Lolita discussion

This is not a romance by any means.
and thats not me trying to sound woke like "this is toxic, dont list it as romance" but quite literally it was never intended to be a romance..

WHAT! Who said that?! Este libro definitivamente no va sobre un romance, que asco

I actually found it so disturbing that so many, especially young readers, read it like a forbidden lovestory.

i just know nabokov is rolling in his grave

I beg your indulgence for the long response, but I think it needs addressing in a somewhat long form for completeness.

The romance/love story misconception about Lolita has been around for a very long time, arguably since the day it came out. In large part, it's been amplified not just by readers, but by publishers, who have done things like put the quote:

“The only convincing love story of our Century” —Vanity Fair.

on the cover of the book. That quote is, however, taken out of context from the Vanity Fair article, which I'd argue isn't a substantially more astute reading of the book, because it's off doing it's own thing about "old Europe" and "young America" rather than addressing the core dynamics of the text, and remains from what I can tell still on the side of describing the relationship depicted as "love", but here it is in more context:

At one point a heated discussion arose over the possible interpretation of Lolita as a grandiose metaphor of the classic European’s hopeless love for a young, seductive, barbaric America. In his afterword to the novel Nabokov himself mentions this as the naïve theory of one of the publishers who turned the book down. And although there can’t be the slightest doubt that Nabokov did not mean to limit Lolita to that interpretation, there is no reason to exclude it as one of the novel’s many dimensions. The point, I felt, became obvious when one drew the line between Lolita as a delightfully frivolous story on the verge of pornography and Lolita as a literary masterpiece, the only convincing love story of our century. If one accepted it as the latter, there was no longer a question of whether to read it as “old Europe debauching young America” or as “young America debauching old Europe.” It simply stood as one of the great examples of passion in literature, a deeply touching story of unfulfillable longing, of suffering through love, love of such ardor that though it concentrated on its subject monomaniacally, it actually aimed beyond it, until it flowed back into the great Eros that had called it into being. Every passionate love can find its image in Humbert Humbert’s boundless love for Lolita, I said; why should it not also reflect the longing of us Europeans for the fulfillment of our childhood dreams about America? As for myself, that longing had become irresistible from the moment, in our translation, when we arrived at Lolita and Humbert’s crisscrossing of the United States. I vowed then that someday humble humble me would follow in their tracks.

Further, consider the conspicuously sexy covers publishers put on their editions. Personally, I find those covers even more problematic because that's an abject participation in the objectification, not just a misreading of a misreading of a personal take on the book.

I'd also suggest that in their casting, cinematography, interpretation and presentation, the adaptations in 1962 by Stanley Kubrick, and 1997 by Adrian Lyne further perpetuated the idea that Lolita was some sort of love story rather than the post-rationalization of a confessional crime novel that it really is.

There were interviews with Nabokov and Trilling in 1958 (I don't know if they're still on the book page for Lolita here on Goodreads, but they're not difficult to find with a little internet search) in which Trilling argues with Nabokov about the meaning of his own work. Now, sure, authors can and do sometimes change their tune after publication when considering things like their legacy or the shifting of publishing markets... but I don't think that's what's happening there, and Trilling's contributions to that discussion have a lot of cringe IMO.

So, this misconception has been around for a long time, and has been fostered by many means.

All that said (I continue to beg for your indulgence) I think there's something to be said for the content of the novel being easily confused by casual or even accomplished readers simply because of the rarity of the story. Nabokov is very accomplished as a writer, and his use of language is purposefully satirical, but in a way that is elegant enough that it bypasses the critical thinking skills of a lot of readers. That's not to bash those readers, btw; it's simply an acknowledgment that this is a text outside of their experience and as such is difficult to digest. Of course it's outside their experience--it's basically a unique piece of literature.


I'll conclude by pointing out that Lolita is also a subversive text meant to address what we should really acknowledge as a cultural phenomenon. That the term "Lolita" now effectively means a sexually precocious young girl making a conscious effort to seduce older men isn't a function of Nabokov's work, but the preconceptions and predilections of the culture into which it was introduced. Whether done out of bad faith or simple contrarianism, there's a real need for many people to take something like Lolita, or Apocalypse Now or The Matrix or the Bible, etc. and either obscure or actively redefine it for their own purposes. Misrepresenting and deconstructing words/terms isn't in and of itself a bad thing. See, for instance, how the LGBTQ+ community uses the word "queer" or how "bitch" went from slur to almost toothless, even prideful descriptor today. In the case of "Lolita" as a term, and Lolita as a text, I think we see that change being, at best, the perpetuation of some really terrible ideas. Whether that's been done knowingly or unwittingly, I'll leave up to you to decide for yourself.