Lolita

I have just finished reading Lolita for the very first time. I am glad that I waited so long to read it. Even Nabokov, through the voice of Humbert, suggests that it not be read until after the year 2000. I would not have appreciated it until now. Before I leave off and move on to Tehran, a few thoughts. Very conveniently, Mr. Nabokov deposited a few words at the end of the book in the form of an essay entitled, “On a Book Entitled Lolita. This was very helpful I might add in giving additional insight into the story. Nabokov states in this thesis that, “‘Teachers of Literature are apt to think up such problems as ‘what is the author’s purpose?’ or still worse ‘what is this guy trying to say?’” Nabokov answers by saying that he is the kind of author that having stared a book completes it for no other reason than to get rid of it. One might just as well wonder what the purpose was behind the Mona Lisa. Just what was Leonardo thinking?

Some may have expected Lolita to be a lewd book .It is not. Nabokov goes on to say that there are three taboos that most American publishers were concerned with in 1955. There is the one that Lolita was concerned about and the other two: A negro-white marriage with lots of children that is a happy success; and the atheist that lives a long, happy and useful life. Lolita is a work of fiction that exists for the sole purpose of eliciting a state of “aesthetic bliss”. In this regard it succeeds admirably.

Before leaving the topic of Nabokov, I want to touch slightly on the controversy surrounding the last manuscript that he wrote. “Laura” has been languishing in a Swiss Bank vault lo these many years. Nabokov left clear instructions that it was to be burned upon his death. I am grateful that "Laura" will be published. We might take a cue from Nabokov himself as to whether the manuscript should have been burned or not. Writing in an essay on the short story "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka, Nabokov relays that Kafka asked his friend, Max Brod, upon his death, "to burn everything he had written, even published material." "Fortunately, Nabokov goes on to say, "Brod did not comply with his wishes." I think we can call upon the same fortune that the family did not destroy the manuscript of "Laura."