Lolita
Registered by 
lukutuoli
of Tampere, Pirkanmaa / Birkaland Finland on 6/13/2006
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
lukutuoli of Tampere, Pirkanmaa / Birkaland Finland on 6/13/2006 This Book is Currently in the Wild!
3 journalers for this copy...
I bought this book from Barcelona.
"Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.
Playfully perverse in form as well as content, riddled with puns and literary allusions, Nabokov's 1955 novel is a hymn to the Russian-born author's delight in his adopted language. Indeed, readers who want to probe all of its allusive nooks and crannies will need to consult the annotated edition. Lolita is undoubtedly, brazenly erotic, but the eroticism springs less from the "frail honey-hued shoulders ... the silky supple bare back" of little Lo than it does from the wantonly gorgeous prose that Humbert uses to recount his forbidden passion:
She was musical and apple-sweet ... Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice ... and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock.
Much has been made of Lolita as metaphor, perhaps because the love affair at its heart is so troubling. Humbert represents the formal, educated Old World of Europe, while Lolita is America: ripening, beautiful, but not too bright and a little vulgar. Nabokov delights in exploring the intercourse between these cultures, and the passages where Humbert describes the suburbs and strip malls and motels of postwar America are filled with both attraction and repulsion, "those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads." Yet however tempting the novel's symbolism may be, its chief delight--and power--lies in the character of Humbert Humbert. He, at least as he tells it, is no seedy skulker, no twisted destroyer of innocence. Instead, Nabokov's celebrated mouthpiece is erudite and witty, even at his most depraved. Humbert can't help it--linguistic jouissance is as important to him as the satisfaction of his arrested libido." --Simon Leake --
This book will leave to Norway, if shimi accepts it as a RABCK!
"Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.
Playfully perverse in form as well as content, riddled with puns and literary allusions, Nabokov's 1955 novel is a hymn to the Russian-born author's delight in his adopted language. Indeed, readers who want to probe all of its allusive nooks and crannies will need to consult the annotated edition. Lolita is undoubtedly, brazenly erotic, but the eroticism springs less from the "frail honey-hued shoulders ... the silky supple bare back" of little Lo than it does from the wantonly gorgeous prose that Humbert uses to recount his forbidden passion:
She was musical and apple-sweet ... Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice ... and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock.
Much has been made of Lolita as metaphor, perhaps because the love affair at its heart is so troubling. Humbert represents the formal, educated Old World of Europe, while Lolita is America: ripening, beautiful, but not too bright and a little vulgar. Nabokov delights in exploring the intercourse between these cultures, and the passages where Humbert describes the suburbs and strip malls and motels of postwar America are filled with both attraction and repulsion, "those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads." Yet however tempting the novel's symbolism may be, its chief delight--and power--lies in the character of Humbert Humbert. He, at least as he tells it, is no seedy skulker, no twisted destroyer of innocence. Instead, Nabokov's celebrated mouthpiece is erudite and witty, even at his most depraved. Humbert can't help it--linguistic jouissance is as important to him as the satisfaction of his arrested libido." --Simon Leake --
This book will leave to Norway, if shimi accepts it as a RABCK!
Very nice to get this book in the mail today!
Thanks so much for sending this one my way, lukutuoli, and I'm looking forward to reading it! :)
Thanks so much for sending this one my way, lukutuoli, and I'm looking forward to reading it! :)
I have just finished Lolita, and I just have to say right away, this book is beautifully written, and the use of language is really very clever. It's not hard to realize how much you can achieve with words after reading this book.
The theme, of course, is not an easy one, but I wasn't able to read this as a moral tale. I thought this was more of an insight into a disturbed mind, as H.H. knows what he does is wrong, we know what he does is wrong, but he still tries to create understanding (for himself? for us?) for his actions. I never felt sympathetic towards H.H. at all, but I'm fascinated with the complexity of the characters throughout the story.
Lolita was a demanding and thought-provoking read for me, and in that instance it was also a good book. I'm still a bit ambivalent about it, and I also thought that a part in the middle was a bit slow moving, but all in all, I enjoyed this read, and I believe it's definitely a book that should be read.
The theme, of course, is not an easy one, but I wasn't able to read this as a moral tale. I thought this was more of an insight into a disturbed mind, as H.H. knows what he does is wrong, we know what he does is wrong, but he still tries to create understanding (for himself? for us?) for his actions. I never felt sympathetic towards H.H. at all, but I'm fascinated with the complexity of the characters throughout the story.
Lolita was a demanding and thought-provoking read for me, and in that instance it was also a good book. I'm still a bit ambivalent about it, and I also thought that a part in the middle was a bit slow moving, but all in all, I enjoyed this read, and I believe it's definitely a book that should be read.
Book number 1 in my Christmas calendar release challenge!
http://www.bookcrossing.com/forum/31/4896536/
This will travel to a friend in Canada to fulfil a wish! Happy reading! :)
http://www.bookcrossing.com/forum/31/4896536/
This will travel to a friend in Canada to fulfil a wish! Happy reading! :)
*screams with delight* This is Christmas two weeks ahead of time in my mailbox! :D Thank you for this shimi, as well as for the other books and chocolate!
Two years later, I finally got around to reading this book... but despite all its obvious qualities, I must admit that I struggled with it.
Journal Entry 7 by rem_VSP-560485 at Bridgehead Coffee House - Dalhousie in Ottawa, Ontario Canada on Saturday, September 11, 2010
Released 13 yrs ago (9/11/2010 UTC) at Bridgehead Coffee House - Dalhousie in Ottawa, Ontario Canada
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
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