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.    

September 18, 2013

Humbert Humbert's father, his "mon cher petit papa, took me out boating and biking, taught me to swim and drive and water-ski, read to me Don Quixote and Les Misérables, and I adored and respected him and felt glad for him whenever I overheard the servants discuss his various lady-friends, beautiful and kind beings who made much of me and cooed and shed precious tears over my cheerful motherlessness" (10-11).  The father, apparently, played an active role in his son's childhood, was a good father; spent time with his son, bonded with him, as one would hope for a single father.  The books he read to Humbert were romantic, adventurous stories of love, and good chivalric, principled love at that; that being said, both romances are idealized and unreal.  Additionally, the "various lady-friends," while ambiguously stated, suggests that the father did not have the same sort of dedication to one lover like either the Don or Marius.  This fact might have influenced Humbert's love life, insofar as his own relationships with women (mature, or of a certain, socially acceptable age) never mature in their own right.  Humbert's "cheerful motherlessness" is a rather odd expression– it could be, that sense his mother died when he was so young, combined with the strong presence and camaraderie showed by his father, Humbert did not grieve heavily for the loss.  At the same time, however, it is somewhat bewildering to imagine that his lacking a mother resulted in cheerfulness– perhaps this almost oxymoronic dynamic is evidence for Humbert's perversion, for lack of a better word.                  

September 16, 2013

The fraudulent foreword and the opening chapters of the novel (memoir) are the legend on the map of this “reality.”  John Ray, Jr., Ph.D. is clearly Nabokov (even without reading his note at the end); the purpose of this foreword would seem to be then, a device for culling authenticity– the man is a Ph.D., mind you.  This book, like several of Daniel Defoe’s works- e.g. Robinson Crusoe (alluded to in The Enchanter) and Roxana (also in several of Borges' stories do we find invented scholars expound on esoteric, erudite subjects e.g. "Three Versions of Judas")  attempts to render what is, in “reality,” fiction, as “reality:” which is, oddly (or perhaps not), almost tautological.

The naturalistic endeavor, blended with Nabokov’s quite literary style– which is seemingly clumsily accounted for by Humbert’s literary education– causes some tension within the reader.  Normally, generally, one suspends disbelief in order to read and immerse oneself in the unreal real world of a text, but with Lolita, we stop short of this suspension and are asked, by the author ( Nabokov/Humbert), to believe in the (obvious?) fiction.      

September 9, 2013

When our man tells us that he is “a pickpocket, not a burglar” (for both are thieves) and then invokes Defoe, he is performing the time-honored Jesuit tradition of casuistic moral argument (4).  The eponymous character of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe enslaves a native islander, whom he (re)christens- Friday; our enchanter, from his position in history, has learned from his society that child molestation (slavery for Crusoe) is wrong, but on a secluded island, where no society, and hence no laws of men abide, his taking of a young girl, (equal to Crusoe’s enslaving Friday) seems a mere trifle compared to a starved desire (body). To suggest that a sandy scenery for “this”/ “it” could positively, morally (based on contemporary social conventions), affect the enchanter's “coming to terms” is indicative of the man's delusional thought-patterns (3).

The enchanter is quite right when he says the island would be “but a license to grow savage” (4).  For, he does give up his “absolutely invisible method” in exchange for the fateful opportunity at the heart of this novella (4).  However, the remark about the “vicious [circle], with a palm tree at its center” might suggest a moment of lucidity: the enchanter realizes his tangential position on the circle, ineffectual and barred from the arboreal (and Edenic) center.               

August 28, 2013

By way of the transcripts of the interviews, if that is indeed an accurate term in this case, (more like a chess game played via post) Nabokov comes across certainly as intelligent and linguistically gifted; however, he seems also self-possessed, opinionated as well as stubborn (though, I think, these are not uncommon attributes among writers).  That said, I do applaud his ability to communicate coherently and gracefully in an unnatural language: I thought too, as a matter of course, of Joseph Conrad, for whom English was a third language, and who also had the extraordinary ability to arrange words in clever and colorful ways.  Furthermore, his techniques for approaching the physical act of writing are interesting and, I think, widely applicable and valuable tools from which one might learn.