Tayari's Blog: Lolita is Fifty!
Posted by TayariJones on September 19, 2005 08:18 AM
Filed under
Bookshelf
I happen to know this because I turned on NPR yesterday and heard everyone oohing and ahing over the Nabokov classic. The editor of The New Yorker cooed that it was a "perfect book." Donna Tart recounted how embarrassed she was to buy such a book from a bookstore. And I just couldn't get excited.
I've read Lolita. And I thought it was well written. One of the greatest of the twentieth century? Umm... no. At least not for me. The people on the radio were going on about how it challenges the reader to hate the pedophilia but love the pedophile. Whatever.
I just have something to say about this. It seems to me that the stigma of pedophilia is mainly restricted to men who sexually abuse little boys. I mean, ask R. Kelly how much people hold it against you for messing with young girls.
Okay. One more little thing. I would argue that they way the term "Lolita" is used in everyday speech is to mean young seductress, not victim of a pedophile. Well, I guess it just blew that taboo right open. I am sure the world is better off for it.
It's not that I don't think that Nabokov is a great writer. It's not that I am some sort of anti-artist who can't recognize the aesthetic value of something I find morally repugnant. I am not an uptight person. I cut people a lot of slack. As a matter of fact, as far as I am concerned, just about anything between consenting ADULTS is fine. But Lolita is about a grown man preying on a little girl and the novel makes it seem like fun.
But here is my point: I think that people are able to overlook the "morality" of a book ONLY when the moral issue is something they really don't care about. Hustle and Flow works for the same reason that Lolita works. Nobody really cares all that much about women who are sexually exploited. I mean, can you imagine if HH was preying on a little BOY rather than a little girl? Can you imagine is the pimp in Hustle and Flow was hustling young MEN?
Okay. Didn't mean to start the morning on such a rant.
If you want to read a perfect book, read Beloved.
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There are 4 comments on "Lolita is Fifty!". If you'd like to leave a comment, click here to jump down to the comments entry form.
Comment #1, by STEPHANIE
T,
I agree with your rant 100%!!! And Beloved is a perfect book...it left me haunted and full of hope simultaneously....
September 19, 2005 10:59 AM
Comment #2, by XENIA
I'm with you on Nabokov's LOLITA & pedophilia. I've never read it & don't plan to & if that makes me close-minded, so be it. I'm working on a coming-of-age novel that features a character named Lolita, who was named after Lolita Lebron, a Puerto Rican nationalist who attempted to assasinate President Truman back in the 1950's. I hope to take the negativity out of the name ;).
X
September 19, 2005 10:50 PM
Comment #3, by Bomani
The comparison to Hustle and Flow seems a bit too simple. I gave that movie a glowing review--while decrying that nearly every character in the movie is utterly deplorable--but I wouldn't say that I ignored the women in the movie because I possessed an indifference toward them. Hustle and Flow worked for me because I thought the filmmakers did an interesting job of showing how the simplest, most mundane things can bring indescribably joy to people who are down and out. As a viewer, I ached for the women who figured their lives were good for little more than turning tricks, and I was amazed how simply singing the hook on a song could light up someone's day.
And I see little stuff like that on a daily basis, which added a bit of reality, no matter how terrible the reality was.
Had DJay been pimping little boys, it would have resonated the same way with me. The hook of that movie, from where I sat, was the way it isolated how people are looking for some niche, some way to be special, some hustle (in the Baldwinian sense). I see the point you make, but I know that I personally never lost sight of how terrible the pimp in that movie was.
September 21, 2005 08:40 AM
Comment #4, by -j.
Hmmmmmmm. VN always said that Lolita was his favorite character (and HH the most objectionable). If we're going the "morality" route -- after all, in "moral" terms _Moby-Dick_ glorifies the slaughter of an entire species; _Walden_ is rhetorical eco-terrorism, _Leaves of Grass_ just kinky, and _The Known World_, well... -- then the "moral" of the novel is that HH's greatest crime actually consists of denying Dolores her **humanity** by transmogrifying her into the verbal artefact Lolita. (VN's afterword "On A Book Entitled 'Lolita'" should be mandatory reading in any FreshEng class...)
And that "morality" then wouldn't make _Lolita_ all that different from _Beloved_ in a roundabout way, would it? Remember, for instance, Schoolteacher? Surely a distant New World cousin of HH!
And one more connection to _Beloved_, if once again only an indirect one -- one of the (rhetorical) questions both books ask is: Does Evil go away if we simply ignore it long enough?
But your entry got me thinking: perhaps, just perhaps, and not necessarily in any "moral" terms, _Lolita_ is but one side of a (deceptively!) gilded coin on whose flip side we may catch a glimpse of, lo and behold, _Leaving Atlanta_...?
(Which would make a mighty fine reading list for a doctoral seminar, by the way: _Lolita_, _Leaving Atlanta_, _Beloved_ -- enough unsettling brain food to keep the aspiring young scholars giddy and confused for a semester, don't you think?)
Alas,T. -- but you should've known this particular bait would lure me out of my lair...!
-j.
September 24, 2005 04:53 PM