ... but that didn't happen. And even though I knew all along Anna was going to die (how amazing an experience would it be to read this for the first time not knowing? I wonder if it's even possible to do that these days) I couldn't believe it until it was too late ... I was entirely swept up by every misery, every concern. I adore how Tolstoy weaves debate into dialogue, how this book became not just a story, not just an examination of the unbearable discomfort of being experienced by all, but also a treasurebox of ideas, momentarily relieving me from the tragedy and getting me to think about all sorts. And I don't think I've ever been so delighted as I was with Kitty and Levin's wedding and the fumbling with the rings, or the proposal; never so wrenched as during Nikolai's death, until Anna's breakdown and having to watch and feel her hurtling to her end. This is incoherent and I don't care - I am utterly overwhelmed by this amazing, amazing book. I almost feel as though it would be disrespectful to exhibit any level of composure at this stage.

this is not a book about a little girl being sexy- it is about a pedophile rationalizing his vice and calling it love. the little girl, dolores, resists and finally escapes her tormentor.

Great, great read. This was a little disterbing and provocative; but I guess that is suppose to be expected. Lolita tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores "Lolita" Haze.

Mary Gaitskill on Lolita
“When I read this book I was happy.” The unedited Mad Lit questionnaire from issue No. 30, wherein the legendary short-story writer and novelist opines on the chemical magic of Nabakov's notorious classic.
by Kate Rockwood

MaryGaitskill*2.jpgMary Gaitskill emerged onto the literary scene in 1988 with her darkly erotic short story collection Bad Behavior. Herself a teenage runaway who sold flowers on the streets of San Francisco before working as a stripper in Toronto, she now lives with her husband in bucolic upstate New York. Those readers who worried married life in the countryside would mute Gaitskill’s fascination with psychosexual themes, a consistent undercurrent in her oeuvre of work, breathed a collective sigh of relief with the 2005 release of her latest novel Veronica, winner of the National Book Award.

What novel does this writer, once dubbed the “princess of darkness,” find herself pining for? Gaitskill responds to our questionnaire with plenty of candid passion, spirited thought, and a bit of guff.

The book I choose is: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.

In one sentence, this book is about: You can’t say what any great book is about in one sentence. However, if I could take a verbal snap shot, this sentence might be the negative: “Lolita” is a bridge between ecstatic dream and broken reality; it is an enchanted bridge beset by mirages and trolls; as the narrator crosses, it bursts into flames behind him; in the end it falls into an abyss.

I chose this title because: it is one of the first books that I recognized on a core level.

The first time I read it I was: a 23-year-old college student, generally very unhappy, lonely, barely able to talk to anyone. When I read this book I was happy.

I’ve read it: five times.

One free-associative personal memory I have of this book is: sitting in the small, cheap, drab studio apartment where I lived and holding in my hands a quick, self-replicating universe created by words.

My favorite character is: I don’t have a favorite character. Instead here is what Nabokov said about his narrator, the ur-pedophile Humbert Humbert: The author would consign him to hell for all eternity with this rare dispensation; for one day out of every year, he would be allowed to walk in a beautiful park. Why? Because along with the gnawing, devouring lust there existed in his heart a small pure place of love for the little girl, Lolita.

The character I most resemble is: Nobody should ever start thinking about who they most resemble in a book. That’s like wondering which illusion in a card trick you resemble, and anyway it just doesn’t matter.

My favorite part is: All of the parts of this book are great. That is actually true, and I don’t think there is any other book I would say that about. However different parts strike me each time I read it. The last time I was surprised to notice, for the first time, a paragraph about Lolita’s mother, the dead, despised 30-ish Charlotte Haze (and Valeria, Humbert’s loathsome—that is to say adult—ex-wife). It comes towards the end of the book, when the desperate Lolita has run off with a more glamorous pedophile and left Humbert in a state of emotional hallucination:

“Singularly enough I seldom if ever dreamed of Lolita as I remember her — as I saw her constantly and obsessively in my conscious mind during my daymares and insomnias. More precisely: she did haunt my sleep but she appeared there in strange and ludicrous disguises as Valeria or Charlotte, or a cross between them. That complex ghost would come to me, shedding shift after shift, in an atmosphere of great melancholy and disgust, and would recline in dull invitation on some narrow board or hard settee, with flesh ajar like the rubber valve of a soccer ball’s bladder. I would find myself, dentures fractured or hopelessly mislaid, in horrible chambers garnies where I would be entertained at tedious vivisecting parties that generally ended with Charlotte or Valeria weeping in my bleeding arms and being tendering kissed by my brotherly lips in a dream disorder of auctioneered Viennese bric-a-brac, pity, impotence and the brown wigs of tragic old women who had just been gassed.”

