Photo by Flickr user Shooz. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Holly of Self-Portrait as, riffing off my loli-con posts points out that whether he meant it to be or not, Nabokov’s Lolita (after whom, after all, the Japanese term “loli-con” derives) blueprinted how men construct women as the “no-sex” class.
I defy anyone to find a passage from that book that is really truly sexy. Consider this example in all its euphemistic obscurity and see if its depiction of a young girl reaction’s to sex is hot—or not:
I liked the cool of armchair feel of armchair leather against my massive nakedness as I held her in my lap. There she would be, a typical kid picking her nose while engrossed in the lighter sections of a newspaper, as indifferent to my ecstasy as if it were something she had sat upon, a shoe, a doll, the handle of a tennis racket, and was too indolent to remove.
Yeah. A naked adult man in a leather armchair, straddled by a girl he has had to bribe into allowing him to touch her, and even still, the only way she’ll tolerate sex with him is if she can read the comics while it’s happening and completely ignore what she’s sitting on. I don’t think that’s hot, and I don’t think for a second that Nabokov wants us to find it hot.
That’s about as clear as it gets, eh? Inside the paradigm the perfect partner really would be a woman too young to feel sexual in an adult sex, too ignorant to distinguish his cock from a tennis racket, and too passive to rise off it even if she did, who’s only interest in him for his money, who’d rather be reading the paper!
What’s compelling to me about Holly’s post is Nabokov’s illustration of Side “B” of the no-sex class paradigm and that’s the equal and opposite distortions men impose on ourselves as the “sex class.” Because of his incapacity to recognize adult women as sexual beings, Nabakov’s Humbert bends his life into an elaborate construction justifying this gigantic other lie he believes he’s living into.
And yeah, sure, Humbert’s an epitome of the banal emptiness of human evil but that only makes his efforts to live into that lie worse, not different, than the rest of us are raised to do.
Can you see any reason on earth why, once we learn to notice the incredible alternatives we’ve been raised to miss, men would be any less inclined than women to stream for the exits on the world view we’re living in?
“There she would be … as indifferent to my ecstasy as if it were something she had sat upon … and was too indolent to remove.” To paraphrase General Bosquet, “C’est magnifique writing, mais ce n’est pas la Real Adult Sex: c’est de la folie!”
Submitted by 1896 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-01-25 19:38.
And yes, it does take a lot of gall for me to go citing books I haven't read (nor really wish to) and mangling quotations in languages I don't know. Mea Culpa.
Submitted by 1896 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-01-25 21:03.
I was assuming you read it before I commented, so I was going to first write that most people who refer to the book as if it were sexy have probably not read it but only have some vague sense of it. But nevermind.
Where Nabokov's genius lies is in his intricate and amazing word plays, which convolute language in ways that seem impossible. It's also a fascinating character study of a very flawed character, not someone I think Nabokov thought readers should emulate any more than someone should, heaven forbid, emulate Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment or the protagonist in The Stranger, or more recently, the rapist in Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. Exploring a character is not an endorsement of that character. It's up to the reader to condemn him and more easily to do so since the book is open ended rather than didactic. Nabokov tells the story. The conclusions are easily drawn.
[As i mentioned I haven't read it, B, but I've read enough about it to know that it's not about sex and that, obviously, there's nothing admirable about Humbert. And that Nabokov didn't intend for him to be admired. What I appreciate about the passage Holly cited is that first, it sounds exactly like the Humbert I've come to expect but, second, the particular *flavor* of his wickedness, and his weakness, came through. Finally, while I knew Nabokov was marvelous with words, and that the appeal of Lolita was the quality of his writing and not the character of the, um, characters, my distaste for the latter completely overwhelmed any interest I might have had in the fomer. Armed with new insight I might now be willing (and may eventually feel obliged) to attempt it. --fl]
Submitted by 1896 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-01-26 01:30.
I was reminded of this book a few years ago when a friend of mine was accused of--and confessed to-- raping a mentally handicapped girl. His rationalization that because she could not understand what was being done to her, it somehow made his crime 'victimless' in his mind.
I've never been so disgusted.
I think that's what was happening here. That her lack of acknowledgement in some way alleviated his guilt.
But I think it is brilliant. This sort of cautionary tale about obsession and rationalization. Just how far a man can sink when he allows himself to go past the limits of his own morality.
I think they used a bit of this in the movie American Beauty.
Her
[And for me it's brilliant because of how his *particular* justifications seismograph the deep faults within men's fundamental perception of women. Thanks! --fl]
Submitted by 1896 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-01-26 08:36.
I wasn't going to comment on this, because I have more or less decided that I don't want to read "Lolita", much as Figleaf had; but the anecdote about the rape of a mentally-handicapped girl I think rings true about what I've read in both fiction and non-fiction about the motivations and justifications that some people make.
The real reason I decided to respond was just that the reCAPTCHA words that came up were again, appropriate:
"justice" "injury"
[Yeah, that reCaptcha's something else, isn't it, SE? Wow. --fl]
Submitted by 1896 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-01-26 09:38.
"Dolor" also refers to sadness. Not to give away the beginning, but Humbert bumps off Dolores' mother, so it's clear from the beginning that he's reprehensible. He has no compunction about any of his actions. I was reminded that Dolores is the character's real name. He changes even that, picking up the "lo" in the middle.
I truly do empathize with your reluctance to read the book, Figleaf, and am not urging you to. At first, I was even angry with Sebold for her portrayal of a rapist and killer, imagining people getting ideas by getting into his head. What I meant about people not reading the book is that many people misunderstand it as seductive or sexy without thinking about what they're saying or even what Nabokov meant--clearly, you don't do that.
For me it was some insight into what makes people that pathological, though it's not something I would typically read. Faulkner and Morrison have that much violence, too, both sexual violence and murder, and their books also make me feel very ill. I can't read crime novels at all or watch most action movies.
Desire X, I hear you. That kind of violence, sexual or beatings, is really common. Look up Brent Martin. There was also a recent case involving a young woman with an intellectual disability who was forced into sexual acts. The parents of the young men involved just claim it was a bit of fun. I can't find the info on it.
[Thanks for stepping back in, B. I spent forever trying to work Dolores's real name into the title, preferably in combination with the word dolor, and finally gave up. What's significant about it to me is how Humbert couldn't even deal with her *real name* let alone her real *reality!* Which by all accounts was actually pretty miserable. So he painted a new name on her reminiscent of the paper umbrellas the Steve Martin character used as signifiers in "The Jerk." Only worse because the Martin character was merely clueless. --fl]
Submitted by 1896 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-01-26 12:14.
I enjoyed reading Lolita. I don't know if you would like it or not, but it was actually a pretty good book.
Submitted by 1896 (not verified) on Sun, 2008-01-27 07:01.
I read Lolita recently. Whilst I would disagree that Nabakov orginated the idea of 'no-sex class' it's pretty likely that's what motiveates Humbert.
Reading Lolita's pretty difficult. Nabakov's prose is amazing. It's so incrediably dense but very compelling. I did feel unhappy after I'd finished it as you're reading the destruction of a person's life.
What stood out for me most in the story is Humbert's repeated warnings to Lolita not to talk to strangers, joking using warnings that they might snatch her up. The irony being, it's those who are closest to her and trusted that prey on her. And that's how it often is :(