by Manuel Gonzales

Lolita Revisited

I wish there were something profound I could say, something which hasn't already been said, something creative, original, intelligent and insightful. But there's little to be said about the novel (and now, for the second time, a movie) about which so much has already been said. "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta." We can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. I can say this -- because of Lolita, I was unable to read the book I should have read for this issue (one which I will read and review next time); because of Lolita, I tossed and turned in my sleep at night, ate poorly, and wrote worse; because of Lolita, I've burned everything I've written -- my manuscripts, my copies and copies and copies of stories unfinished and now unfinish-able (well, not really, but I considered burning or at least throwing them away and I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with them now, anyway). You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style, but who could expect such a lyrical and comical and heartbreaking prose style from a Russian writing in his second, maybe even third language.

Say what you will about Lolita, that it is mere pornography, that it is a twisted and disgusting story, that it isn't a love story, but a depraved man's depraved fantasy. Say what you will about Humbert Humbert. He was a pervert. A nasty, terrible man who loved little girls, nymphets, who would abuse himself (mentally and physically) as he saw them in parks and playing on their school playgrounds. Who would sit on benches ecstatic as the little girls climbed and crawled over and around him looking for marbles or their dolls or their balls. Humbert Humbert, murderer who fell madly, passionately, horribly in love with Dolores Haze, aka Dolly, aka Lo, aka Lolita. Who ruined her childhood, pulled her with him from state to state, motel to motel, leading each of them further into the depths of hell. The story is terrible, horrible, horrifying. And yet -- you forget all this. Reading page after page, chapter after chapter. You forget. You are lost. Lost in Nabokov's words. Lost in the love story, lost in the mystery, lost in the scenery, the commentary (because this is no porn novel, not to be found in the erotica section of the bookstore, but literature, story, commentary, humor and passion), the passion, so much passion, from beginning to end, Humbert Humbert is in love.

Not only do you forget that you are reading the love story of a man in love with a twelve year old girl (a consummated romance, to be sure), Nabokov knows you have forgotten, will forget again, knows this and so reminds you, every so often, with a phrase a word a description, brings back reality, futility, depravity. He will let you slip into comfort, into the soft, smooth rhythm of his words, the warmth of Humbert's love for Lolita. But just as Humbert cannot stay forever with his Lolita, we cannot stay long in that comfort.

Nabokov developed a mastery of the English language that many native speaking writers (even the good ones) will never know, never understand. I do not understand. He wrote with a fluid and natural and easy and free style that I cannot understand, cannot fathom, cannot find in some of America's better writers, much less my own. This, aside from the story (the plot), aside from the drepavity, the love, the horror, the murder, aside from everything else, Nabokov's mastery of the English language, of writing, of words (his way with words, much like, I imagine, the horse whisperer's way with horses -- though I've not read the book nor seen the film) -- and not that he was a Russian, who spoke French (and I think German) and then English, all these after his native Russian, who had been writing and speaking and thinking in Russian, then French, for 41 years before moving the United States, not even because of this -- but that Nabokov, compared to all writers in English, wrote with such flair, with such style, with such ease (ease on the paper, on his canvas, though I'm sure he labored over his words -- mentally and or physically) -- that is what makes the novel great. And it is great. Probably the greatest love story ever written.