Subject
Teaching Lolita
From
Date
Body
In regard to Lewis' remarks, I can only imagine what it would be like to
confront most of the college students I have taught in the past few
years
with Lolita. The one critical faculty most of them come prepared to
wield
is the judgement of characters - and boy do they wield it. It is a
faculty they are as likely to have picked up from Jerry Springer as
their
high school teachers. Thus, I learned from my students, Oedipus Rex is
merely a squalid tale of incest in which Oedipus "could have made
different choices."
Despite all the talk of ours being an age of irony, my students are
unable
to comprehend the cosmic ironies of tragedy or the self-assailing irony
of
a George Orwell in "Shooting an Elephant," which they regularly view as
Orwell bragging about shooting a poor elephant. It is little wonder
that
they can't laugh with Humbert Humbert. Part of this, I will grant, is
poor reading skills. Part of it is something that seems a great deal
harder to remedy: moralism without empathy.
Francine Prose wrote a good essay about 5 years ago for Harper's called
(I
believe) "I know why the caged bird can't read," which I recommend to
anybody else who has noticed this depressing trend. (I sound like I'm
blaming the students, for example, and to her credit she doesn't).
Vic Perry
[EDNOTE. I have taught Lolita to college students off and on for over
twenty years now, and have found that my current students not only miss
the black humor but are also less likely to find Humbert even the least
bit sympathetic, which makes their experience of the novel quite, quite
different than mine. -- SES]
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confront most of the college students I have taught in the past few
years
with Lolita. The one critical faculty most of them come prepared to
wield
is the judgement of characters - and boy do they wield it. It is a
faculty they are as likely to have picked up from Jerry Springer as
their
high school teachers. Thus, I learned from my students, Oedipus Rex is
merely a squalid tale of incest in which Oedipus "could have made
different choices."
Despite all the talk of ours being an age of irony, my students are
unable
to comprehend the cosmic ironies of tragedy or the self-assailing irony
of
a George Orwell in "Shooting an Elephant," which they regularly view as
Orwell bragging about shooting a poor elephant. It is little wonder
that
they can't laugh with Humbert Humbert. Part of this, I will grant, is
poor reading skills. Part of it is something that seems a great deal
harder to remedy: moralism without empathy.
Francine Prose wrote a good essay about 5 years ago for Harper's called
(I
believe) "I know why the caged bird can't read," which I recommend to
anybody else who has noticed this depressing trend. (I sound like I'm
blaming the students, for example, and to her credit she doesn't).
Vic Perry
[EDNOTE. I have taught Lolita to college students off and on for over
twenty years now, and have found that my current students not only miss
the black humor but are also less likely to find Humbert even the least
bit sympathetic, which makes their experience of the novel quite, quite
different than mine. -- SES]
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm