Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 

Rereading this book as an adult was really sad. Humbert's prose is gorgeous, but it's in service to destroying a girl's life. It's still my favourite book but it's an absolute tragedy. The tragedy not involving Humbert at all, his end being too good for him, despite what he proclaims

I think it's also good to keep in mind that the book is written from Humbert's perspective and there is no reason to think that he is a reliable narrator. It is his attempt to make himself likable... He seems to be successful at it, despite the fact that it is quite explicit that he is a child rapist and an overall monster.

Man, this was really crazy to hear. None of my friends are really readers so I never really got a chance to hear anyone else's perspective on this and I couldn't have imagined considering Dolores as the instigator of anything. My take was always that it was a monster story, a monster that wants more than anything to convince itself it's not sick. I didn't think Dolores had any crush on him, I think that's the story he liked and he doesn't include her dialogue because it challenges his reality. If anyone read this whole spiel thanks, and was very interesting video, I love hearing other people's takes on books it's crazy how different a story the same words can tell to different people!

I'm a childhood sexual abuse survivor. I had to read this book my freshman year of college and it triggered me beyond belief. I'm tempted to read it again now at age 46 after I've healed from my trauma, but I'm not sure anything good would come from it.

I had the same experience. Came back to this book a decade after reading it and seeing the movie, and thought…wait a minute. This isn’t a story about a child seductrice at all! It was reading My Dark Vanessa that made me come back to Lolita, and think about the grooming by Humbert. Much respect to Vladimir Nabokov, much disappointment in all the misguided interpreters and movie makers of his story. Now off to listen to this podcast…thanks!

I think one should not confuse the issues... Is it a good book? It is extraordinary, deeply moving and certainly one of the greatest books ever written. Was Nabokov depicting Lolita as a seductress or as a victim? As a victim (all the more for her beauty, her poignant charm, her game of tennis, which we see through Humbert's adoring eyes). Did Humbert ignore the fact? No, he says it again and again, he knows what he has done, he feels irreparable guilt, and I dare say he also feels a great broken and limitless love for her. We experience great difficulty with allowing Humbert's irresistible voice into our heads with the knowledge that he is a monster, and if we cry with him in the end, it is because we pity him, and her, and ourselves for understanding the deeply tragic nature of things. And this mixed emotions, in Fitzgerald's words: this "ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function" is I would argue , not just the mark of a first rate intelligence but also the challenge of a first rate book ; a book, which should not be held responsible for the misinterpretations it generates. I would even say that Lolita is in the end a very moral book (not that that's what truly matters here) all the more because it is so devastatingly sad. The seduction is in the enchanting words, and one should never feel guilt for falling under that spell, the magic spell of literature.

you explaining about the different lenses we can interpret the characters is just so eye opening for so many victims, thank you ❤️

Thanks for sharing this interesting journey you’ve been on - the point you made around the 7 minute mark about Nabokov testing us all and how society has failed the test seemed just right. It is probably the most discomforting book I’ve ever read, and both the structure and language work to manipulate the reader so well. A masterpiece as you say, and we won’t even get started on the literary references etc. I liked your comment about the book’s cover too - my copy has a plain brown cover - I think it dates from when Nabokov was still alive. I’m going to read Nabokov’s Pale Fire later this year which is another psychological study of a ‘troubling’ narrator so I’m looking forward to that - have you ever read it?

I just finished Lolita and I'm really depressed

Your observations and changing perspective over time and age speaks volumes to the present debates about childhood choices and agency right now.

Thank you for the review . I am thinking to take this novel as my university project . Keep going sister ✌️

I'm listening to the audiobook now. (Read by Jeremy Irons. Just brilliant.) The more it goes on, the more I think Humbert is distorting, or downright lying, about their relationship. I think he murdered Lolita's mother and that the whole car accident story was a lie. Lolita isn't portrayed as a seductress so much as being sexually precocious. He says she cries every night when he feigns being asleep. He drags her about the country so that she never has the chance to meet someone she can trust.

