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Speaker 1: Trigger warning. This podcast is about the book Lolita and

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Speaker 1: discusses themes of pedophilia. Listener discretion is advised. December sixth,

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, finished Lolita, which was begun exactly five

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Speaker 1: years ago. Vladimir Nabukov wrote to a friend that he

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Speaker 1: had finished Lolita, a novel he had been working on

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Speaker 1: for five years and when he was certain would be

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Speaker 1: even more challenging to publish than it was to write.

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Speaker 1: The book detailed the memoir of European pedophile Humbert. Humbert Hu,

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Speaker 1: Nabukov referred to in later interviews as quote, a vain

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Speaker 1: and cruel wretch who manages to appear touching and Dolores

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Speaker 1: Lolita Hayes, a twelve year old American girl. He becomes

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Speaker 1: obsessed with, abducts and rapes hundreds of times over the

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Speaker 1: course of several years. The novel takes the perspective of Humbert,

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Speaker 1: who is trying to convince you, the reader and his jury,

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Speaker 1: that this is a love story. Nabokov would later say

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Speaker 1: that the humbrid character was inspired by an ape who

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Speaker 1: learned to draw. Nabokov says this the initial shiver of

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Speaker 1: inspiration was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an

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Speaker 1: ape in the Jardin de Plance, who, after months of

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Speaker 1: coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing every charcoal

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Speaker 1: by an animal. This sketch showed the bars of the

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Speaker 1: poor creature's cage. Nabokov constructed Humbard's drawing of his own

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Speaker 1: cage on index cards in the summers between teaching at

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Speaker 1: Cornell University. He right in the back seat of the

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Speaker 1: car after long days of his wife Vera, driving them

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Speaker 1: from the east to west coast of the United States,

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Speaker 1: stopping in motels that Nabokov used as inspiration on where

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Speaker 1: Humbert brings Lalita after kidnapping her, trailing the quote sinuous

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Speaker 1: trail of slime unquote, as Nabokov describes. A legend has

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Speaker 1: it that Vera once caught him trying to destroy the

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Speaker 1: manuscript and stopped him right in time. Not to mention,

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Speaker 1: this wasn't even the first time he'd attempted to write

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Speaker 1: about this theme or destroyed that attempt. Nabokov had written

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Speaker 1: a novella called The Enchanter while living in the Russian

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Speaker 1: emigrant community in Berlin nine very similar storyline, but Nabulkov

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Speaker 1: destroys all copies of the story he thinks, before it's

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Speaker 1: ever published. But now it's the end of ninety three

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Speaker 1: and the Bookov's work is complete. He wants to publish

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Speaker 1: it under a pseudonym. At first, worried that the themes

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Speaker 1: of the book would lose him his teaching job at Cornell,

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Speaker 1: whose income he was still very dependent on at this time,

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Speaker 1: but he's advised that this would make it even less

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Speaker 1: likely that Lolita would be published at all, and in fact,

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Speaker 1: could be used to make him look guilty in a

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Speaker 1: court of law if things went that far. Because this

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Speaker 1: is still towards the end of the McCarthy era in

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Speaker 1: the US, Nabokov wasn't the untouchable writer he's regarded as

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Speaker 1: today at this time. In fact, Lolita's success would turn

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Speaker 1: him into that. And it's not like there's no established

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Speaker 1: precedent for books landing authors and publishers in court, no

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Speaker 1: matter how well regarded the work is. James Joyce's Ulysses

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Speaker 1: ran into censorship issues back in the twenties during its

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Speaker 1: pre publication serialization in the US, leading to the United

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Speaker 1: States Versus One book called Ulysses case of three very

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Speaker 1: dramatic case name. The book went out, but not before

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Speaker 1: a lot of money was spent on both sides, and

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Speaker 1: similar situations had befallen erotic novel Forever Amber by Kathleen Windsor,

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Speaker 1: as well as to Nabokov's friend, American writer Edmund Wilson's

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Speaker 1: Memoirs of Heckate County in the fifties. All of these

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Speaker 1: books end up prevailing in the courts, but the process

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Speaker 1: was arduous and expensive on publishers, and many didn't want

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Speaker 1: to take the financial and reputational risk, even on a

