Lolita

"Indeed. Lolita is narrated by Humbert Humbert, an older man in his late thirties. He is obsessed with young girls – he calls them “nymphettes” – and he self-confessedly makes it his mission to seduce a nymphette. Sinisterly, he rents a room from a widow called Charlotte Haze, whom he marries basically in order to be near her daughter, Dorothy or “Lolita”, who is only 12 at the start of the story. He eventually seduces her – or in fact she seduces him. It is a very dark novel, but the reason I chose it is because his love for Lolita is so all-consuming that he still loves her when she isn’t a nymphette any more. In some ways I feel he is redeemed by that. Once she is past the nymphette stage of beauty – which he eulogises in a very convincing way, talking about how girls can only be beautiful at that prepubescent moment – he does eventually get over that obsession for what she is as a grown-up. I wouldn’t call it a warning, because it’s so much more of a brilliant book than just being an example of what not to do. Humbert Humbert’s love of Lolita is something epic, and although at heart it is sick because he seduces a young girl, he justifies it to the reader. Even though it’s wrong, you sympathise with him because he can’t help himself and writes about it in such a passionate and empathetic way. Reading Lolita we’re not all paedophiles, but we can understand what he’s feeling. It’s not a justification for what he is, but you can empathise totally. So I’m holding this up as an example of a dangerously powerful but thrilling love. It’s a book that you finish feeling wrung out and saddened, but also with a little bit of admiration for the power and strength of his love for her. That’s such a huge question. You can of course read more realistic novels which don’t romanticise love. But I agree to some extent that romantic love is far too idealised, and turned into something hideously commercialised for Valentine’s Day. But I’m still a great believer in romantic love. Call me an old sentimentalist. Either give your partner one of these books – they’re brilliant love gifts – or choose a book to read aloud to him or her. There are some fantastic love stories that you could read together this evening. One good book for this is Anthropology by Dan Rhodes, which is 101 short true love stories, each of them 101 words long. So they’re very short reads, funny and interesting, covering different aspects of love. That would be a great Valentine’s activity. Go home and read Proust! You will get lost in the remembrance of things past, and cheer yourself up by it."

"Well, even the tone of your voice suggests Lolita, relationship with the sun? And I was surprised as you are now. I knew that in Ada two of the main characters – cousins who fall in love – go outside their ancestral home to the garden and play a game with the setting sun. And it’s become a courtship ritual. I thought, I certainly want to mention that in my book in the chapter on the sun and literature, but I’ve read so little of Nabokov’s work, just some of his stories, I really ought to read more. So about three years ago I took Lolita on holiday with me, and, to my absolute surprise, discovered that it’s more imbued with references to the sun and using the sun as symbol or metaphor – almost a kind of character in the novel – than any other work in literature. Well, I make it the fact that it’s long, about 300 pages, and the sun is mentioned roughly every three pages. It’s amazing that when it occurs so often it’s never pushed at you – Nabokov was very capable of being irritating in his word play and his cleverness. I sent the pages in my book about Lolita to the author of that wonderful book Reading Lolita in Tehran . She’d earlier written a critical book about Nabokov and she said, ‘You’re absolutely right, and I’d never noticed it.’ Well, if you go back to the novel, you’ll think, why didn’t I notice that before? But it’s one of the real credits or accomplishments of Nabokov that he’s not a show-off. Well, probably I’d say that of major novels of the last 100 years it’s the sexiest. That’s normally quite a good way of convincing someone to read a book. But of course the sun is sexy. Sunbathing and being heated by the sun is all part of sexual allure. So it’s not surprising in some ways that Nabokov should enlist its help. But sunlight and lack of light turns out to have a sinister side in the novel. And really, from Homer through Shakespeare , Dante , Chaucer , major writers have written works using the sun to a great degree. Nabokov therefore is part of a long line. Different voices have different things to tell us. In my book I have chapters not only on the sun and literature but the sun in music, the sun in art, in film, photography, architecture, which illustrates how the sun gets into everything. I mention Mark Twain almost as much as any other writer. Because I think he is so tremendous. In writing my book I went to 20 countries around the world. From Norway to the Antarctic to India…all over the world. And I wouldn’t say every place I went to Twain had been there before me, but an awful lot of them. In A Yankee in the Court of King Arthur , Twain talks about how the Yankee who is going to be put to death knows there is going to be a solar eclipse and says to his captors, ‘I’m going to put out the sun.’ He uses that as a kind of blackmail, because of course the solar eclipse arrives on time and he says, right, well I’ll put it back for you if you’ll free me. But that is a total cheat from something Columbus did in real life. And Rider Haggard uses the same idea in King Solomon’s Mines . And Hergé does the same thing in Tintin ."

"My shelves are equally occupied by women writers, my books populated by strong and diverse characters but they didn’t come to mind for this assignment. Naturally, I worried. I contacted a friend, a professor, and one of her specialities is rape. Did she have any female writers who were anxious, or at least addressed anxiety through their work? She made a compelling case for Beatrix Potter as well as Rebecca Skloot but I had read neither. She briefly postulated that writing by women, the writing that floats to the top, may be more redemptive than the writing by men. She wasn’t sure and didn’t want to be quoted. Do I need to outline the plot? There’s this guy Humbert, see, and he falls for this underage girl, Lolita. He knows it’s not OK, but that doesn’t slow him down. Hence, the worry, here in the form of obsession. He flirts with the girl’s mother just so he can linger in her tender young presence. Then, when the mother gets conveniently run over, he drives the girl around the US, pretending to be her father, so they can share motel rooms as they go. She gets away and marries and he chases her around the US some more. It’s all because of some unresolved issue he had with a childhood sweetheart that blossomed into a feverish sort of paedophilia, as if that’s an excuse. His desire to manipulate her never stops and, maybe because his efforts are not all that successful, you stay with him even as his creepy hand inches ever further up her thigh. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter (Lolita’s motivations, her actions, and her ability to survive are another thing entirely. In fact, this might be an area for a grand feminist work, in the vein of Rhys’s The Wide Sargasso Sea. Who wouldn’t read the book called Humbert? Would it be speared through by anxiety, though? I don’t think so.) What’s spectacular for me is the triumph of the humour over his loathsomeness. You can almost sympathise with his compulsive stream of thought, and if you can’t, you can at least admit to being entertained. Nabokov’s wry reading of America and of Humbert manages to overcome much of what’s repellent in the book. (For me, not my professor friend.)"

"Nabokov’s writing is brilliant, especially considering that English was his third language."

"Humbert Humbert in Lolita was the most unforgettable, uncomfortable relationship I’ve had with a character I can remember."

"It cut me in two, and I'm still trying to sew myself back together."

"I reread Lolita and once again marveled at Nabokov's amazing, feverish, riotous sentences. Only Nabokov could make the opening of a freezer door sound like poetry."

"I think of the last pages of “Lolita,” where Humbert Humbert hears children’s voices and recognizes the harm he’s brought Dolores Haze... To see a writer describe the world with such specificity, and to learn that this formulation of words went beyond words — that it taught you about pity and shame…"

"Rereading "Lolita" became an annual tradition for me."

""Catherine, Called Birdy," by Karen Cushman. "Lolita," by Vladimir Nabokov."

"I think "Lolita" is probably the most thrilling book I have read because of the writing."

"Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov. The writing is extraordinary."

"We all have books on our shelves that we’ve not yet read. I’d never read Lolita. So I thought I’ve got to read Lolita."

"His humor and grasp of humanity and language thrill."

"I’ve sent both my older kids Lolita and advised them to read the first chapter. They’re older than when I had it read to me – I was about 12. I didn’t read the whole thing [at the time]. The point was the first chapter is very short, half a page. It’s undeniably beautiful even to a young child, to someone who doesn’t really understand."