Journal Entry 1 by pennywhistler on Friday, January 05, 2007

Sending to CaterinaAnna as a RABCK - enjoy!

"Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, fastidious college professor. He also likes little girls. And none more so than Lolita, who he'll do anything to possess. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? Or is he all of these?" 

Journal Entry 2 by Caterinaanna from Coventry, West Midlands United Kingdom on Monday, January 15, 2007

Arrived safely last week, just been a bit slow to journal, sorry pennywhistler. I have a couple of ring books at the top of the TBR pile, but hope to get onto this soon. Any preferences for what happens to it after that? 

Journal Entry 3 by Caterinaanna from Coventry, West Midlands United Kingdom on Saturday, January 26, 2008

My memory of this, from my first reading of it while I was myself at school, was that Lolita brought about Humbert's downfall and I thought her a horrible, selfish child. Having now worked with many girls who have similar relationships with their mother and absent father, and who have also discovered ways of getting what they think they want, I find her more sympathetic.

Even so, and in spite of his actions, I cannot bring myself to think of HH as a predatory monster: weak and foolish to go along with something he knew was wrong, but to be despised more for his unwillingness to accept responsibility for his choices than for the outcomes of those decisions themselves. Note that I am not condoning the actions of similar people today: in the context of the society of the time where, as the author points out, marriage was still legal at 12 in several states, and the rights of young people were only just being acknowledged, the relationship between the two - for relationship it is - makes far greater sense.

I relished the writing for its own sake on this reading. Humbert's word play is all the more wonderful for realising it has been put into his thoughts by someone writing in a foreign tongue. I read this without my tin of book darts to hand, and have delayed this JE too long to give examples, but I would pick up more by Nabokov if it were to come my way.

In this edition Craig Raine's afterword - which others may have placed as an introduction and so spoilt the discovery of language - echoed and bolstered many of my thoughts. Oh that all suppporting texts could work in this way! 

Journal Entry 4 by Caterinaanna at Pen and Wig pub OBCZ in Cardiff, Wales United Kingdom on Saturday, January 26, 2008

Released 4 yrs ago (1/26/2008 UTC) at Pen and Wig pub OBCZ in Cardiff, Wales United Kingdom

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At this afternoon's monthly meet-up