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Speaker 1: writer they really liked. So Lolita is sent to American publishers,

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Speaker 1: to Viking, to Simon and Schuster, to New Directions Double Day,

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Speaker 1: and it's a resounding now across the board. Simon and

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Speaker 1: Schuster says it's sheer pornography. Nabokov writes to his longtime

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Speaker 1: editor Katherine White at The New Yorker, who also has

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Speaker 1: rejected Lowlit to at this point, saying the following, I

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Speaker 1: had to write that book for artistic reasons, and I

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Speaker 1: don't really care much what happens to it next. But

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Speaker 1: it turns out he does care because then it's on

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Speaker 1: to the British publishers, but still no luck. In early

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five, still searching, he writes this to Edmund Wilson,

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Speaker 1: I suppose it will be published by some shady firm

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Speaker 1: with a Viennese dream name e g. Silo, And in

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Speaker 1: April nineteen fifty five it reaches Olympia Press in Paris,

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Speaker 1: run by Mario Gerodius. Olympia was famous for two things,

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Speaker 1: publishing controversial scraps by famous writers like Miller, Beckett and

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Speaker 1: Boroughs that they couldn't release elsewhere, and erotica porn book porn.

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Speaker 1: It was book porn, and Gerodius accepted the title of Mr.

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Speaker 1: Book porn with quote joy and pride end quote, and hey,

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Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with a little bit of book porn.

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Speaker 1: That's not how I would classify Lolita the book at all,

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Speaker 1: but the genre of erotica itself. I mean, who cares.

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Speaker 1: I'll tell you who cares. It's Vladimir Nabokov. Reflecting on

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Speaker 1: this time later, he says this, I had not been

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Speaker 1: in Europe since nineteen forty, was not interested in pointo

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Speaker 1: graphic books, and thus knew nothing about the obscene novelettes,

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Speaker 1: would Mr Gerodius was hiring hacks to confect with assistants.

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Speaker 1: I have pondered the painful question whether I would have

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Speaker 1: agreed so cheerfully to his publishing Lolita had I been

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Speaker 1: a wearer in May nineteen fifty five of what formed

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Speaker 1: the supple backbone of his production. Alas, I probably would

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Speaker 1: the less cheerfully. And he's right. Gerodius, in spite of

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Speaker 1: giving Lolita the first of its many breaks that would

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Speaker 1: turn it into a classic, did not get it and

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Speaker 1: was quoted as saying it quote might bring about a

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Speaker 1: change in social attitudes towards the kind of love described unquote,

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Speaker 1: which was, as you know, definitely not the point of

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Speaker 1: the book. To put it generously, The book of American

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Speaker 1: academic friends advise him not to publish, thinking it will

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Speaker 1: damage his reputation. There's a little bit of drama with

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Speaker 1: copyright between the author and Olympia, and in September nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty five, Lolita's first edition is published and everyone loves it.

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Speaker 1: No notes the end, just kidding. This is Lolita Podcast.

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Speaker 1: Welcome back. I'm Jamie Loftus. Nice to paras socially interact

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Speaker 1: with you again. Here on Lolita Podcast. Last week in

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Speaker 1: our first episode, we talked about some of the current

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Speaker 1: prevalent schools of thought on Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and took

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Speaker 1: an in depth look at the events of the book itself,

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Speaker 1: because there's no use in knowing what happens in the

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Speaker 1: adaptations if you don't know what you're comparing it against.

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Speaker 1: And it goes without saying that. We have a lot

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Speaker 1: to talk about. But today we're going to take it

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Speaker 1: back in time a little bit to talk about nabokof

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Speaker 1: to talk to several of the scholars in the Nabokov community,

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Speaker 1: to talk about some of the finer points of the book,

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Speaker 1: and to trace the journey of the book's first publication

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Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty five, through the long battle of Lolita

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Speaker 1: as a band book, all the way up to the

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Speaker 1: first film adaptation attempt in the early nineteen sixties. Brian Boyd,

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Speaker 1: who has written the definitive two volume of Nabokov biography

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Speaker 1: that I've been using, and we're also going to be

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Speaker 1: talking to Brian in this episode as well. So, my friends,

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Speaker 1: the time has come to ask who is Vladimir Nabokov.

