Why My Blog is Called "Lo-Lee-Ta"

Hello again, for the third time!

I hope everyone has been enjoying their books lately. Lately, I've been wondering about the origins of Lolita, and how it affected the public when it was first published. Through some research, I learned a few interesting tidbits about Lolita's origin and why it is considered a book of literary merit, highly praised, extremely controversial, and an American literary classic.

American publicists were weary of Lolita's content, and every publisher turned Nabokov away. Desperate for a publisher, Nabokov finally found a willing publisher in Paris. (Olympia Press, which was commonly known for publishing "pornographic pulp novels". Yikes.) "Despite the French publisher, the novel was banned in France in 1955. It was banned in Australia the same year, and was heatedly discussed in British Parliament as well, after Graham Greene named it one of the best novels of the year. A copy was detained by Customs in Sydney in 1957, a year before the book was published in New York." (Lay, Amy)

The novel's prohibition wasn't uplifted until it was brought back into the public eye in 1964, when an American Literature professor in Australia, named Dr Bob Brissenden, requested to use Lolita in his classroom. Again, there was a resurgence in publicity for Lolita, but Brissenden was eventually denied access to the novel. However, In 1965, the ban was finally lifted from Lolita, and it was free to be imported into the countries in which it was initially banned. 

You might be asking yourself, "Why all this, for a book about a pedophile"? Trust me, I'm right there with you. However, I have a couple ideas as to why Lolita is now considered as a highly recognized novel of literary merit. 

Lolita features some of the most confusing babble I've ever read. Humbert Humbert is a delusional man, corrupted by his love affair for young nymphet girls. Humbert, as a narrator, is extremely expressive and skillful in his intentions within his writing. He never comes out and says "Lolita and I had sex", but, instead, "There would have been a fire opal dissolving within a ripple-ringed pool, a last throb, a last dap of color, stinging red, smarting pink, a sigh, a wincing child." (135) This shows how must thought Nabokov went into describing such graphic scenes, in a n elegant yet disturbing way. 

This dodging of what's really going on solidifies the distance Humbert has from his reader, and the distance he tries to provide himself by separating himself from his own actions. Often, when discussing matters that involve himself, he regards himself as a character, looking in  and the actions he commits, almost becoming an omniscient narrator, but only able to hear his own thoughts. He knows what he is doing is wrong, but by separating himself and observing it as a third person really presents the novel in a unique way. Slowly, you notice Humbert going insane. 

The book is the first of it's kind, in its entirety. The way Nabokov wrote the novel is incredibly elegant, while alluding to so many horrible things that happen, like the extremely graphic death of Charolette, and his affair with his beloved Lolita. Nabokov's style can be summed up by the first chapter of the novel. It's simply one paragraph, but, as Mrs. LaClair taught us, the first paragraph of a novel is the most important, and sets the tone for the whole book. 

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. 

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. 

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. 

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns."

I mean, come on... that's some pretty elegant writing right there. (Lo-lee-ta, now you get the name of my blog!) All jokes aside, Nabokov's writing is really beautiful, and unlike anything I've ever read before. His speech, word choice, and rhythm are what really make Lolita a work of literary merit. I touched on my thoughts about Nabokov's style and how that affected me in the beginning in my first blog post, so feel free to go and read that if you so choose! 

I hope the excerpt of the first paragraph gave you a taste to what Lolita is all about. Humbert makes you question everything, laugh when you should cry, and ultimately make you feel like your going insane. I don't know if my other classmates have felt this way about Nabokov's writing, but once I finish reading a long section, I feel trapped in Humbert's mind, thinking like he would. His style and point of view really help the reader to understand Humbert's character from the inside out, and what of a disastrous and hopeless romantic he is. 

Lay, Amy. “Lolita | Banned.” Banned, blog.naa.gov.au/banned/2013/10/09/lolita/.