September 23, 2013

Issue: "obvious" fiction vs. the assumption that this is all true

"When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions and so forth, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past. I am convinced, however, that in a certain magic and fateful way Lolita began with Annabel" (13-14).

Everyone's past is complex and we necessarily approach it from the present; in this Humbert is not wrong, he is merely as unable as the rest of us to mine every piece of our previous lives out of our minds.  It does not mean that what he, Humbert, recounts of his memories for our reading is necessarily false (ignoring for a moment his fictitious nature).  However, when he says, "Lolita began with Annabel," it could mean his desire, passion, for Lolita began with Annabel, but it might also mean that this story, "Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male," began in another story, "Annabel"(3).         

"Actually, she was at least in her late twenties (I never established her exact age for even her passport lied) and had mislaid her virginity under circumstances that changed with her reminiscent moods" (25).

In this passage, the parenthetical discovery of a lie, told by a passport (Valeria's) an object, of which we expect indefatigable scrupulousness, constructs a "reality;" however, this reputed "reality" is established, paradoxically, by a negation of truth.  Furthermore, the changing circumstances surrounding the loss of her, Valeria's, virginity reiterates the "maddeningly complex prospect of [the] past" (13).  

"In looking through the latter volume, I was treated last night to one of those dazzling coincidences that logicians loathe and poets love. I transcribe most of the page:..." (31).

While the tense shifts constantly between past and non-past in Book One, these moments when Humbert writes declaratively directly to the audience from the present (incarcerated) moment of his "actual" writing of this text helps to lend the rest of his story credence.  Coincidence as well is interesting here, because, for one thing, coincidences (or the perception of such phenomena) are mystifying, yet somehow enhance one's experience of "reality;" additionally, it might be said by one strictly speaking, that fiction (literary invention, not, perforce, perjury) and truth (veracity, non-fiction, cogency, etc.) are coinciding in this passage and in the book generally.