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Speaker 1: He is born on April twenty second, eighteen ninety nine

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Speaker 1: in St. Petersburg to a very wealthy Russian noble family.

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Speaker 1: But his family does require some explaining, so we're going

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Speaker 1: to take it back a little bit before that. Nabokov's grandfather,

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Speaker 1: Dmitri Nabokov is high up in the pre revolutionary government.

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Speaker 1: He's the Minister of Justice under the liberal Ish Czar's

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Speaker 1: Alexander's two and three. He is a bureaucratic liberal. But

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Speaker 1: even this was enough to get labeled as a radical

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Speaker 1: every once in a while. Think of how people called

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Speaker 1: Joe Biden a radical when he was running, and it's like, honey,

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Speaker 1: I wish uh sorry for getting political. Moving on, Dmitri

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Speaker 1: is considered radical for saying wild things like there should

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Speaker 1: be fair trials for all. His writer grandson would actually

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Speaker 1: continue this line of thought later in his life, saying

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Speaker 1: that he pitied both JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald after

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Speaker 1: watching media coverage of the president's assassination in the US

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. Dmitri Nabokov is prominent in pre

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Speaker 1: revolutionary Russia and then a buck Offs have a number

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Speaker 1: of brushes, but literary fame before the famous novelist in

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Speaker 1: the family is born. Dmitri encounters writer and founder of

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Speaker 1: socialist realism Nikolai Schernishevski, who under Alexander was intimidated by

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Speaker 1: being mock executed but then told just kidding, You're not

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Speaker 1: being executed, but get out, and then he was exiled.

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Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of this in pre revolutionary Russia. Anyways,

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Speaker 1: Dmitri has an affair with an older woman and then

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Speaker 1: marries her daughter to keep things above board. And the

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Speaker 1: woman he marries is Vladimir Nabokov's grandmother, but she's also

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Speaker 1: Vladimir Nabokov's mother because Vladimir Nabokov and his father have

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Speaker 1: the exact same name, which becomes messy for the author

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Speaker 1: and for me right now. So to differentiate, I am

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Speaker 1: going to call the father of Lowlit to author Vladimir Nabakov,

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Speaker 1: Daddy Vlad to make things easier, thank you. That is

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Speaker 1: a very elegant solution. I was in mensa, so Daddy

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Speaker 1: Vlad pretty cool guy born in eighteen seventy. His politics

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Speaker 1: are pretty far to the left of his father, Dmitri.

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Speaker 1: He's arrested as a student protester he was outspoken against

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Speaker 1: anti Semitism and went on to be a successful defender

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Speaker 1: of Russian Jews. During his legal career. He also defended

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Speaker 1: queer people, ex convicts, and political insurgents from legal oppression. Overall,

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Speaker 1: I would have dated him, but he was still from

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Speaker 1: a bougie family, and he marries accordingly. Daddy Vlad marries

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Speaker 1: Elena rukov Shnakova, daughter of landowners so rich her dad

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Speaker 1: opened a school for only his kids. Elena is very

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Speaker 1: intelligent and is educated in the natural sciences. They're married

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Speaker 1: and have five kids, the oldest of whom is Vladimir Nabokov,

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Speaker 1: or Volodia as he's known as a kid. Daddy Vlad

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Speaker 1: starts working as an editor at Provo, a left leaning journal,

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Speaker 1: and Volodia is pretty uninterested in politics as a young person.

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Speaker 1: He has another brush with literary fame. A young Volodia

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Speaker 1: and Daddy Vlad meat writer Leo Tolstoy, Hello in passing

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Speaker 1: when Volodia is only ten, and here I'll be honest,

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Speaker 1: Vladimir Nabokov sounds like an absolute braddy rich kid while

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Speaker 1: he's growing up, and Nabokov scholars will defend this, but Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he's very bright, but he seems like kind of a jerk.

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Speaker 1: He had like valet Is driving him to school. It's

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Speaker 1: not for me. Very spoiled by his parents, Volodia had

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Speaker 1: nanny's and private tutors and literally teethed on his mother's

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Speaker 1: jewels growing up. For reference, he's about the same age

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Speaker 1: as the Romanov Children's Anastasia to all those so he

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Speaker 1: wasn't royalty, but that same time and that same vibe

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Speaker 1: like teething on jewels, A cocky, rich kid. Nabokov speaks Russian,

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Speaker 1: English and French from a young age, and later says

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Speaker 1: this of himself in his autobiography, speak memory. I think

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Speaker 1: I was born like that. A precocious genius and humble too.

