On Re-Reading 'Lolita'

Now that I have a certain amount of spare time (when not working, studying Chinese, composing music, or navigating the New York mass-transit system) I've begun doing something I haven't done in some time: reading for fun.

There are those among us (mainly those who haven't read the book) who make it out as some kind of apologia for pedophilia. People still use the term 'Lolita' to mean a sexually precocious young girl, and the poster of the 1962 movie (which made her at least 15 instead of 12) doesn't help at all:

Actually, the book is a grand display of the unreliable narrator; a novel-length exercise in defending the indefensible. In short, a trick.

I say a trick because our anti-hero, Humbert Humbert, is many things other than a predator. He's clever. He's funny. He's highly educated. He seems self-aware. And he's a smooth talker. Is he ever! The narrative never lets up for an instant; showering you with classical allusion, puns, wry observations,  self-pitying exculpations, and poetical descriptions of his passion for the doomed Dolores Haze.

He's also extremely perceptive; at least about the hollowness and absurdity of modern bourgeois sentimentality and taste. His status as a well-educated European provides him the distance necessary to see how bad it all is.  Without the molestation theme the book could function as a hilarious satire on mid-century Americana kitsch. Of course, this perspective allows him to treat everyone else as less than real. Not a single character - other than HH and Lolita herself - ever rises above a caricature. The deaths of Charlotte Haze and Clare Quilty are presented as almost pure comedy. Even Lolita is treated with contempt despite Humbert's mania for her ('Mentally, I found her to be a disgustingly conventional little girl').

On top of everything, we get the obligatory depiction of Lolita as sexually aggressive. She's the one who seduced him! Humbert even goes so far as to portray himself as rather conservative than not, acting like a typical overprotective father and refusing to let his Lo go on dates or even talk to boys on the phone when she is enrolled in Beardsley high school.   The act which ultimately lands him in jail is not his kidnapping and abuse of Lolita but his murder of the man Humbert believes has acted in essentially the same way as himself.

The result is that many - perhaps most - readers are fooled. Sure, Humbert may be a rapist and murderer and a schemer - but at least he's not some middle-class boor! Besides, she was a slut anyway.

Occasionally, very occasionally, we have flashes of insight about the reality of his and Lolita's situation (he notes in passing that Lolita is crying herself to sleep every night) but these never stop him in his pursuit of his nymphet.

I am not inclined to read any symbolism into the story as a whole (Nabakov claimed to 'detest symbols and allegories') so I have to disagree with those who see Humbert as personifying Communism or dictatorship or some such thing.

Instead, Lolita shows us how bad people can get away with it for so long. If villains were dirty and ugly with Snidely Whiplash mustaches and were accompanied everywhere by screeching strings they would never get far. They can be evil because they have an unlimited capacity to justify themselves, and charm the rest of the world.