I enjoy Turner Classic Movies, and today I perused the schedule to see if there were any upcoming hidden gems. I noticed Lolita–the 1962 version directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring James Mason as Humbert Humbert and Sue Lyon as Lolita. Nabokov wrote the screenplay for this version. I prefer the 1997 version, directed by Adrian Lyne which features a suitably tortured Jeremy Irons as Humbert.
The Turner Movie Classic guide describes the 1962 film as being based on Nabokov’s “racy classic.” This choice of the word “racy” continues the myth that surrounds the book–something you’d think people would be over by now. I’ve read Lolita but never considered it ‘racy’ or ‘filthy’ or anything along those lines. In 1955, John Gordon, the editor of the Sunday Express called Lolita: “The filthiest book I’ve ever read.” Of course, it probably didn’t help that Nabokov, who’d been rejected by several American publishers finally published Lolita in France through Olympia Press which published erotic and avant-garde books. British customs seized all the copies coming into the country, and then the French banned it in 1956. Meanwhile Graham Greene championed the novel, and a battle raged between Gordon and Greene which eventually spilled out to question the morals of the British publisher, George Weidenfeld. The rather game British publisher, Weidenfeld and Nicholson (Sackville-West’s son) held up publication in Britain pending a possible change in the then-current pornography law, but the scandal of Lolita helped bury Nicholson’s political career. The film poster says it all–the heart-shaped sunglasses and the rather suggestive bright red lollipop. The 1962 film poster is quite different from the much more subtle 1997 poster which depicts Humbert Humbert (Irons) standing off in the background with Lolita reading in the foreground–seemingly unaware of the attention.
Nabokov initially planned to call his novel The Kingdom by the Sea, but it became Lolita, and the very name entered the English language as a term to describe a sexually precocious young girl. Nabokov is best remembered for this novel, and I suppose Lolita probably brings Nabokov readers, but is the opposite also true? Do people NOT read Nabokov because of Lolita? Lolita was the first Nabokov novel I read. I’ve read a few others since (not enough), so I suppose you could say that Lolita brought me to Nabokov. I was curious, and then again it was one of those books I’d always meant to get around to reading but hadn’t. I was curious too about D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a book that became the object of a famous obscenity trial. I didn’t enjoy reading about Mellors and his John Thomas, and to me Lady Chatterley’s Lover is a crap novel.
Anyway, this is a short post–just me thinking about Lolita. I’ve decided that I need to reread this novel again. 2010 will be a good year for it.
His Futile Preoccupations ..... 
I like the opening shots of the 1997 version, with Humbert driving in the car and the Ennio Morricone score, but I can’t remember much else about it. I’ve never seen the older film, but I’m going through a bit of a Kubrick phase at the moment, so I’m sure I’ll get around to it soon.
There’s an annotated edition of Lolita that might be worth checking out for your reread – it used to be available as a very elegant Penguin silver spine with a butterfly on the cover. Perhaps it still is?
It occurs to me that Lolita is one of those books that should be re-read. Rereadings can be so revealing–not just of the text but also revealing about ourselves and how our attitudes and beliefs have altered.
Every time I reread Jane Eyre, I get something different from it.
Thanks for the tip on the annotated edition. Will check it out.
Both the novel and the 1962 film (which I read in the original) actually blew my mind – my young hormones probably contributing a bit, but not exclusively.
After a few years I read Ada, another great novel by Nabokov. I am Italian mother-tongue. These two books, so cultivated, made my English progress a lot since they were HARD for me to read in those years. I toiled and read them carefully, word by word.
Now, frankly, I wish I had dedicated such effort to Joyce or to the The Cantos by Ezra Pound. Not that Nabokov is not a great author. He is. Plus I even more admire him because, as Russian mother-tongue, he succeeded in becoming a perfect English writer.
His vision of sex though is a bit twisted being clearly Christian-originated. Pre-Christian sex was much healthier. The Greco-Romans did unimaginable things compared to what you read in Lolita or Ada, but they did it with a spirit free from the pleasure-and-sin, virtue-and-vice trap.
This I’m trying to explain in my *My Sex and the city (of Rome)* series, the most successful of my blog – I wonder why – but also the less historically accurate, it being one of my first experiments.