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Speaker 1: Volodia is also diagnosed with synesthesia as a kid, a

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Speaker 1: condition where letters and numbers are associated with colors, and

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Speaker 1: that's something that his eventual wife, Vera will share Daddy.

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Speaker 1: Vlad is elected into the first Duma Council in nineteen

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Speaker 1: o six, but then is sent to prison and solitary

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Speaker 1: confinement in nineteen o eight for his association with the

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Speaker 1: Provo Journal. He comes back find but Volodia remembers this

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Speaker 1: time very clearly. Nabokov has four younger siblings, one of

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Speaker 1: whom is a childhood friend to iron Rand, which I

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Speaker 1: don't want to talk about at all, and one of

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Speaker 1: which is his brother Sergei, which I do as Volodia

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Speaker 1: does something both pretty unforgivable and very of his time

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Speaker 1: and outs his brother as a gay man to their parents,

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Speaker 1: which results in Sergey's being sent away to a boarding school.

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Speaker 1: The relationship doesn't completely heal for some time, and Sergey,

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Speaker 1: after many happy years with his lover, dies in a

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Speaker 1: concentration camp in nineteen forty five after speaking out against Hitler.

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Speaker 1: Back in nineteen sixteen, Volodia falls in love with a

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Speaker 1: girl named Valentina, who later dumps him. He self publishes

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Speaker 1: a poetry collection as a teen Emo king, then inherits

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Speaker 1: two million pounds in nineteen seventeen, money from his uncle,

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Speaker 1: who Brian Boyd mentions in his biography of Nabokov molested

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Speaker 1: him as a child. One of his experiences seems to

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Speaker 1: be replicated in pretty close detail later in Lolita, in

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Speaker 1: a scene where Humbert Humbert bounces Dolores on his lap

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Speaker 1: in order to pleasure himself. In nineteen seventeen, the February

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Speaker 1: Revolution happens in Russia and Daddy Vlad is made secretary

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Speaker 1: to the provisional government, but is forced to flee with

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Speaker 1: the family when the Bolshevik Revolution starts. He then serves

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Speaker 1: as the Minister of Justice in nineteen eighteen in the

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Speaker 1: Crimean regional government, and the Nabokov family finally settles in Berlin,

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Speaker 1: Germany permanently in nineteen nineteen, and at this point they

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Speaker 1: are entirely stripped of their court titles and all of

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Speaker 1: their money, and in fact, a necklace of pearls that

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Speaker 1: Nabokov Tethon as a baby are sold so they can

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Speaker 1: make rent in Germany. This is a huge shift in

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Speaker 1: Nabokov's life. He goes on to attend Cambridge University in

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Speaker 1: England with his brother Sergei, while Daddy Flad begins editing

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Speaker 1: Russian immigrant newspaper rule Back in Berlin, Nabokov begins publishing

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Speaker 1: poetry in his dad's paper, so no nepotism there, and

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Speaker 1: he uses a pen name, Vladimir Syrian, which is a

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Speaker 1: pseudonym meant to distance him and prevent confusion with his

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Speaker 1: dad in a way that kind of evokes Nick Cage's

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Speaker 1: relationship to the Coppola's for me, like he just kind

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Speaker 1: of got rid of the name and hopes that no

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Speaker 1: one would notice. I get it. You don't want to

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Speaker 1: seem like nepotism, but like you are, and we know

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Speaker 1: that anyways. Like Nick Cage, this ends up being kind

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Speaker 1: of a wash because Syrian is a legitimately talented writer

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Speaker 1: and becomes popular locally. Then in Daddy Vlad is suddenly murdered,

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Speaker 1: completely altering the direction of the family's life. He attends

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Speaker 1: a former colleagues speaking engagement in the hope of repairing

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Speaker 1: their lapsed friendship. A gunman shoots at the speaker. Daddy

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Speaker 1: Vlad tries to interfere, and he's hit and killed. Nabokov's

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Speaker 1: journals from this night are devastating. What has happened? Tell

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Speaker 1: me what's happened, she asks, Seizing him by the sleeves,

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Speaker 1: he spreads out his hands, something terrible. He sobs, cannot finish,

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Speaker 1: so it's all over, He says nothing. Hessen too says nothing.

