/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17459318]

how did this become the most impactful written work in the modern era?

[Anonymous No.17459571]

>>17459318
Women readers took it at face value and enjoyed the first part of the book. They inevitably get filtered by everything past the Enchanted Huntress because they grossly misunderstand the book.

Basically women like this book because they don't actually understand it and enjoy the fantasy of being hot young thing with a dirty old man pawing after them.

[Anonymous No.17459604]

>>17459571
>because they grossly misunderstand the book
>Basically women like this book because they don't actually understand it and enjoy the fantasy of being hot young thing with a dirty old man pawing after them
Uhhh was this not the point of the book? Humbert's impossible infatuation with Lo? Did I miss something, broz?

[Anonymous No.17459658]

it's less politically incorrect for women to like this book but it's unreal how many women LOVE this book.

[Anonymous No.17459697]

>>17459604
>wait you're telling me that my surface level understanding of the book is different than the message the book is trying to portray?
I haven't read the book but even I know that Humbert Humbert is an unreliable narrator who possibly doesn't exist/lolita is a slut/lolita doesn't exist/Humbert and Lolita are the same person. It's the same concept as Pale Fire and it filters people so hard
>uhmm no acktually the book said this so that is what happened in the book

[Anonymous No.17459739]

>>17459571
its The Enchanted Hunters you fucking retard.

[Anonymous No.17459743]

>Lolita, for men

[Anonymous No.17459749]

>>17459697
Well yea I knew he was unreliable but what the fuck else are you talking about
>possibly doesn't exist
>lolita doesn't exist
>Humbert and Lolita are the same person
uhhhh did I get filtered or are you a schizo?

[Anonymous No.17459767]

>>17459604
Women read it as a love story, and a story about the trajectory of a relationship.
>teehee love at first sight! omg
>haha sex for the first time is awkard!!!
>OMG I LOVE SEX SEX GOOD GIMME MORE SEX SEX SEX SEX
>ok um turns out this guy I had sex with isn't that good in comparison to other guys
>there are just so many more options
>i'm gonnna cheat on him
>lol
>oh shidddd I kinda regret that
>now I'm a used up whore with no future and a boring husband plus a kid on the way
>oh look it's my old romeo
>lol hahaha we had good times but I guess it's better this way
That's literally how women read the book. One of the blurbs on most of editions of the book is a quote from Vanity Fair (a women's magazine). It basically says Lolita is the modern world's perfect love story.

The reality is you should see the first half of the book as Humbert's solipsism of Dolly. He creates the figure of Lolita, the perfect nymphet. The first part of the book up to the Enchanted Huntress is him indulging in this fantasy. Then comes the rest of the book. This is where the book becomes ART, as pointed out by John Ray Jr. in the Foreword.

It is at this point Humbert realizes what he has done. How horrible he was. How much of a lie he was living. By reflecting his able to see through his solipsism. He realizes the "slimy trail" he and Dolly made across America. He realizes how horrible he was to create Lolita and deny Dolly any reality as a person. The art of Lolita is Humbert's realization of this, while at the same time writing a memoir which illustrates this tonal shift. Most women and many male readers miss this slight tonal shift. But if you read closely you can catch it.
There's a quote near the end, it's sometime around when Humbert pulls over on a mountain pass and throws up, that he says he hopes this memoir will serve as a palliative for all the wrongs he did to Dolly. Or there's some quote about a palliative. That's a huge key to the novel as well as the "slimy trail" across America quote.
Loose quotation but
>I hear her cry. Every night. Every night I hear her cry.
But of course women just go
>XD SEX HAHAHA ME WANTED SEX WHEN I WAS 13 WITH OLD MAN
Like the whole point of this novel is that even though Humbert is a terrible person and did awful things, he is able to turn this into art by reflecting on it. It's art which is the palliative that can right wrongs. It's art which saves humanity. This last bit is a bit moralizing, but it's important to compare Lolita to Nabokov's earlier novel Despair. Humbert is an example of the criminal as artist. Where he turns his crime into art. Despair is the opposite. It's a failed artist who is a criminal. He believe his crime is art, and that he has turned it into art, but he is no artist.