Humbert is a twisted human being, and he even acknowledges he’s a pervert at one point. Can’t say the book did much to my hormones one way or another.
Have you seen the Jeremy Irons version?
No, I haven’t, but I’ll see it sooner or later. I’ll briefly fix some dose of guilty pleasure into my veins once more, why not, I’m no puritan. Is it a good movie btw? If it’s crap, I won’t see it.
Humbert is a twisted human being, and he even acknowledges …
Not only the character, it is the writer, Nabokov, to be twisted, as a reading of Ada can attest.
PS
Can’t say the book did much to my hormones
Much depends on the age, the person etc. I read Lolita and Ada in my 20s. Now at 61 I probably wouldn’t flinch, though one never knows.
I have read some of your beautifully written posts. You seem to delve into literature quite a lot. Intriguing, especially since you are able to recreate the atmosphere of a novel, which is pleasant to read. Thing is, I now tend to read mainly ancient classics – my retirement hobby is my blog mixing ancient and modern – and am even leaning towards the idea of brushing up my Latin and Greek – good for my research and inner peace, without a doubt, but daunting.
Nevertheless, I am preparing two long poems – one in Greek one in Latin – made of all the easiest and most beautiful sentences verses I can find, from any work (pagan & non pagan) written in those 2 languages. A good brushing up (or even a start) beginning from what is both simple and beautiful – the two things, classically, go in fact together.
I know I am digressing. I’m sorry. I’ll finish saying I experienced the effectiveness of the *natural language learning* as non-conscious acquisition. Massive input (reading) – I learned many languages in this way, with very little formal language education or grammar.
Good for you on the translations.
I haven’t read ADA (yet) so I can’t comment, I’m afraid, either way.
Re: the film–some people I’ve talked to disliked the Melanie Griffith portrayal of Lolita’s mother. I didn’t, but for me, I remember the film for its portrayal of Humbert. It’s all a matter of taste of course, but I really enjoyed this version. I think it’s well-worth watching.
So I will watch it.
Ada is a GREAT novel. Since I read it 35 years ago, I checked the wiki and following the links here and there I realised to my surprise that there is like a cult of this novel and that it is now considered his best and more complex work. There is even an Ada online, http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/. The scholar Alfred Appel in the New York Times book review said this novel is “further evidence Nabokov is a peer of Kafka, Proust and Joyce.” Which is a very exact thing to say, because it is clear you can find in Ada so much wandering like in Proust and bewitching things like a theory of time and a Geography of Antiterra etc. in ways not far from Joyce or Dante. You can check the weirdness of antiterra here: http://www.dezimmer.net/ReAda/AntiterraGeography.htm
Now I think I’ll have to reread Ada, unfortunately.
No translations. The 2 poems will be in the original.
I’ve got translations on the brain at the moment. Not sure when I’ll get around to Ada. I feel like rereading Lolita first.
I have only seen Kubricks Lolita – I don’t think I can fit another one in my brain.
When I first read Lolita as a college student, I found it absolutely hilarious. It is – Nabokov can be wickedly funny. I certainly didn’t find it racy, even then. I read it a few years ago and still found it funny, but also incredibly sad. This is part of Nabokov’s genius. [Tribute here: http://iamyouasheisme.wordpress.com/2007/11/12/stolen-light-pale-fire/%5D
Humber IS twisted, and he doesn’t know it, most of the time, despite his education and sophisticated mind. That’s the humor and the irony. There’s no question in the novel at all that he is a child rapist – Lolita says it. The Kubrick film fudges a lot of that for multiple reasons.
Pale Fire reprises some of Lolita’s themes – the unreliable, mad narrator, the murder, misplaced love, grandiosity, etc. – but places it within a dizzying nest of self-referential stories.
Normally, I find that sort of stuff boring and tedious, like watching a Cameron film – Okay, you’re good with with CGI effects… – and even Italo Calvino, one of my heroes, falls flat with them at times, but Nabokov makes them poetic.
I read Ada, and have forgotten it, so I recommend Pale Fire strongly! Or Pnin (funny, very sad). Or Invitation to a Beheading (crazy!)