I did not notice this section for the first four times I read the book, partly because “Lolita” is so rich with beauty that gruesome beauty like this is easy to miss, and partly because I was at first so taken with the story of the little girl that I missed the mother. In this section — modest for being so dramatically unannounced — Humbert starts to become conscious that he is a murderer in spirit if not in fact. He also starts to become conscious of the erotic link between the ideal “love” of Lolita and the loathing of her mother — who is loathed in part because she desires Humbert while Lolita is sexually repelled by him. I don’t want to make too much of this because to do so would be unjust to the book’s complexity. But having read almost all of Nabokov’s work, I am struck by the repetition of a theme: a romantic protagonist in a tense cross-beam of two females, one who repulsively loves him, another who is sexually and celestially indifferent. In the early books there is no age difference between the two; as the books progress the indifferent beauty becomes younger and younger. In “Lolita,” the dynamic becomes increasingly anguished and erotic, and the despised, desiring mother becomes both clearly and mysteriously a necessary part of the fantasy’s taut and tortured structure.

My favorite line is: To repeat the above, it isn’t possible to have a favorite line in a book like this. Here are a few:

”There, on the soft sand, a few feet away from our elders, we would sprawl all morning, in a petrified paroxysm of desire, and take advantage of every blessed quirk in space and time to touch each other; her hand, half-hidden in the sand, would creep toward me, its slender brown fingers sleepwalking nearer and nearer; then, her opalescent knee would start on a long cautious journey; sometimes a chance rampart built by younger children granted us sufficient concealment to graze each other’s salty lips; these incomplete contacts drove our healthy and inexperienced young bodies to such a state of exasperation that not even the cold blue water, under which we still clawed at each other, could bring relief.”

“There is nothing wrong, say both hemispheres, when a brute of forty, blessed by the local priest and bloated with drink, sheds his sweat-drenched finery and thrusts himself up to the hilt into his youthful bride.”

“While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life’s full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.”

“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 tires and her sobs in the night — every night, every night — the moment I feigned sleep.”

If I ever met the author, I would: I won’t meet the author because he is dead. I’m not sure I would want to meet a person I hold in such high esteem.

After reading it, this book caused me to: understand more consciously than before that life is a series of unpredictable patterns, some of which can be seen by us, some of which can be seen only in glimpses, some of which can’t be seen at all, but dimly felt. It also made me better understand the meta-humor mixed with tragedy that happens around us all the time, but in pieces; in the book it appeared before me all at once, like a juggler with a thousand balls in the air.

One unresolved question I wondered about was: There is no such thing as a great book that resolves questions. In terms of the plot, anything that is completely resolved is dead.

Music to listen to when reading this: “In Every Dream Home A Heart-Ache” by Roxy Music. Anything by the Tijuana Brass, Britney Spears or Strauss. What kind of question is this anyway? You shouldn’t listen to any music while reading anything but a comic book — though each of the musics I mention have a uniquely perverse quality that compliments Lolita as far as I’m concerned. Weird fact: Nabokov for some crazy reason hated music. When his son Dmitri became a classical musician, Vladimir attended his concerts wearing earplugs.

You should read it when: you feel like it.

I read part of this book for a class in college, but left off partially through because I got bored. I decided to try again, and this audioversion (read by Jeremy Irons) was great.
I knew it was a creepy book, but I think one really has to read the whole thing to understand just how creepy it is. More creepy than it would be if it were more pornographic; instead, it just hints at that aspect and focuses on how one-sided the love in their relationship is.
But obviously he doesn't really love her- he freely admits he doesn't even know her or what she thinks or feels. She is a figment of his fantasies.
I didn't feel much sympathy for HH, but I also didn't hate him as much as I should have...