I try to reread “lolita” every summer for both pure enjoyment of pretty prose and to stay vigilant. It’s too easy to sweep under the rug and excuse behavior that’s seen as so normal in society, and ignore our pain.

I feel lucky to have read this book in the way I did. I read it at about the same age as you did, but I never believed (or even considered) that Dolores was being portrayed as a seductress. It’s easily my favourite novel, and I’m so fortunate to have had the chance to read it with relatively little influence from secondary interpreters.

Have you read Pale Fire by Nabokov? I’d love to see you review that. It’s an extraordinary book.

I've been wanting to read this book and your review has been great. I'm going to read it, thank you for actually telling me what it's about, because alot of people just say it's a very sexual book instead of saying what its actually is about.

Thank you for addressing such a controverial - but genius - book "Lolita". I just read it, the prose is mesmerizing, but the topic is difficult of course. I subscribed on your RU-vid channel and hope to hear and see more of you. Greets from The Netherlands (Utrecht), Menno Alexander Zandee

Spot on description of the plight of Dolores/Lolita and her misrepresentation in movies and pop culture. Having read the novel, I then wanted to figure out why he wrote Lolita. If have not read it, I recommend reading his autobiography--Speak, Memory. In particular, analyze the relationship with his unmarried uncle. The clues are mostly vague but become much more explicit in one passing comment. I think in writing Lolita, he was working through the trauma of his own childhood abuse. Interestingly I read that his wife saved the Lolita manuscript from being destroyed three times by him and insisted he finish writing it which would potentially support that theory.

The last 30 seconds of this video were where you actually achieved genius. I look forward to your review in ten years.

I completely agree with you. Nabokov points out in that interview with Lionel Trilling how uncommon the response of readers is to remark on, "how helpless she is", and I don't see how any one can read Humbert's mournfulness at the end when he hears the children playing from a distance and not understand the wrongfulness and regret he has for what he's done. The text is more amazing to me after reading more of his writing and picking up on the connections it has with Nabokov being severed from his beloved Russian upbringing, his love of butterflys and literature, and how it still reins his passion and could be transfered into something so distant from his life like weaving together a story about "love between humans", no less a grown man and immature girl.

It is so interesting hearing your perspective change so much - thank you for sharing. I only read the book for the first time about a year ago aged 35, and to be honest I didn't know the story, and had never seen any adaptations. I never felt Lolita was a seductress (only a victim), however I did spend a lot of my time feeling sorry for Humbert, which then made me feel disgusted with myself for having sympathy with him. However, I guess that is the genius of the book - it is from his perspective, and he cleverly manipulates you the reader into feeling sorry for him. It is very beautifully written, which is such a paradox, because it made me feel physically sick a times. There is part of me which would like to re-read it, and part of me which wouldn't...

Apart from what you told in video, the change of mood in those 9-10 minutes is beautiful and that's I think important to Nabokov too...

Thanks for making this video and the podcast recommendation. This book is still languishing in my tbr years after I bought it. I read the first page and was absorbed by the beautiful prose, but the subject matter has always held me back from actually reading it. I’ll definitely be checking out the podcast before I pick this up. Oh, and will you be rereading The Virgin Suicides and making a video on that (since it seems like this reread of Lolita has you questioning your understanding of that story as well)?

Lolita is Nabokov's love letter to the English language. He waxes poetic as if he is drunk on English because the point of the novel is to show how an articulate person can manipulate via language, and often achieve societal pardon. It is similar to how we overlook the indiscretions of our favorite filmmakers, artists, and musicians because of their genius. Elvis, Steven Tyler, Michael Jackson, Polanski, Woody Allen, and Anne Sexton all victimized children, yet people often ignore these transgressions because of their contributions to culture/society. All that being said, if you read a lot of Nabokov's works you start to observe a persistent fascination with "nymphets". From his short stories to Ada or Ardor he featured "nymphets" in questionable situations.

A hauntingly powerful vlog - thank you. I haven't read the book, probably never will, but was moved by your honest struggle to respond.

