It's at this point--when all of the plot is on the brink of annihilation--that we have to consider the role of John Ray's Foreword in text: it serves as a stay against the kind of existential erosion that RSG is describing. Some critics have suggested that John Ray might well be part of the deception, that he might simply be another mask for HH, but I'm not convinced by this reading. I outline why in my paper in Miranda.
I recently saw a video clip in which Nabokov, Lionel Trilling and an interviewer were discussing the book's controversial subject. That is, they were discussing, or maybe dancing around, the basic allegation that the criminal interest in young girls belongs to the author and not the character. It seemed to me that Nabokov didn't defend himself very convincingly (although he does suggest that the murder of CQ is unequivocal, a basic fact of the plot). But like many, I see the book itself as its own best defense. For one thing, I find it difficult to imagine that an actual pedophile would be able to lampoon his obsession so scathingly, even hilariously. My sense is that an actual pedophile would be utterly humorless about his fantasies.In fact, this is part of the problem with The Enchanter, the ur-Lolita text. Yes, it's a very rough draft, but it's a thoroughgoing failure. If Nabokov had left us only this work, then I think his antagonists might have a case. But then again, in that event, none of this would be worth talking about.Lolita is "about" much more than pedophilia, obviously: it's a meditation on reality, art, and time, and in terms of artistic design, it is nearly peerless. The book does require us to attend to its moral dimensions, yes. It seems to raise the questions, is Humbert rehabilitated by the novel's end? Is it possible for him to love Lolita authentically, as an autonomous other? The pathos of the book derives from the asking of these questions. The genius of the book lies, at least partly, in its refusal to answer them.The link to the interview clips: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2012/02/vladimir-nabokov-and-lionel-trilling-discuss-lolita.htmlBruce
Date: Wed, 29 Feb 2012 23:38:18 -0500
From: Rsgwynn1@CS.COM
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Fw: [NABOKV-L] Nabokov and Twelve-Year-Old Girls ...
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
"I failed to mention that Humbert Humbert's "Quilty" may be a figment of his imagination, one which he creates to represent in his eyes (as characters are usually able to think, imagine, hallucinate...) his sensation of being chased by "a fiend". Nabokov is not the repulsive Quilty, as I seemed to have implied, but he is certainly HH's fiend (rather unlike the corrupt evil Clare Quilty of HH's hallucinations)."
RSGwynn: If one accepts that CQ may be merely a figment of HH's imagination, why not go whole hog and assume that all of the events of the novel, which we know only from the pov of the perhaps less than reliable first-person narrator, are part of the delusion? Why not just assume that Lolita herself is the hallucination of a mad pedophile? There's no way to disprove this theoretical reading, of course, just as there is no way to "prove" that HH has some kind of "reality," given the usual conventions of the novel. I think of Krug in BS in this regard, who the author ("VN") constantly reminds us is nothing more that a fictional character subject to the god-like author's "whims and megrims." But Lolita, as a first-person narrative, does not allow this degree of authorial intrusion (though surely it is there, in a subtler way); we are stuck with Humbert's version of events, unreliable or not, though we do know that he "confesses" his absolute inability to know Lo's mind. My feeling is that we should trust (more or less) the "truth" of his confession. If we believe that his narration is no more than an inventive trope, a mere literary conceit orchestrated by VN, then the whole novel dissolves into the irrelevance of a madman's fantasy life and an author's playing tricks on us that we have failed to comprehend.
RSG
All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.