Subject
Fwd: 'Lolita' still causes at stir at 50 ...
From
Date
Body
----- Forwarded message from spklein52@hotmail.com -----
Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 11:23:40 -0400
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
Subject: 'Lolita' still causes at stir at 50 ...
To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050515/FEATURES06/505150303/1010/FEATURES[2]
'Lolita' still causes at stir at 50
Louisville Courier-Journal, KY - 6 hours ago
... " The alliteration alone, in that passage, is thrilling. Fifty
years ago, when VLADIMIR NABOKOV published his novel "Lolita," it was
a seismic literary event. ...
'Lolita' still causes at stir at 50 By Frederick Smock
Special to The Courier-Journal
Lolita turns 50 this year. Do you imagine that she is still living
in a clapboard shack out west, slouching in the doorway, a cigarette
dangling from her pouty lower lip?
When last we glimpsed her, through the distorted lens of Humbert
Humbert's obsession, there she stood, "pale and pregnant," in a
dustbowl at the end of the world. A far cry from the idealized
creature who opened the novel: "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. .
. ." The alliteration alone, in that passage, is thrilling.
Fifty years ago, when Vladimir Nabokov published his novel "Lolita,"
it was a seismic literary event. "Lolita" was an absolutely original
novel. What were its influences? Everything, and nothing. No book
like it had ever existed. In that sense, it shares a shelf with
"Hamlet," "Ulysses," "Death in Venice," and a very few others.
Nabokov was teaching at Cornell University at the time, but they
would only let him teach Russian literature. He was writing American
literature at his home in the evenings, but they wouldn't let him
teach it. A strange irony, one the author must have secretly
relished.
Rejected by four American publishers as being too smutty, "Lolita"
first appeared in Paris in 1955 from Olympia Press and immediately
dropped from view. That is, until copies were seized by U.S. Customs,
and reviewer Graham Greene chose it as one of the three best novels of
the year.
Then, what Nabokov dubbed "Hurricane Lolita" began to blow. Glowing
reviews appeared nearly everywhere. The book was published in America
in 1958, where it became an instant best seller (within four days it
had gone into its third printing). Now a cultural icon, "Lolita" has
been filmed twice -- with James Mason in the original role of
Humbert, in Stanley Kubrick's version; and, more recently, and far
likelier, starring the British actor Jeremy Irons.
This story -- of a dark and perverse love affair between a fortyish
man and a 12-year-old girl -- has inspired, in perhaps equal parts,
horror and wonderment. "This is one of the funniest and one of the
saddest books that will be published this year," critic Elizabeth
Janeway wrote, in 1958.
Critics were in no way unified in their praise. John Hollander, in
the Partisan Review, termed the novel a "tremendous perversity."
Robertson Davies thought it high comedy. Kingsley Amis called it a
moral failure.
Far from being an endorsement of ephebophilia, the book portrays
Humbert as a "hateful person," in the author's own words, a hateful
person who just happens to be a wizard with words. Nabokov
acknowledged that he is probably responsible for parents not naming
their daughters Lolita anymore.
Certainly, the most exciting part of Nabokov's "dirty little book"
is the language. "Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be
written, that is, ecstatically," John Updike has written. That is
what makes it a masterpiece.
Frederick Smock is poet-in-residence at Bellarmine University. His
newest book, "Poetry & Compassion: Essays on Art & Craft," is
forthcoming this fall.
Links:
------
[1] http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
[2]
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050515/FEATURES06/505150303/1010/FEATURES
----- End forwarded message -----
Date: Sun, 15 May 2005 11:23:40 -0400
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
Subject: 'Lolita' still causes at stir at 50 ...
To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050515/FEATURES06/505150303/1010/FEATURES[2]
'Lolita' still causes at stir at 50
Louisville Courier-Journal, KY - 6 hours ago
... " The alliteration alone, in that passage, is thrilling. Fifty
years ago, when VLADIMIR NABOKOV published his novel "Lolita," it was
a seismic literary event. ...
'Lolita' still causes at stir at 50 By Frederick Smock
Special to The Courier-Journal
Lolita turns 50 this year. Do you imagine that she is still living
in a clapboard shack out west, slouching in the doorway, a cigarette
dangling from her pouty lower lip?
When last we glimpsed her, through the distorted lens of Humbert
Humbert's obsession, there she stood, "pale and pregnant," in a
dustbowl at the end of the world. A far cry from the idealized
creature who opened the novel: "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. .
. ." The alliteration alone, in that passage, is thrilling.
Fifty years ago, when Vladimir Nabokov published his novel "Lolita,"
it was a seismic literary event. "Lolita" was an absolutely original
novel. What were its influences? Everything, and nothing. No book
like it had ever existed. In that sense, it shares a shelf with
"Hamlet," "Ulysses," "Death in Venice," and a very few others.
Nabokov was teaching at Cornell University at the time, but they
would only let him teach Russian literature. He was writing American
literature at his home in the evenings, but they wouldn't let him
teach it. A strange irony, one the author must have secretly
relished.
Rejected by four American publishers as being too smutty, "Lolita"
first appeared in Paris in 1955 from Olympia Press and immediately
dropped from view. That is, until copies were seized by U.S. Customs,
and reviewer Graham Greene chose it as one of the three best novels of
the year.
Then, what Nabokov dubbed "Hurricane Lolita" began to blow. Glowing
reviews appeared nearly everywhere. The book was published in America
in 1958, where it became an instant best seller (within four days it
had gone into its third printing). Now a cultural icon, "Lolita" has
been filmed twice -- with James Mason in the original role of
Humbert, in Stanley Kubrick's version; and, more recently, and far
likelier, starring the British actor Jeremy Irons.
This story -- of a dark and perverse love affair between a fortyish
man and a 12-year-old girl -- has inspired, in perhaps equal parts,
horror and wonderment. "This is one of the funniest and one of the
saddest books that will be published this year," critic Elizabeth
Janeway wrote, in 1958.
Critics were in no way unified in their praise. John Hollander, in
the Partisan Review, termed the novel a "tremendous perversity."
Robertson Davies thought it high comedy. Kingsley Amis called it a
moral failure.
Far from being an endorsement of ephebophilia, the book portrays
Humbert as a "hateful person," in the author's own words, a hateful
person who just happens to be a wizard with words. Nabokov
acknowledged that he is probably responsible for parents not naming
their daughters Lolita anymore.
Certainly, the most exciting part of Nabokov's "dirty little book"
is the language. "Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be
written, that is, ecstatically," John Updike has written. That is
what makes it a masterpiece.
Frederick Smock is poet-in-residence at Bellarmine University. His
newest book, "Poetry & Compassion: Essays on Art & Craft," is
forthcoming this fall.
Links:
------
[1] http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage
[2]
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050515/FEATURES06/505150303/1010/FEATURES
----- End forwarded message -----