Lolita
''Lolita'' is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first published in 1955. The novel is famous both for its innovative style and for its controversial subject. The novel's narrator and main character, Humbert Humbert, becomes sexually obsessed with a pubescent girl. ''Lolita'' is also the title of two film based on the novel; Nabokov was involved in the writing of the Lolita (1962 movie) by Stanley Kubrick. The name has also become a slang term for a sexually attractive or precocious young girl. For more about these non-literary meanings of the term, see the end of this article. ==Plot== A scholar, Humbert leaves Europe for the United States and moves into a rented room in the home of Charlotte Haze, after seeing her twelve-year-old daughter (Dolores Haze, affectionately shortened to Lo, or Lolita) sunbathing in the garden. Humbert, who has had a lifelong passion for "nymphets" (attractive pubescent girls) is instantly smitten, and will do anything to be near her. The elder Haze, a lonely widow, becomes Humbert's unwitting pawn in his silent quest to be near her young daughter. She and Humbert soon marry. Some time later, while searching Humbert's room, she finds his diary, containing written confessions of indifference to his new wife and impassioned lust for her daughter. She runs away in disgust and, in fleeing the home, is hit and killed by a passing car. Humbert begins traveling around the United States, from one motel to another, in the company of Lolita, with whom he is now having a sexual relationship. This relationship ends when a rival adult suitor, playwright Clare Quilty, convinces Lolita to leave Humbert and run away with him. At the end of the novel, Humbert briefly reunites with Lolita. He had intended to kill her husband, but on meeting him realises this is not the character Lo had been seeing during their travels years ago. He persuades Lo to reveal the name of the mystery man and she eventually does so. Humbert gives Lo $4,000, thus allowing her to go to Alaska with her husband. Humbert realizes that he still wants her: she is no longer one of those compelling young girls he refers to as "nymphets," but he has truly fallen in love with her. However, Lolita does not return his love telling him instead that the only person she has really loved was Quilty. After finding this out Humbert goes to track down Quilty and kill him. He dies in prison after dictating the story to his lawyer.
Lo will later die in Alaska while giving birth to a child who also dies. ==Style and interpretation== The novel is a tragicomedy narrated by Humbert, who riddles the narrative with his wry observations of American culture. His humor provides an effective counterpoint to the pathos of the tragic plot. The novel's flamboyant style is characterized by word play, multilingual puns, anagrams, and coinages such as ''nymphet'', a word which has since had a life of its own and can be found in most dictionaries. Humbert is a well-educated, multilingual, literary-minded European émigré, and his clever, humorous narrative style immediately endears him to the reader. Humbert is both lovable and reprehensible, and the combination of sympathy and repulsion that he evokes in the reader is at the core of the book's genius. Humbert fancies himself a great artist, but he lacks something that Nabokov himself characterizes as essential: curiosity. Humbert tells the story of a Lolita that he creates in his mind because he is unable and unwilling to actually listen to the girl and accept her on her own terms. In the words of Richard Rorty, from his famous interpretation of ''Lolita'' in ''Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity'', Humbert is a "monster of incuriosity". ==Publication and reception== Because of the subject matter, Nabokov had difficulty finding a publisher, eventually resorting to Olympia Press, a publisher of "erotica" in Paris, which published ''Lolita'' in 1955. A favorable notice by English author Graham Greene (writer) led to widespread critical admiration for the book, and its eventual U.S. publication on August 18, 1958, by G.P. Putnam's Sons. Today, it is considered by many one of the finest novels written in the 20th century. ==Literary allusions== *Humbert Humbert's first love, Annabel, is named after the woman in the poem "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe. In fact, their young love is described in phrases borrowed from Poe's poem. *Humbert Humbert's double name recalls Edgar Allan Poe's "William Wilson (short story)", a tale in which the main character is haunted by his doppelgänger, paralleling to the presence of Humbert's own doppelgänger, Clare Quilty. *In March 2004 the German researcher Michael Maar discovered a short story named "Lolita" published in Germany in 1916. It was written by a certain Heinz von Lichberg. While the plot of this story resembles the summarized plot of Nabokov's ''Lolita'', most scholars regard charges of plagiarism as completely overblown. ==Afterword== In 1956, Nabokov penned an afterword to ''Lolita'' ("On a Book Entitled Lolita") that was included in every subsequent edition of the book. In the afterword, Nabokov wrote that "the initial shiver of inspiration" for ''Lolita'' "was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage." Neither the article nor the drawing has been discovered; however, there has been some speculation that photographs by an ape could have been influential [http://www.juliar.com/wnr/fullContrib.php?cID=1]. In response to an American critic who characterized Lolita as the record of Nabokov's "love affair with the romantic novel", Nabokov wrote that "the substitution of 'English language' for 'romantic novel' would make this elegant formula more correct." Nabokov concluded the afterword with a reference to his beloved first language, which he abandoned as a writer once he moved to the United States in 1940: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian (language) tongue for a second-rate brand of English (language)." ==Influence== ''Lolita'' has been filmed twice: the Lolita (1962 movie) was made in 1962 by Stanley Kubrick, and starred James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers and, as Lolita, Sue Lyon; and in 1997 by Adrian Lyne, starring Jeremy Irons, Dominique Swain, and Melanie Griffith. Nabokov was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on the earlier film's adapted screenplay, although little of this work reached the screen. The term ''lolita'' has come to be used to refer to an adolescent girl considered to be very seductive, especially one younger than the age of consent. In the marketing of pornography, it has been used to refer to any attractive woman who has only recently reached, or is still younger than, the age of consent, or sometimes to refer to women who only appear to be younger than the age of consent. For this reason, it is especially worth noting that Nabokov's ''Lolita'' is far from an endorsement of pedophilia, since it dramatizes the tragic consequences of Humbert's obsession with the young heroine. Nabokov himself described Humbert as "a hateful person" (see Humbert Humbert). In ''Strong Opinions,'' Nabokov opines that he is "probably responsible" for parents not naming their children "Lolita" anymore. In the book itself, "Lolita" is specifically the name of the girl, and "nymphet" is the general term for the type of young girl to whom Humbert is attracted. However, commerce has preferred to use the girl's name, and to make "lolitas" attractive (in film adaptations and pornography) to a much wider audience than the small number of "nympholepts" (pedophiles) which Humbert Humbert believes to exist. This is despite the fact that, in the book, Dolores's mother describes the child's looks as plain at best. The case of Amy Fisher, whom in 1992 the press dubbed the "Long Island Lolita", helped popularize the term among a new generation. Screenwriter Alan Ball considered writing a play based on the Fisher case, but the story soon got away from him and mutated into the screenplay which became ''American Beauty (1999 movie)'' (1999 in film). The narrator, played by Kevin Spacey, falls for a teenage girl who is a "lolita" in the mainstream or pornographic sense but is too old to be a Nabokovian nymphet. His name, Lester Burnham, is an anagram of "Humbert learns"; the girl's name, Angela Hayes, is also a play on Dolores Haze. Thomas Pynchon's novel ''The Crying of Lot 49'' (1966 in literature) provides an early example of the modern "nymphet" usage entering the literary canon. Serge, a teenage rock singer, loses his girlfriend to a middle-aged lawyer whom he compares to Humbert Humbert. Pynchon was a student at Cornell University, where he may have audited Nabokov's Literature 312 class. Another early usage occurs in Kurt Vonnegut's ''God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater'' (1965), where "nymphet" describes Tawny Wainwright, a fourteen-year-old girl impregnated by her abusive stepfather. In the Woody Allen film ''Manhattan,'' when Mary discovers Isaac is dating a 17-year-old, she says, "Somewhere Nabokov is smiling." ''Lolita'' is the book referred to as "that book by Nabokov" in the song "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by The Police. ==See also== * Pedophilia * Ephebophilia * Lolicon ==References== * Appel, Alfred Jr. (1991). ''The Annotated Lolita'' (revised ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-72729-9. ::One of the best guides to the complexities of ''Lolita''. First published by McGraw-Hill in 1970. (Nabokov was able to comment on Appel's earliest annotations, creating a situation which Appel described as being like John Shade revising Charles Kinbote's comments on Shade's poem ''Pale Fire''. Oddly enough, this is exactly the situation Nabokov scholar Brian Boyd proposed to resolve the literary complexities of Nabokov's ''Pale Fire''.) * Nabokov, Vladimir (1955). ''Lolita''. New York: Vintage International. ISBN 0-679-72316-1. ::The original novel. * "[http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm Zembla]" ::A resource of the Arts & Humanities Library of the Pennsylvania State University Libraries, home of the International Vladimir Nabokov Society and its publication ''The Nabokovian''. 1955 books Banned books Controversial books Modern Library 100 best novels Sexuality and age Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita
