Subject
Letters re LOLITA (film & novel) in Sunday NY Times (fwd)
Date
Body
>From Christopher Berg (Tentender@aol.com)
There is a shockingly ill-informed and unperceptive set of three letters in
the Arts and Leisure section of last Sunday's (3/29/98) New York Times,
prompted by Caryn James's thoughtful article a couple weeks back.
Rather than comment on them (they speak for themselves, unfortunately), it
occurred to me while reading them that the point so often missed (and, if I am
not mistaken, the "artistic problem" which Nabokov was solving with the book)
is that Humbert is unmistakably an artist, and a very great one, his sole
masterpiece being, of course, LOLITA. Is his paedophilia "explained" by the
book? No, but the intensity of his passion and in the end the profound depth
of his love (in the true, selfless sense) for Dolores Haze goes a long way
toward explaining what allows him to become a great artist -- a great artist
who is, like many an artist, a total failure in "real life." And toward
explaining the sympathetic response which we so loathe ourselves for feeling
toward him: after all, he "did" "write" this book which is moving us so
profoundly.
The fact that there are so few artists may, too, go a long way in explaining
the utter incomprehension that LOLITA (the novel) seems so often to be met
with, even, it appears, by people who "like" it. While the book has many self-
professed admirers, I wonder really how many "good readers" of it there really
are.
Certainly the level of the current discourse (aside from that on this
discussion group) is powerfully disheartening.
Greetings to the list -- which seems to be in a bit of a lull these days
(disheartened as I am by all the Nabokov bashing going on?)
There is a shockingly ill-informed and unperceptive set of three letters in
the Arts and Leisure section of last Sunday's (3/29/98) New York Times,
prompted by Caryn James's thoughtful article a couple weeks back.
Rather than comment on them (they speak for themselves, unfortunately), it
occurred to me while reading them that the point so often missed (and, if I am
not mistaken, the "artistic problem" which Nabokov was solving with the book)
is that Humbert is unmistakably an artist, and a very great one, his sole
masterpiece being, of course, LOLITA. Is his paedophilia "explained" by the
book? No, but the intensity of his passion and in the end the profound depth
of his love (in the true, selfless sense) for Dolores Haze goes a long way
toward explaining what allows him to become a great artist -- a great artist
who is, like many an artist, a total failure in "real life." And toward
explaining the sympathetic response which we so loathe ourselves for feeling
toward him: after all, he "did" "write" this book which is moving us so
profoundly.
The fact that there are so few artists may, too, go a long way in explaining
the utter incomprehension that LOLITA (the novel) seems so often to be met
with, even, it appears, by people who "like" it. While the book has many self-
professed admirers, I wonder really how many "good readers" of it there really
are.
Certainly the level of the current discourse (aside from that on this
discussion group) is powerfully disheartening.
Greetings to the list -- which seems to be in a bit of a lull these days
(disheartened as I am by all the Nabokov bashing going on?)