I just read this recently and was also had completely misunderstood what the story was going to be about from the cultural intellect about it. Even the definition of what Lolita is in the library is counter to what the book is about. It was shocking reading it for the first time and finding out what it was actually about. I made a video about how it. It’s so disgusting how our culture has essentially just completely taken the POV of Humbert.

I've read it every 5 years since I was 14, I'm now 50. I keep coming back, I hate myself for being seduced by humbert, each time. I'm determined to loathe him yet somehow... Jerome irons audiobook reading is amazing, his gravelly tones have become humbert in my mind. I know it shouldn't be my favourite book. But the pace, language and characters make any other fiction seem pale and tiresome, I can't care about them as there seems so little at stake. Lolita feels like the shadow of a secret folded away inside an attic trunk. What would have been a truly horrific ending is Lo and Humbert happy! Even Nabokov couldn't make that pretty.

That cold opening ❤️❤️

Thank you for this. But what was that jab at Jeremy Irons? I'm currently listening the audio book. It's narrated by him. But what wrong did he do?

Thank you for making this review

As some one who was groomed around well Lolita’s aged, touched inappropriately and almost r worded by well someone who one of my family members was romantically involved (humburt and Dolores’s mom) I find myself also haunted by this story because I want to see Dolores justified I want to see her side her mindset of it all, I have also felt pity for humburt tho as my family members took the side of the man who assaulted me and it’s devastating how society as blamed me and many young girls like Dolores for seducing older man but even worse they way in which we hate ourselves and feel like we deserve this

For me, I've known about this book since I was 15 or so. Just in passing. Always knowing it as "that book that's about a pedo". It wasn't until I got really into reading and writing again a year or so ago that I came across some good essays about it. I've put off reading it, not because I think it's bad or anything, just because the subject matter is obviously upsetting. I just ordered it to read earlier today. I've gained a pretty healthy understanding of the text and am ready to read it myself. I think becoming more knowledgeable about this book, the author, the history of it, the misrepresentation, the post modern aspects, I've come to a point where I need to read it myself.

Havent read the book but kinda surprised to read that people whos read it think a 12 year old is to blame for seducing a man.... COME ON!

Fine... I'll read it. Thanks for the review.

Thank you for such a sincere account of your experience with the novel. I have a Ph.D. in Russian literature and I never made it past the first few pages out of utter disgust. So it is very validating to hear your perspective. I have not kept up with literary theory, so I can't cite any clever names, but I can't help but think of the fact that the author was a dislocated Russian aristocrat and a deeply arrogant individual. I always suspect that "Lolita" was Nabokov's way of mocking and belittling the West. There is a distinct essence of amorality that Nabokov could create such enthralling prose about such a disgraceful subject. Isn't there a certain moral vacuity and condescending mockery in such an act? Again, your perspective was genuinely validating. And I wonder if the seeming paradox of an eloquent artifact about a depraved subject can be explained by its source.

My read: Lolita is a modern retelling of Faust. Or possibly The Divine Comedy. I'm willing to take Mr. Crafty at his word, whatever that is. Nobody's panties gets ruffled; it's a work of fiction. Nabokov took enormous pride in that he had the juice to write the book. His astonishing combinatory skills; yah, right. Great literary works trespass, cross the boundaries of decorum. That brought a shitstorm of opprobrium down in my head at Reddit but no one there had anything more substantive to say other than I was stupid. That was the depth of analysis there. So Nabokov is alive and well. Smithy9 @ AllPoetry

Jean Anouilh said: Politics in theater is like a gunshot in a concert. It kills the art dead. The same goes for morality in fiction. Viewing fiction through the lens of morality (or worse, moralism), is what Nabokov called Poshlost, or, in English: Philistinism. It is seeing art as a utilitarian pursuit. However the underlying question always is: What are you first? An artist, or a moral crusader / good citizen? This question is a brutal one because, for an artist, the response is binary: Either, or. That's why "Lolita" was banned, and why Flaubert was prosecuted for "Madame Bovary." Philistinism re-appears anew in every generation. And as Oscar Wilde said of bad poetry, it is always sincere.