==Humbert== Humbert is in his "middle ages"? "Debauched" murder? Somebody needs to revert Dabiel's revisions -- they have made the second paragraph even more confusing than before. User:Bds yahoo 16:29, 1 May 2004 (UTC) ==Rob Moore== Hi. I just extensively revised the entry on Lolita, to provide more details on the plot, and a brief history of its publication. This is my first Wikipedia entry, so please let me know if I'm doing anything terribly wrong. Ralph Robert (Rob) Moore SENTENCE at http://www.ralphrobertmoore.com robmary@swbell.net ==Links== I removed these on the theory that link collections add nothing to the article. We should probably add summaries (probably gathering information from the links below) rather than just adding the links. What do others think? --:Robert Merkel :I agree - they never contain anything that won't end up here as a matter of course. --MichaelTinkler ::Somebody has added them back again. I'm going to remove them again, and add a comment suggesting that the person that added them back, if they really think they belong, should discuss it here first. --:Robert Merkel Internet Movie Database links for the films:
* :http://us.imdb.com/Title?0056193 http://us.imdb.com/Title?0056193 * :http://us.imdb.com/Title?0119558 http://us.imdb.com/Title?0119558 :::I see no reason not to have imdb links in articles. (In fact, my biggest gripe with wikipedia is the overall dearth of relevant external links - but I digress.) In the case at hand, imdb will tell you at a glance that the first film is a masterpiece, while the remake is a big waste of celluloid. Value judgements like that don't belong in an encyclopedia, but I believe links to a collection of reviews that anyone can add to do. It's pertinent information, after all. User:Mkweise 07:18 Jan 26, 2003 (UTC) ::::Hum. Why is it important for people to "know" that the first version is superior to the second? First of all, a strong opposing case can be made. Kubrick threw out Nabokov's own script, remember, and even its fans complain about his putting the last scene first, while the remake was carefully modelled on Nabokov's own rejected screenplay. But that's not important. The point is, it's not our job as encyclopedists to be shaping the reader's taste. User:Bds yahoo 22:59, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC) ==Age== I deleted the following sentence from the article, as it is incorrect: It should be noted that in the film versions the girl was aged to 15 rather than left at the more shocking 12. The Kubrick film did age the character to 15, but the later version the girl was most definitely only portrayed as 12 or 13 (indeed, the actor playing Lolita was only 13 at the time of filming and great care had to be taken when filming to avoid the perception of the possibility of psychological harm to her). -- :Robert Merkel ---- I'm not so good with telling age, but do I remember hearing that the later one upped her age as well. I'm searching for documentation of this before I unilarterally change anything. Okay, I've found numerous sources that say her age was upped to 14, and they used a 19 year old body double in some scenes. Dominique swaine was born in 1980, which would make her roughly 15/16 at the end of filming in 1996. Every source I have found on the 'net for how old she was at filming was 15, though Steven Schiff the screenwriter admits they picked dominique because she could pass for 12-13. --alan d --- I just watched the 1997 film and at one point Lolita's age is specifically mentioned as being 14. Well one of the benefits of reading the book, is that youll know, Nabokov's 'Lo was only 12, ('on the cusp of womanhood' ), and in the movie version version her age was bumped up a bit, to avoid some controversy, and also for casting purposes, its far easier to cast for a fourteen year old, ( for such a risky role ) than for a 12-13 year old. Incidentally, I havent seen the movie.-User:Stevertigo :Please realize that, while Dolores Haze is 12 when she first casts her sunglassed eyes on Mr. Humbert, she ages throughout the course of the novel, becoming 14 and 15 and continuously less attractive, at least physically, to our charismatic pedophile. --User:Stephencelis =="Lolita-themed films"?== Is it really necessary -- or even proper -- to provide a list of "Lolita-themed" films? To me, that's like having a list of books about father-son relationships linked to the page on the ''Odyssey''. Unless a work shows signs of direct influence, I think it's irrelevant to an entry devoted to Nabokov's novel. User:Bds yahoo 23:04, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC) == Mentioning movies and slang early, Amy Fisher late == I've just made edits in which I included brief mentions of the movie and the use of ''lolita'' as a slang term in the lead section (above the Wikipedia:Table of contents). I'm a little concerned about the paragraph being removed, so let me explain: someone looking for the movies or the slang term may not bother scanning through the article once they see it's about the novel, especially if they've followed a link expecting such information (that was my first impulse, anyway). I also added a mention of Amy Fisher, the "Long Island Lolita" at the end of the article (just be thankful I didn't add ''that'' to the lead ;) and "standardized" the References section to be in line with Wikipedia:Cite your sources. As for the IMDb links issue, I urge interested parties to ''consider what would be most useful to Wikipedia readers''. I find myself opening up new browser windows all the time to look up movies in the IMDb. If the issue is one of website favoritism, lobby for a Wikipedia:ISBN type "linkfest" page for movies. - User:Dcljr 06:41, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC) I've created a Wikipedia:disambiguation page at Lolita (disambiguation) if someone would like to create stubs for the