Re: a question

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Sat, 16 Jan 1999 11:58:56 +1100 

Jim wrote:
> Yeah, see, here I'd have to vehemently distinguish between Nabokov's
> voice and Humbert's.  Remember that _Lolita_ is Humbert Humbert speaking,
> it's Nabokov acting in a very literary way like he's someone else.  The
> identification of the narrative with Nabokov would then be like
> identifying Leonardo DiCaprio with Romeo.

Well, this is partially right ... but it would be more correctly like
identifying William Shakespeare with Romeo, which is a slightly different
thing. I would assume there are little parts of Shakespeare - and more
importantly, little parts of his opinions and biases and outlooks on life -
scattered all the way through his works. I would assume that any writer, if
they are hoping to convey any sort of message or ethos, would be conveying
something approximating their own.

> So what does this tell us about Nabokov's intent?  That he is showing us
> the limitations of Humbert's perspective by having him deny something so
> obvious, or that he's trying to violate our expectations at every turn? 
> Maybe both.  At present, in this case, I'm leaning toward the former.

I always had trouble considering Humbert an `unreliable narrator' - but of
course he is, probably more than the trusting reader imagines (and
something certainly emphasised by `Pale Fire' which is basically about the
phenomena) - how do we know it was Lolita who seduced him first, etc etc -
but he conveys to me an odd sort of trustworthiness for a simple reason -
what has he to lose? He's in jail. He's lost Lolita. He quite possibly
knows he is about to die. For that reason I find it hard rather than easy
to mistrust him.

We must always remember that underneath any book is the writer's intent and
opinions - Nabokov's being firmly stated as anti-Freudian - rendered both
thematically and, here, in the way the author wants us to read and
comprehend the book. For my money, I think the placing of this specifically
Freud-esque episode at the beginning of the book is there to trip the
reader up - for everything that follows is designed to make us question the
whole idea of Freudianism and the reasons for a perversion such as
Humbert's.

By the way - anyone seen the new movie of `Lolita'? I heard it got a
limited release in America. Still no word on whether it will ever reach
Australia. With the banning of `The Tin Drum' in some parts of America I'm
suprised they even let a print into the country.

Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
@ THE INVERTED FOREST www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest