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Reader Feedback on "Ageless"
Another comment: I agree there is a tricky and fine line between Humbert's loving Lolita and his sheer narcissism (wanting to become her). But I do think we can identify with Humbert precisely for this reason: most obsessive love is narcissistic in nature, and most of the pain of love comes from losing a part of yourself that you saw in the other.
--JM
10/02 |
I agree that Humbert does truly love Lolita, but I would add a more important and poignant point to the argument: he loves Lolita first and foremost because of who and what she represents to him (a lost Annabel, a lost childhood, frozen in time)...as in Hitchcock's Vertigo with Scottie Fergusen loving Madeleine, Humbert sees himself reflected in Lolita--he longs for her own youth, vitality, energy, and immortality (youth by proxy, or osmosis, or both). As Humbert says, 'Lolita had been safely solipsized...' He is able to make and morph her into the image he desires--he can freeze her in time (with his obsession, and his stealing her childhood) and, in a sense, become her by joining his body to hers. The true poignancy and tragedy of Lolita is the painstaking process of his obsession turning into true love--and true remorse over what he has done. "I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of demure murmur for background, and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord." This is what Adrian Lyne conveys so beautifully in his version of Lolita, with Jeremy Irons driving aimlessly down a lone road, fingering one of Lolita's bobby pins with blood-stained fingers, after the murder of Quilty. And this is why Lolita is so immortal--because of Humbert's own exaggerated quest for immortality through love.
--JM
10/02 |
This essay made me cry.
--nnya
09/25 |
How bizarre of Almond to be so shallow and wrong - it's not "love" at all that drives "Lolita", it's only lust and desire. One can define love many different ways, but child-molestation and abduction is not on most folks list of the actions that suggest love.
--kate
09/24 |
But it's Lolita that's the aggressor, not Humbert.
--NM
09/24 |
I would just like to make a point that the whole side story of Lolita representing the childish and shallow US and Humbert representing the quality that is in Europe is quite obvious. There is no need to always mention all aspects of a book in critisism. What I think almond did was write about what moves you in the book and not necessarily the message behind it. We need to stop being pompous assholes and maybe take a lesson from Humbert and just feel without caring for the consequences. Milles bises to Mr. Almond from beautiful (rainy) Paris.
--OS
09/16 |
jo and vs miss the point as much as a critic making the opposite argument. to say that the book is exclusively satire or exclusively an excercise in communicating human passion is simplistic,and i don't think Almond makes the latter caes. he acknowledges the satire reading but choses to focus on the book's great accomplishment, which is not making fun of america but rather convincing readers to identify with an all too human hapless "pervert." satirizing the naivite of america is easy; the accomplishment of Lolita is far more impressive. well done steve.
--ted
09/15 |
A nice, straightforward tribute that's immediately drawn some of the anemic criticism you made a point of shedding with your opening anecdote. I'm astounded whenever I read adults insisting that the subjective experience of great love must be an equal, admirable, or even reciprocal one. Nabokov would have us infatuated, complicit, and dismayed all at once, I think--he's not one to confine himself to a merely ironic register. Anyway, I also wanted to point out a minor error: the quotation in paragraph four ("She trembled and twitched . . . .")describes Humbert's thwarted penultimate encounter with his childhood love Annabel, not Lolita. Thank you again for your article's clarity.
--W.S.
09/15 |
It seems to me that Mr. Almond misses the point of the book completely. There is not one mention in the whole essay of the word irony. In fact, Humbert doesn't LOVE Lolita, he tells himself he does but that kind of love is clearly a pathological one. Not just because she is young, but because he can only love the anima projection of his own lost innocence. For all his detailed sensuality, she is still an abstraction to him. The reader is let in on the secret that Lolita loathes Humbert even though he never seems to see it or if he does, he refuses to believe it, taking refuge in his own style. That is why the final two sequences--murder and punishment--are slap-stick and ludicrous: they are in the name of a "love" that is mere narcissism. We can recognize Humbert as a traditional character from the earliest novels-- the traveling con man, the picaro. To say that Humbert's inability to staunch his desire is what makes the book such a powerful love story is nuts. That is exactly what makes "Lolita" so funny, sardonic, ironic, and sad. Nabokov seemed to want to paint a portrait of immature love, the sentimental and silly type that America seems to project. When we are the slaves to our own bodily desires, we are clowns. There is a whole theory of comedy that says that when human beings become mechanical, they become the source of humor itself (Bergson). That is the humor and irony in the figure of Humbert, and Don Quixote, whom he resembles. Almond says if we are honest, we do not look upon Humbert with disgust. That is pure Sophistry. We don't need disgust; how about dismay? We can still be honest and judge him to be a shallow, perverse manipulator. You're assuming a great deal about "us" in talking about (and exposing, I might add) some of your own failings. To identify with Humbert (and Nabokov is very tricky here) is to misread the entire novel. And to say that "most of our wishes are illicit" sounds so puritan, so false, so subjective. Sorry for the lecture, but dude, come again.
--jo
09/15 |
Well, one can read Nabokov literally and go down the whole man-child love soap. But Nabokov was much more complex than that. He wrote LoLita after he had come to the U.S. during the war and was teaching here. He found American culture to be so juvenile that he wrote Lolita as a comment on American culture. And to this day, much of American culture still doesn't see that he was making fun of us, with a tease. :)
--vz
09/15 |
Steve - I always enjoy your reviews and essays, and this one was no exception, reminding me of a fabulous work that I haven't thought of since high school. However, I have to wonder what the random bit about Republicans hating gays really had to do with anything. Leave the political party trashing to cable TV and just let us enjoy your exquisite writing.
--TM
09/15 |
fabulous piece on "lolita." insightful, poetic and a great read. many thanks
--bf
09/15 |
Steve, you write so beautifully- your words seem so graceful and almost delicate. You move me.
--LSH
09/15 |
'Lolita' is my all time favorite. I remember reading it and smiling at the sheer beauty and honesty of nabakov's prose. what i liked best about it was the fact that i felt for Humbert. I wanted him to get lolita. I also loved how he still loved her when she was no longer a nymphet and pregnant. shows how through his love for her he was relieved of his fixation on little girls. the most gorgeous book ever written and thank you to the writer for reminding us of it. bisous from Paris
--OS
09/15 |
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