Lolita is an assault. I read it over two days in breaks at work and, emerging from the 'quiet area' in the corner at the end of each one (reading at desks being forbidden, of course - unless it's the Financial Times), I was entirely unable to readjust to the world. I can't actually remember anything that happened on those days: it's like trying to remember a dream you can just about grasp the overall atmosphere of, but that is all, no details. I know everyone says this, but it is so dizzying, so overwhelming, so disturbing; in a word, amazing. I think Martin Amis sums it up best when he says: 'you read Lolita sprawling limply in your chair, ravished, overcome, nodding scandalised assent'. It *was* ravishing, and you feel abused, and you can't shake the concern that a substantial part of you absolutely fucking loved it.

I for one am quite happy leaving the book with these concerns, though: far better to be questioning of it all than for Nabokov to have taken the easy route and plastered insurmountable moralism over the whole thing. It probably sounds obvious but the books I value the most are those that leave me wondering, whose themes force me to reconsider my views, that wrench my mind wider open than I ever wanted it to be and mockingly inform me I can go back if I wish, knowing full well I do not wish to; those that make me uncomfortable - and this was anything but comfortable. Empathising with a paedophile is not something I ever really thought I would or could do, but here I am, with a list of reasons as long as my arm to find Humbert Humbert contemptible, knowing full well I can say what I want but, still, I'm persuaded: we're both achingly human and alone and failures (albeit not in the same way). And his snide comments completely won me over, despite the towering ugliness I knew he embodied. I know I'm not expressing this very well; I feel nervous about publishing this, to be honest. But I want to get my point across: that the extreme conflict caused by this book is proof of its necessity, its importance, its power.

It's predictable but I can't finish this entry without praising Nabokov's hold of the English language. I don't really think I can say anything about this that somebody else hasn't said more eloquently (and famously). Still. That was the most ravishing aspect for me. Hats off, Vladimir.

The best opening line for a book in the English language. You MUST read it aloud. A masterpiece of the language itself, and daring in the subject it chooses to explore.

Lolita is an assault. I read it over two days in breaks at work and, emerging from the 'quiet area' in the corner at the end of each one (reading at desks being forbidden, of course - unless it's the Financial Times), I was entirely unable to readjust to the world. I can't actually remember anything that happened on those days: it's like trying to remember a dream you can just about grasp the overall atmosphere of, but that is all, no details. I know everyone says this, but it is so dizzying, so overwhelming, so disturbing; in a word, amazing. I think Martin Amis sums it up best when he says: 'you read Lolita sprawling limply in your chair, ravished, overcome, nodding scandalised assent'. It *was* ravishing, and you feel abused, and you can't shake the concern that a substantial part of you absolutely fucking loved it.

I for one am quite happy leaving the book with these concerns, though: far better to be questioning of it all than for Nabokov to have taken the easy route and plastered insurmountable moralism over the whole thing. It probably sounds obvious but the books I value the most are those that leave me wondering, whose themes force me to reconsider my views, that wrench my mind wider open than I ever wanted it to be and mockingly inform me I can go back if I wish, knowing full well I do not wish to; those that make me uncomfortable - and this was anything but comfortable. Empathising with a paedophile is not something I ever really thought I would or could do, but here I am, with a list of reasons as long as my arm to find Humbert Humbert contemptible, knowing full well I can say what I want but, still, I'm persuaded: we're both achingly human and alone and failures (albeit not in the same way). And his snide comments completely won me over, despite the towering ugliness I knew he embodied. I know I'm not expressing this very well; I feel nervous about publishing this, to be honest. But I want to get my point across: that the extreme conflict caused by this book is proof of its necessity, its importance, its power.

It's predictable but I can't finish this entry without praising Nabokov's hold of the English language. I don't really think I can say anything about this that somebody else hasn't said more eloquently (and famously). Still. That was the most ravishing aspect for me. Hats off, Vladimir.

AMAZING. I thought Pushkin was going to be one of those people everyone overrates because it makes them look literary to people who don't know what they're talking about ... but he isn't. He's just fucking fantastic.

AMAZING. I thought Pushkin was going to be one of those people everyone overrates because it makes them look literary to people who don't know what they're talking about ... but he isn't. He's just fucking fantastic.