/lit/ - Literature

>>10770160
They had the balls to say what everyone else was thinking.

>>10770160
all men are rapists

>>10770160
It’s an elaborate fedora-tip. Move along.

>>10770185
are you implying Lolita didnt want the d

>>10770160

I suppose it makes sense that a magazine called 'Vanity Fair' considers legitimate love to be a virulent and ultimately self-nullifying, destructive thing to be quite literally enjoyed to death.

>>10770160
I don't get the hype, I feel like it's average at best with only some rare glimpses of excellent prose.

>>10770189
>believing anything Humbert says

>>10770204
You could copy and paste this onto any book review and it would make sense be original, come up with real criticism.

>>10770210

>The pedophile is an unreliable narrator!

Well no shit. But still how does this imply she didn't want the d anyway?

Reminder that jews are and always have been the main promoters of pedophilia. Regarding the publication of Lolita:

>via his translator Doussia Ergaz, it reached Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press, "three-quarters of [whose] list was pornographic trash".
>Girodias was born Maurice Kahane in Paris, France ... His father was Jewish.

>>10770204
wow guys we have a real lit critic here

>>10770242
He mentions she began to weep inconsolably after they had sex for the first time, and she thought he was out of earshot. It's heavily implied that she really didn't know what she was doing.

>>10770238
It feels dry I guess. I like reading/discovering character through dialog or action and getting a seen of them through metaphor or other indirect avenues. When describing events or people, Humbert seems so bland and on-the-nose. I'm often impressed by how he shortly gets across actions or small habits that I always thought would be hard to describe in prose, but he does so in such a report-like way. The accuracy of language there is impressive, the emotional or artistic impact not so much. The prose is very technically sound, but feels very lacking in it's ability to immediately convey feeling or being. I also feel like there's not much character to sift through here besides questioning Humbert's unreliable accounts of their relationship.

I wanted to like it, and at many moments Nabokov's technical perfect in his description of environment wowed me, but overall I feel like I didn't get much from it.

>>10770289
I agree with a lot of that, something definitely feels a little off. I always chalked it up to English being his second language.

>>10770242
Her real name, which Humbert never uses, literally means pain or sorrow. He's willfully ignoring the pain he's causing her when it would be obvious to anyone else.

that book is not even close to being considered a love story, what the hell is wrong with these people?

I don't even fucking know. It's a story told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator desperate to show off that his pedophilia was totally consensual and okay. The writing is great but anyone who thinks it's a real love story is missing the point. Humbert in his "memoir" is the basically doing the same as modern pedophiles who groom and abuse and then say shit like "well, she approached me!" and try to rationalize and justify their disgusting acts. Not a fucking love story...

>>10770404

I'd say "nothing" is wrong with people in the sense that their own relationships are probably very similar to Dolores' and they probably don't know what it's like to have actual companionship. For lack of a better reference frame, this is love for many. Just look at your normie friends and how they probably confide in friends more than in partners, hide things, feel imprisoned inside relationships, etc. Lolita is genius because it not only shows the POV of an abuser but also allows you to put women (and perhaps even men) of just about any age in the place of Dolores, with the same outcome (because it's all about the abuser ofc).

>>10770398
Dolores isn’t even really her name either, though. Humbert invented it, as he did his own name, to “protect” their real identities. He explains this in the afterword, I believe. So he’s cognizant of her suffering since he gave her that name. He still probably makes warps the truth to justify his behavior, though.

>>10770428
not everything is abuse

>>10770248
maybe Hitler was right all along

>>10770248
Why are you on a literature discussion board if you don't read?

>>10770441

Perhaps, but most of what Humbert does is, and it's also most of what goes on in an exceedingly high number of relationships, even among adults of similar age.

Also, the key point which makes Humbert more unreliable than anything is that he is utterly incapable of conveying an unaltered version of Dolores' own account, of any situation at all. This is a glaring sign of lack of communication (that in this case is probably harder due to age difference, but happens very commonly in any couple), which is not the only cause of, but invariably leads to abuse in one form or the other. He is not only very willing, but also probably unable to understand her pain. With different people this could have put the woman in the place of abuser, say in a teacher-student relationship.

>>10770439
Good point, I had forgotten about that

>>10770242
she was fucking 12

>>10770489
idk what definition of abuse you're using here but it sounds like you think being a dick is abuse

>>10770549
Wouldn't that make her a pedo and Humbert a cuck?

>>10770549
Your point being?

>>10770189
I cannot fathom how someone could read Lolita and come to this conclusion

>>10770289
>emotional or artistic impact not so much
>I wanted to like it
No, you didn't. You wanted to find what was wrong with it so you could be contrarian.

>>10770160
They misunderstood the book. Typical of a women's magazine

>>10770160
that it's realistic and thorugh.

>>10770549
Well no, he was fucking 12.

>>10770204
>average at best
>>>/sci/

>>10770249
Notice how people say this only when the critique is negative? kek

>>10770289
is this bait

>>10770398
Lola and Lolita are also dimunitives of Dolores (like Billy-William) in Spanish. The point is that he's always calling it that, but he downplays her pain in favor of his pleasure, by calling by the diminutive. "In my arms she was always Lolita". It's fucked-up.

>>10773251
kek

>>10772430

Pedophiles maybe?

>>10770583

I used to date a girl who was older than me (I was about 21 and she was about 27), but she was passive as fuck and basically put herself in a position to be exploited at every possible opportunity. She was a tomboy and acted like something right out of effusive French cinema, always daydreaming about things and completely oblivious to worldly responsibilities. She did not really want to be with me (or with any *man*, taking years to finally get out of the closet), cried about it a lot (but also warmed up to me sometimes, out of Stockholm syndrome perhaps) and I wanted it so bad that I more or less forced her into it for years. In the end we were just fighting and wasting curses on each other so I just left and eliminated all ways of me possibly communicating with her again.