movies. - User:Dcljr 07:41, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC) == plain Dolores == I'm not very confident in the following: :''...in the book, Dolores' looks are described as plain at best.'' Humbert Humbert certainly falls for her, but his perceptions are skewed, so we can't really rely on that. Charlotte Haze does call her daughter "decidedly homely" and constantly derides Lo's "starlet" ambitions. However, Charlotte too has ulterior motives, and in her case, a vast quantity of stored resentment. Why trust her opinion either? When he purports to describe how his nympholepsy originated, Humbert describes his childhood love, Annabel Lee. He lists her physical attributes in a much less impassioned way than he describes Lolita; this catalogue can be considered a guide to Lolita's appearance in a more removed, photographic way than Humbert's usual ravings. (Remember, the two girls resemble each other closely in physical appearance: it is only as he grows familiar with Lolita's personality that Humbert recognizes differences.) Humbert reports several instances of teenage boys drooling over Lolita. Having once been one myself, I submit that even adolescent males have standards. Humbert usually impugns their attractiveness—the "pimply" soda jerk pops to mind—and at least once he mocks a young ogler staring at Lo's indrawn abdomen, "which I kissed five minutes later, Jack". One could argue that some of these admirers are products of Humbert's feverishly jealous imagination, but to me, that doesn't cover the whole story. First of all, Humbert's fantasies are generally vacuous and rather teenage themselves—consider his vision of Lo spread-eagled on their hotel bed, felled by his magic sleeping pills, especially compared to the "reality" he sees a few pages later. Saying that H.H. invented ''all'' of Lo's admirers ''and gave them all the details which the narrative provides'' is at odds with his character. (Remember Yoda's Law of Revisionism: "Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.") Brian Boyd goes into this sort of logic in [http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/boyd1.htm this essay]. Putting the soda jerks and ski-lift operators aside, we still have the matter of Clare Quilty's blatant attraction. Remember, he has his pick of ladyfriends, small and large alike. (His favourite mistress, of course, is the enigmatic Vivian Darkbloom.) He chooses Lolita and goes to great lengths to achieve her, most of the work going into getting her away from Humbert. Sure, he has his odd traits too, but his desires overlap the mainstream a trifle more than Humbert's do. To paraphrase H.H., Quilty hunts for Eve as well as Lilith. If ''he'' likes Lolita, well. . . . Finally, if Lo's looks are as bad as Charlotte indicates, I have to say that both Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne made some terrible casting choices. User:Anville 12:33, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC) :Boys have standards, but, still, a young girl really doesn't have to be an oil painting to get a great deal of attention from the opposite sex. I'm not saying Dolores was a total dog or anything; it's just that Humbert's love/obsession was not motivated by any fabulous looks but rather by the special something that Lola had. He also states at the beginning that the "nymphets" he generally desires are not necessarily conventionally beautiful. Charlotte's comments confirm that the girl was in this category of nymphets who are neither ugly nor gorgeous, but merely alluring. :Directors and others who have depicted Lolita over the years have all succumbed to commercial pressures that require the female lead to be highly attractive, with beauties such as Natalie Hershlag being offered the role, despite the fact that they are obviously inappropriate if an accurate adaptation of the book is desired. User:Chameleon 14:19, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC) == Pynchon song == I've removed the doggerel that Pynchon has Serge sing. It's mildly interesting, but of very peripheral concern to most people interested in ''Lolita'', and also I get the impression that copyright holders take a very dim view of quotations of verse. -- User:Hoary 08:05, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC) And now I see it has been replaced, with an edit comment that it shows the influence of the book. Indeed it does, but does it have to be quoted in full? And how about the copyright issue? -- User:Hoary 14:22, 2005 Mar 27 (UTC) :It seems to me, too, that it would be better with the Pynchon item removed. --User:Daniel11 09:09, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC) The same text is on The Crying of Lot 49, so it's at best redundant. -User:Pyrop User talk:Pyrop 20:44, May 24, 2005 (UTC) :And therefore I've removed it again. If anyone wants to put it back in, please explain the reasoning for doing so. -- User:Hoary 01:59, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC) =="Quotes"== Somebody put in gobbets from the novel in a new section, "Quotes". ''Lolita'' is not GFDL. "Fair use", as I understand the term, allows the small quotations in order to back up or illustrate points being made in critical or academic works. It doesn't cover long quotations about which no remarks are made. -- User:Hoary 02:02, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)
Lolita
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