[Anonymous No.17459773]

>>17459739
>oh no you conflated Enchanted Huntress (Nabokov's short story) with Enchanted Hunters
>therefore you know nothing about this book
I know more about this book than you, you fucking tranny. Shut the fuck up.

[Anonymous No.17459776]

>>17459571
>Basically women like this book because they don't actually understand it and enjoy the fantasy of being hot young thing with a dirty old man pawing after them.
100% THIS

[Anonymous No.17459783]

>>17459773
Preempting your faggy reply
>>OH NO YOU CONFLATED THE ENCHANTER WITH THE ENCHANTED HUNTRESS WHICH YOU EARLIER CONFLATED WITH THE ENCHANTED HUNTER
stfu faggot.

[Anonymous No.17459788]

>>17459767
okay good that was the messaging I drew from it beyond the "HEHEHE SEX". Not filtered, feelsgood.

[Anonymous No.17459793]

>>17459773
>>17459783
take your meds

[Anonymous No.17459803]

>>17459743
based

[Anonymous No.17459807]

>>17459788
Nice. My drunk posting made sense.
>>17459793
I took a whole mother fucking class on Nabokov you illiterate twit.

[Anonymous No.17459811]

>>17459807
ty for the breakdown btw. Schizos talking about Lo and Humbert not existing spooked me.

[Anonymous No.17459820]

>>17459807
wow a whole class. take your meds

[Anonymous No.17459852]

>>17459820
TAKE MY MEDS I'MMA TAKE MORE BEER AHHHH
We went to the Smokies to see the butterfly Nabokov describes in Pale Fire. That's how fucking serious this class was. We had a lepidoptery themed field trip, for a fucking 4000 level literature class.
>Schizos talking about Lo and Humbert not existing spooked me
These are valid readings to a certain degree. Many people take the "waterproof" quote as an indication that the events of the book past the planned drowning never took place. That Humbert merely made it up to act out what would happen if Charlotte were to die. There's also the ridiculousness of the confrontation with Quilty. Quilty comes down and plays the piano and reveals what happened to Humbert. Then Humbert attacks him and is described as doing this weird kangaroo hop. Then he shoots Quilty like seven times and the dude just walks to his bedroom and lays down to die. It's all too surreal. There are definitely arguments for Humbert and Dolly's nonexistence and merely being characters in a story (from the context of the narrative. John Ray Jr. <===> Humbert Humbert. JRJR and HH.

[Anonymous No.17459867]

>>17459852
>TAKE MY MEDS I'MMA TAKE MORE BEER AHHHH
baste

[Anonymous No.17459961]

>>17459767
The scene in the barbershop is quite important too. It basically reinforces what yours saying about how it's all just a palliative and an attempt to convey contrition for his actions by making it into art, but all of it is still done for his own solipsistic benefit. Just as the problems of the essentially nonentity barber (in his eyes) are wholly trivial for him so too are the problems and the pain he has caused Lolita wholly and utterly irrelevant to him, he only has ever cared about himself. It's essentially the only part of the book where you know he isn't lying because it doesn't render him in a favorable fashion. This is unlike the two quotes that are incredibly poignant towards the end of the book like the one you loosely quoted as well as one more that I can't remember (it is too the same effect though) I wouldn't take as face value, he obviously feels bad for her, but these words of remorse are done for his own sake, they aren't genuine essentially, and its all for the artistic flare. And like you said it's all to turn it into art by reflecting on it. In some aspects, the whole "unreliable narrator" can be taken too far sometimes, you can really say anything you want, there's people that posit that even John Shade doesn't exist and that he is just another manifestation of Kinbotes, these things are unfalsifiable because you can't take anything in the book at face value. It kinda ruins it in my opinion (when people take it to the extreme).

[Anonymous No.17459973]

>>17459767
>It basically says Lolita is the modern world's perfect love story.
Jesus fucking christ.

[Anonymous No.17460021]

>>17459852
See this is the thing, >>17459961 my whole post is essentially "I wouldn't take his contrition seriously," which is obviously nothing new to you. Honestly, the discussion of this book just makes you a schizo, and it will never end. At some point, you feel like just reading it a face value the way women do. Just from Humberts perspective, gets some cunny then feels bad about it. The end.