That Book With the Unspeakable Title: A while back, I started reading a book with a title that is pronounced Low Lee Ta. I’m describing it that way so as not to set off any hypersensitive content filters. This month I returned to it and am nearly though it.
It is certainly one of the most discussed and debated books ever written. And as someone who read any number of critical appraisals, I can happily say it is not what I expected. It is both worse and better. Better in that the writing is amazing. Every sentence is a complex structure loaded with meaning. Wordplay abounds. There are times when Nabokov seems a little too in love with this elaboration but the majority of it is gorgeous from a stylist's standpoint. However, because of that, it is best reserved for an experienced and patient reader. This is not an airplane or beach book; it is probably best to break it up into short, closely focused reading sessions.
Worse in that it does not spare you one iota of the creepiness of the protagonist Humbert Humbert. And yet it doesn’t entirely spare the title character either. It is a truly savage appraisal of the ways in which victim and victimizer manipulate each other. But unlike most such stories, it is not really morally ambivalent. Humbert is the adult, his manipulations are evil. The girl is 12, and she manipulates like any 12-year old, except the context of it is sexual depredation. It’s just a very disturbing thing to read, more so because most of the emotions and motivations are similar to what any human being experiences, but the context makes them appalling.
There are about a million angles one could take on the story, and I may try to pass along a few in the future. If you're interested in giving it a shot, I offer a qualified recommendation. You need to be ready to deal with the fairly complicated prose. You need to suspend your expectations of what a story about a lecherous pedophile is supposed to be. But you do not need to suspend your sense of right and wrong -- that alone puts it above most modern works.