Now none of this happened in a brutish way where it was clear that I was being evil. In fact my friends actually tried to blame her at first for "being a bitch who kept me around for attention while she was a lesbian all along". I was and am the good guy who can talk to anyone and always does his best to help others. But I knew all along she was in doubt of herself, that it had nothing to do with me, and I was just exploiting her vulnerabilities instead of stepping back and allowing her own thoughts to flourish without my input.

This is nothing about being a dick, people are hardly dicks at first in abusive relations. It's about manipulating emotions and betraying the trust of people, by purposely leading them to "choices" that are actually not beneficial to them at all. Humbert is the textbook case of this, he is clearly lying all the time, even going so far as lying to himself until he is able to justify his vile acts. It will of course seem very compelling and convincing to anyone who (like myself) has ever done the same, be it to children or to adults.

>>10770549
Can you come up with a well researched reason why this is a bad thing?

>>10773358
That's entirely the fault of your dyke ex for allowing all that to happen

abuse is beating people up or threatening them with violence or things of that nature

>>10773296
Theres never really positive criticism on /lit/. Liking something kills the thread.

>>10773291
Underrated

>>10773375

You have no idea of what you're talking about and you have probably been coerced by parents or others (probably with violence) into losing most traces of empathy. Abuse is not about beating but about improper and cruel treatment (of which beating is a mere instance), and if you don't think it's cruel to impose a lifestyle on someone (even though they "allow" it), then you would probably be in the very same position as Humbert if given the chance.

>>10773393
>You have no idea of what you're talking about
What you mean is that I disagree with you.

I'm aware of the retarded definition of abuse you're using and it is synonymous with 'being a dick' and not actually abuse at all.

>>10773399

No, this can't be a matter of opinion because people like Lolita do get hurt out of this language-game. You can't disagree with me and carry on to "be a dick" (protip: you can exploit someone without calling them names) to people and wreck their (potentially very low already) emotional intelligence. Well, I guess you actually can, but that makes you an exploiter and abuser even if you don't want to see yourself as one. It is precisely the subject of Lolita and precisely why people like Humbert are widespread.

>>10773418
>this language-game
The fucking hypocrisy. You guys are the one who took the word 'abuse' and changed it from 'man who beats his wife daily' to 'man who disagrees with his wife's interpretation of an event'

newsflash m8 being a dick isn't abuse, 'emotional harm' is not abuse, it's just a fact of life

Lolita was such a fucking whore. I really hate this book. I wanted a read with a cute loli but got this disgusting whore. I felt as if taking a mouthful of earth after having read it.

Humbert humbert is a very charismatic narrator. Taking his story at face value, it is a very convincing love story. By the end, I was convinced Humbert loved Delores. The only snag here is that Humbert is pretty honest about how Lolita frequently didn't want the D and had to be convinced and coerced, so if anything it's not a convincing mutual love story.

>>10773857
>Lolita was such a fucking whore.
t.Quilty

>>10773251
literally this

>>10773857
top kek

>>10773427
Good post

I got a boner when some kid in the woods fucked her and her friend but then I remembered an old middle-aged russian guy wrote it.

>>10773857
That's women for you.

>>10773427
How is emotional harm not abuse? Abuse doesn't explicitly mean physical abuse

>>10773393
>>10773418
This is not a case of lost empathic connection to other humans, or some silly shit.

This is about accountability, personal responsibility. If you, personally, choose to be responsible for the choices other humans make... when you're not forcing them at gunpoint to make those choices, you do you. That isn't abuse.

You've been convinced of something, which is fine, but it is an opinion. Not truth. Truth is that every single human is responsible for themself. Even children and babies. Different cultures have different timespans they'll allow an individual to act irresponsible while individuals figure out who they are and how they benefit the society/culture they're part of. Sure, biochemically speaking, mothers have an instinct to protect and care for their young, and fathers generally do as well. But it is the individual's choice to say "I will be responsible for me, and for ______ as well."

I was not responsible for my mother, rest her bones, or my idiot father, or my siblings, or the family pet(s). I am accountable to my employees, to provide for them in exchange for their service for me, but I am not responsible for a single one of them. If they die, it sucks, but their role in society still needs to be filled.. When I die, someone will either fill the role left behind of their own volition or the role will die with me. When you die, the universe will go on without you. It may be a lesson you've yet to learn, but responsibility for anyone other than yourself is a choice. One life is valued at one life, always.

Unless you believe in Icons, Idols, and that kind of martyrdom, any single human has a value or worth of 1.

>>10770160
They implied that all men are rapist pedophiles, and are a danger to young girls, BUT LETS DISREGARD ALL THE FEMALE TEACHERS THAT SEXUALLY ASSAULT STUDENTS OR COMMIT STATUTORY RAPE

>>10770160
Bitches be crazy

>>10770204
>excellent prose
You can say that again. Are all of Nabokov's books this beautifully written? One of my favorite passages wasn't even about Lolita at all, just about driving at night:
>We climbed long grades and rolled downhill again, and heeded speed limits, and spared slow children, and reproduced in sweeping terms the black wiggles of curves on their yellow shields, and no matter how and where we drove, the enchanted interspace slid on intact, mathematical, mirage-like, the viatic counterpart of a magic carpet.

>>10770281
BUT SHE WASN'T EVEN A VIRGIN! THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING!

>>10773375
based

>>10772453
nah, same situation as him. I was very excited to read it and expecting I would love it, but was a bit disappointed. I agree with what the guy said.

I'm not buying into this whole 'unrealiable narrator means he raped and abused her constantly'. It's more complicated than that.

>>10773375
This.

>>10773291
heh