It's painful to get through. I'm 41 and only have a niece. I see why people say this becomes a horror novel when you get older.

This is just about the same comment I made on the seven-year-old Lolita video. And if you read that one, the book wouldn’t bother you so much and you’d read it again. Okay, this video is kind of special for me because the old lady who lives next door to me had Nabokov as a professor at Cornell about a million years ago. She didn’t like the novel. But because she had Nabokov (the Russian literature class-she gave me the textbook) I wanted to make sure I read the Lolita. It took me three tries to get all the way through it. Here is my take: Nabokov is borrowing from Edgar Allen Poe. My first step in figuring that out was that the little girlfriend who died when Humbert Humbert was 12 is named Annabelle Lee, and that is also the title of an Edgar Allen Poe poem where the narrator’s true love died. Then...look at Poe’s short story “The Tell Tale Heart.” That is a story, told in first person, about an insane murderer-who gets caught-who sits in an interrogation room and tries to convince the police that what he did made perfect sense. The more he pushes that contention, the more you know he’s crazy. Then look at “The Cask of Amontillado.” A first person narration where the killer-who got away with the crime-is telling you how he did it and that the victim had it coming. He’s an eloquent narrator, obviously highly intelligent (just look at the vocabulary in the first three paragraphs) trying his best to convince you that the murder was justified. He’s trying to fool you with his eloquence, even trying to convince you that you know him well when you’ve only known him for 90 seconds. So the lesson of that story: Sometimes crazy people are very intelligent and will do their best to convince you that the terrible thing they did was okay. Don’t fall for their act. Since Poe had already used this motif for murder, that was out for Nabokov, so he just used it for sex. Here is Humbert Humbert, obviously super intelligent since his prose style is amazing, doing his best to try to convince the reader that what he did-having sex with a 12-year-old-was okay. At one point Humbert Humbert pulls the “She seduced me” act, which is a common ploy with sex offenders. Humbert Humbert thinks that his eloquence will trick you into forgiving him. Don’t. Lesson: Not all child molesters are dumb and live in a trailer park. (Though I’ve known some who did.) Some child molesters are very intelligent. Look out for them!

you should know, more copies were bought by women than men.

“You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.” Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

I've never heard of this book and I'm really glad now...

I have a friend I see often, we sometimes exchange books and then discuss, who decided to start reading classics around the start of the first pandemic lockdown and this was the first one she read and was saying how the author was funny... I was like NOPE NOPE NOPE I have a long TBR, sorry not sorry.

This was such an excellent video and really thought-provoking. I read Lolita once when I was in university and had nightmares for days it was so unsettling. I completely see how it's a masterpiece and commend Vladimir Nabokov for his intentions, but you're so right! It's a hard book to get through, mostly because of how society looks at it. I'm so interested in listening to that podcast you mentioned, thanks for the recommendation Charlotte!

Nabokov would be so happy that you fell out of one of the book's main traps. Makes the book much darker, but better in every way.

Interesting I didn't know the author didn't want her image on the cover. It makes you really think about Kubrick's theatrical release poster.

Have you read signs and symbols? You are right about it all being a test. The pair couldn't say a word without throwing pearls before swine

I was in my twenties when I first read it, I had a little knowledge about the plot but I didn't think that Humbert would actually succeed in is his attempt to rape the girl, I was so chocked when he did. Its an incredibly well written book but damn is it disturbing.

That was a cow pat of elegant bloviation. If your ten year engagement with Lolita led you to the conclusion that you never want to read the book again, that should be a prima facie argument that you've gone down the wrong trail. Check the bottom of your shoes.

Nabokov is great at writing from the perspective of evil men. "Desperation" is another example of this. I think everyone who read another Nabokov book wouldn't fall into the trap of thinking Lolita is some kind of love story.

Sorry, once you listen to Jeremy irons reading of these opening lines you can never hear it from anyone else again. He is Humber

Also, the fact he's the protagonist makes him inherently sympathetic to some degree. If it were told from Dolores' perspective, Humbert would seem considerably more reprehensible.

So if I understand correctly you think the book is fantastic but you don't like it because of your own personal issues with your past adolescent mind and how you thought maybe it was a positive rep of a pedo relationship, but now you view it as you matured a book that shows the real horrors of pedo relationship?

This. Is. BRILLIANT

I'm in the process of reading the book, I've seen the 1997 film and the director claims it was a "twisted love story" or something similar. Irons' Humbert comes across as a weak man with perverse desires, initially manipulated by Dolores and thus not entirely culpable. At the end as I recall he's virtually portrayed as a tragic hero, killing the more reprehensible Quilty and dying as a man both broken and fulfilled. The story is facilitated by the unlikely death of Dolores' mother; a plot contrivance which seems providential. The effect of the story has been pro-paedophile as I see it, it did something to normalise these relationships. These are likely feelings that Nabakov himself grappled with (in my estimation) and several of his works contained similar themes. He also didn't deny Lionel Trilling's assertion that it was a "love story" and looked very uncomfortable in an interview on the subject of Lolita.

Do the enchanteror next!

3:56 why even consider to do is baffling [oh, I forgot ladies go for the novels]. Video In nutshell, a lady's realizing that the novel is as cursed as a hentai. And people wonder why anime sold to the western world is considered pandering towards western nuances. Considering literature like this laying around, it is not surprising.

Audio ! No it isn't my computer....checked ! Wish I could follow this channel 😣

I like the explanation offered by the authors of Reading Lolita in Tehran. Turns out they didn't have any moral qualms; they just wanted to read something that sprayed piss on the censors.

Is hard to sympathize with Dolores she's a brat. I always found it interesting that Humbert is still interested in Dolores at the end even though she's no longer a nymphet.

You definitely need never read Lolita again. But his book THE GIFT will give you the brilliant prose and characterizations without the horror and deeply dark comedy. The Gift is my favorite of his books. It has so much heart and humor as it explores the nature of artisitic creation from a thousand points of view.

Guy's father was killed by Sergey Taboritsky

I remember watching Kubrick's adaptation and feeling let down, because it shows Humbert as a simp for Lolita. He basically does her bidding because she teases him, yet she never gives into his desires. My ex and I (we watched it together) felt the movie was off. I never tried rewatching it, bc it's rather trashy. This was before I ever read the novel. I never have to this day, because I know what it's about, but I have a Library of America edition of Pale Fire that also contains Lolita and I have flicked through some pages out of curiosity. This novel is indeed well written, yet it's so obvious Humbert is trying to manipulate us just like he manipulated Lolita. How do you explain a man forcing a child to give him a blowjob for extracurricular activities other than simply calling it abuse? I don't know if I can put up with reading such a novel, even if it's supposed to be the most beautiful prose ever written. Something somewhat unrelated, it came to me while watching your review, but it makes my hair stand up whenever men call their lovers/wives/girlfriends "my nymphet". Not many do it, most of them are old writers, but knowing what it refers to I simply cannot understand how you would ever think calling your dearest person a nymphet would come across as a compliment.

Interesting

"It's totally normal for young girls to have crushes on older powerful men" lol wow red flag

It is disgusting how the man character in the book tries to justify how he isolated, groomed and rape a young girl. Includeing.how the reason he is attracted to young girls because of the girl he lost years ago how was his first love. Also I really do think that how he died wasn't enough for the sick and crazed fuck.

She had a crush on humbert? I missed that somehow! Also, why 9 year olds are in the list? And what's A faunlet? Does he have a thing for little boys too?

I'm currently reading this book and it made me physically sick. I'm at the part when he meets Delores and I already hate it.

Thank you.

The book has not changed since you first read it. Only your intelligence and even then there is still more to go

♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

I have this as my current required reading in 11th grade, and i couldn't get past the first like 30 pages, it was awful, the entire time i wanted to rip the book to shreds. And our literature teacher (who is a woman) deadass called it a "forbidden romance". Ugh.

