Re: Johnson article
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Thu, 14 Jan 1999 11:59:20 +1100
Blah b b Blah wrote:
> I guess the center of the book--where he was just taking Lolita from
> place to place--seemed somewhat Drug Out. And almost the entire book was
> simply a study of the psychology of desire--
Actually Nabokov was stridently attempting to face off the Freudians and
the psychologists - for example, by putting the obvious explanation for
Humbert's perversion in the form of his lost love Annabel Lee and then
having Humbert emphatically deny it. I think it would be steadfastly dull
had it just been a straight clinical analysis - like that dreadful dreadful
book written on the subject a year or two ago - but the fact that Humbert
*is* a learned and cultured man; the fact that he does not fit into any
obvious criminal profile is what drove his absolute love for Lolita into
high relief for me.
> and that gets pretty
> monotonous after not too very long, to me, anyways. The end of the book
> pretty well seemed to justify its writing (the transformation of
> lust/desire into sacrificial love) and its literary merit, and what I
> found really interesting was that I had to go back to the first page to
> find out what happened to the little nymphet :)
You would be well served by proceeding straight to `Pale Fire'. I think
you'll like that one a lot better - just be sure not to listen to a word
Charles Kinbote says (:
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
@ THE INVERTED FOREST www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest