Sometimes, you don’t just come across a book as much as it’s thrown your way in disgust and beauty and intrigue, and every time it comes close, you step to the side and let it bounce on by for the next person to deal with. I don’t know if it was lack of time or desire that made me shrug off Lolita. I would say the sketchy subject matter scared me away, but I’m far from the type to shy away from heavy subject matter, and even less the type to give up on a story because of a revolting narrator.
Let me come clean.
I didn’t just happen upon this in a book store. I wasn’t lead by a friend or colleague in the natural sense that most people find their next novel. I was directed to Lolita by none other than Pewdiepie, in one of those rare book club videos. Yup, that’s right, folks. I’m a nine-year-old. Fight me. (But don’t, seriously, because I am but a weak almost 30 year old who doesn’t know how to fight and conflict makes me feel icky.)
The point is I knew Lolita existed, but I never cared enough to read it. And now, after the last page, I wish I had read it sooner. Or if not sooner, I wish I had read it with a group so I could talk about it with someone and hear other’s thoughts about it as a whole. And since my book club doesn’t read the same book, I’m just here shouting to the void about this.
That’s you.
You’re the void.
Love you 😉
I’m getting off track, and I’m not even sure if I was on track to begin with.
I think the one thing I said
to every person I told about this book is that it is one of the most horrible
things I’ve ever read, but it’s written in such a way that it’s beautiful. It’s poetic.
The words flow like a sick, twisted lullaby.
It’s a sick man’s love story, in a sick way.
The narrator, “Humbert Humbert,” is as unreliable as they come, but damn does he weave some attractive lies. Every bit of it is poetic. He refuses to curse in the majority of the book, and I find it…oh, not ironic, but…odd, given the atrocious things he does to Delores. He’ll touch little kids, but Lord forbid he say anything about blowjobs. Aristocratic. That’s a good word to describe him. Snobbish. That’s another one. Narcissistic. That’s even better yet. He’s full of himself, but the way he words his thoughts makes him likeable.
The reader really gets a sense of who the main character is, and even if he writes under an alias, he is unapologetically himself. It makes him feel real, you know what I’m saying? He doesn’t feel like some throwaway character for plot’s sake. H. Humbert is a real, living, breathing person, and how well he is written is both captivating and terrifying.
I. Loved. This. Book.
So, the unreliability. Let’s touch on that.
H. Humbert is a lot of things, but humble is not one of them. He is supposedly a good-looking man, and knows as much. Women fall at his feet everywhere he goes. Especially women who are well out of his league, him being the better off, of course. And Delores, his dear Lolita, hoo-boy. He was a hot knife, and she was butter (you like that comparison?). She was a squeaky door, and he was a can of WD-40 (yeah that’s right they get worse). He’s a cunning, sly man who has everyone playing in the palm of his hand.
Or is he?
Humbert’s first wife cheated on him with another man, likely because of his superiority complex (and the whole slapping her around thing). His second wife, while enamored with his looks, inevitably saw him for who he was, and things fell apart from there. I’m not saying that he’s not a looker. I’m just saying maybe he’s not as smooth as he thinks he is. His version of his attractive self isn’t necessarily the version that everyone else sees. As for Delores, he has the reader believing that she is just as in love with him as ever, that is, up until the end, where it’s revealed that perhaps he took advantage of her more often than not. He admits to feeling bad about this, but he would go to embrace her and attempt to right all his wrongs, but soon enough he’d be right back at it again whether she wanted to or not.
That’s rape, folks, and not just the statutory kind.
The final point I’ll leave up in the air, mainly because I don’t want to give anything major away. All I’ll say about it is not everyone is quite who they seem, and honestly, the brute isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.
But damn, if it isn’t a fun ride along the way.
All in all, Lolita is about a bad man who does some bad things, but he does them oh so good. It’s a terrible subject matter, but it’s written in such a way that is tasteful. If you’re looking for graphic sex scenes, first of all, that’s gross she’s like a baby, and second of all, this isn’t the book for you. If you’re looking for an in-depth character analysis on how fucked up a guy can get, and a glimpse of how the mind of a pedophile works, you came to the right bookstore, sir.
Ugh, that’s the thing, though, isn’t it? It’s a messed up book, and we aren’t supposed to like those things because apparently that, in turn, makes us messed up, yeah? A sort of promotion of bad things. Yeah?
Fuck that.
That’s the beauty of fiction. Hell, that’s the beauty of art in general. We read books about pedophiles. We watch movies with graphic violence. We purchase art of…asdfghjk; insert vile act here, am I right? And that’s the thing of it. It’s fake. It’s make-believe. It exists, but it also doesn’t exist. You feel me on that? Just because I couldn’t put that book down doesn’t mean in any way shape or form that I think what the character did was okay or justified or anything of the sort. Just because you watched all the sexy/rape-y glory of Game of Thrones doesn’t mean you think any of it was an alright thing to do. And hey, just because that basic bitch loved Fifty Shades doesn’t mean she’s an advocate for…what…sexual abuse or some shit? It doesn’t. That’s art, folks. If it’s not making you uncomfortable, what’s the point?
And now, I turn it over to you, the void in which I scream into. What’s the most fucked-up, depraved thing you’ve ever read or watched?
Manda Kay Writes 