Pearls before swine

Def not a book for teenagers to read. I never thought of it as a child seductress novel wtf, i thought it was very obvious it was Humbert fighting with his immoral love and lust and then just what happens from there written in the most beautiful way. I was annoyed at towards the middle and end Lolita had less and less dialogue and it does kinda show Humberts mind had run off with him and he was loving her for lust - focused on her idealisation or romantic abstraction - but love nonetheless. I wish the character of Lolita was explored more but how can that be the case when the novel is a manuscript from a fervent sexual loving mad man, our perspectives are limited thusly.

It's funny, I've been finally getting around to reading the book after decades of its reputation preceding it, and it...kinda baffles me how anyone with even the most passing familiarity with the concept of an "unreliable narrator" (basically anyone who read a few Edger Allan Poe stories as a kid) could possibly miss the point about Humbert, or that Dolores TOTALLY AIN'T into this. The most chilling passages are the ones where he lets the mask slip and is practically bragging about how he was coercing her the whole time. I mean, his pedophelea ain't even the only super-apparent way in which he's a complete slimeball. The whole source of dramatic tension is how he's *outwardly* charming to everyone he interacts with, while we're privy to his thoughts wherein he never runs out of ways to explicitly reveal what a delusional, arrogant, blowhard, pathetic weasel he really is internally. The caveat that he's often quite witty and funny in his snarky, misanthropic observations is one of the few things that make it bearable to spend a whole book stuck inside his head. I looked up and watched the trailer to the movie version with Jeremy Irons, which appears to have tried to frame their relationship as a legit star-crossed tragic love story. Is that just, y'know, trailers, or did the filmmakers REALLY miss the point that badly?

Don't know if you're still monitoring comments on this vid, but just in case you are; If you'd be interested in having an entirely new interpretation of the book closer to the author's intent, read his _Pale Fire_ first and then reread _Lolita_. Consider the possibility that there's a grand joke being told that you might have missed due to the intensity of the subject matter and writing.

Edit - this must be the longest YT comment of my life. Only the 1st para is aimed at you... Rest I just pondered on lol. I'm curious what made you read this book at a young age... Very easy to misconstrue/misinterpret it as "Lolita is a seductress" back then. Never once did that idea cross my mind, though must admit I read it first at ripe old age of 29. The undependable narrator is just that. There's irony, wordplay, dark dark humour. In

Remember that the rules of law or society can never be completely in line with reality (maybe this girl matured early... in other societies that is an age of marriage). And any sexual desires are not a matter of choice. I didnt choose to have totally normal straight male sexual desires... I just seem to have been born with them. So the fact that he is a criminal by our standards has nothing to do with who he is as a person. I understand that is hard to accept. Maybe that is also the point of the book (which i havent read)

Access granted.

you saying you saw the book as agency for sexual agency really shows you see what you want to see.

*_"Everything woke, turns to SHⵓT"_* - President Donald J. *Trump* ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Why do you hate Jeremy Irons? He was just an actor playing a part. Do you also hate Vladimir Nabokov for writing the book?

I see Lolita as a metaphor for guys in general being attracted to young and younger women. Major age gaps in relationships usually do not work. They can work and sometimes do; but those are the exceptions.

I always wondered how the film could get made without transgressive scandal - now I know. It wasn’t

I'm trying to read it but man. It feels gross. Total depravity, and acting as a victim

I’m reading this for the first time and so creeped out I didn’t think she was a seductive at all and only 80 pages in lol. I’m trying to decided why people love this and why so many things say it’s so funny.

You’ve said you don’t want to re-read it twice. But you still did. I’m 50 pages in, I’ve never felt so uncomfortable by a book. The pros are just out of this world. I wish it was about a time machine not, that.

The books is written in his perspective how he viewed her and the situation and its a dark tragedy so I don't see any basis of your argument its just not very smart ....

Unreliable narrators completely confuse modern readers.

This was Milo Yiannopolis’s view of his own abuse when he was 14. Then at 40 he realised he was the victim.

nothing new here unfortunately. just more pearl clutching cliches. if this book is too much maybe stick to harry potter.