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Speaker 1: Their teeth chatter, their eyes dart a lot, and mother understood.

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Speaker 1: I thought she would faint. So that's it, she repeated, quietly.

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Speaker 1: She seemed to reason it out with herself, how can

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Speaker 1: it be? And then, lad do you understand? In ninety three,

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Speaker 1: Nabokov meets his future wife Vera, a Russian Jew from

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Speaker 1: the upper class who I absolutely love, and there's a

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Speaker 1: very beautiful biography written about her by Stacy Schiff that

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Speaker 1: I highly recommend. They're married in nine in Berlin, and

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Speaker 1: Nabokov as Syrian, continues to write again, occasionally benefiting from

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Speaker 1: nepotism due to the tragically killed daddy Vlatt. Now firmly

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Speaker 1: a member of the middle class, he begins working to

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Speaker 1: support the family and speaking to his early work, I

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Speaker 1: think this is really interesting and encouraging for those of

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Speaker 1: us that are also writers in our twenties. A lot

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Speaker 1: of his early stories are just okay. As he continues

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Speaker 1: to thrive in the emigrade writing communities, he writes stories

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Speaker 1: like the Potato Elf. He was not a great writer immediately,

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Speaker 1: which I find to be cool and realistic and comforting

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Speaker 1: and never is really discussed about the great writer canon.

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Speaker 1: Vladimir and Vera were very active in the Russian emigrane community.

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Speaker 1: They tutored and did setitary work, respectively to make ends

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Speaker 1: meet while they were living there. They end up living

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Speaker 1: in Berlin for twenty years, and Vladimir publishes early novels,

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Speaker 1: including ones that I really like, like The Defense and

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Speaker 1: The Gift, but he never really likes Germany and only

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Speaker 1: has a basic grasp on the language. In nineteen thirty six,

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Speaker 1: when their son Dmitri is only two years old, Vera

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Speaker 1: loses her job because of the increasing anti Semitism in Berlin.

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Speaker 1: And that same year, and I still cannot wrap my

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Speaker 1: head around this, but that same year, the man who

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Speaker 1: had murdered Daddy, vlad In, is promoted to be second

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Speaker 1: in command of the Russian emigrade group in Berlin, and

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Speaker 1: so the Nabokov's get the funk out of there. They

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Speaker 1: then spent some time in Paris, where Nabokov has a

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Speaker 1: brief affair. Vera finds out it ends, although there's enough

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Speaker 1: drama in there alone for a decent indie movie. He

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Speaker 1: writes his first English language novel, and mere weeks before

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Speaker 1: the Germans bomb Paris, Vladimir, Vira and Dmitri managed to

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Speaker 1: get to the US. To get there, they have half

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Speaker 1: of their ticket paid for by a Jewish rescue organization

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Speaker 1: that was arranged due to all of the great work

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Speaker 1: that Daddy Flatt had done back in the day, and

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Speaker 1: they crowdfund the rest from their rich friends. And in

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty they get to New York and I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's all a pretty amazing story. They get to the US,

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Speaker 1: and Nibulkov loves it. They're vowing to become, for all

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Speaker 1: intents and purposes, a fully American writer, although he remains

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Speaker 1: extremely nostalgic for Russia, both in memory and in language.

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Speaker 1: For the rest of his career, he volunteers at the

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Speaker 1: American Museum of Natural History and expands his studies on lepidoptery.

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Speaker 1: And this is a good point to mention that Nabokov

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Speaker 1: was also a full on butterfly scientist. That's what lepidoptery is,

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Speaker 1: stemming from a boyhood interest and ultimately taking up quite

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Speaker 1: a bit of his time in the nineteen forties while

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Speaker 1: teaching classes in Russian and literature at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

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Speaker 1: He also worked as the curator of lepidoptery at Harvard

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Speaker 1: University and ultimately contributed work to that field that remains

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Speaker 1: relevant today. Wild Stuff. In nine he first has the

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Speaker 1: idea for Lolita although at this time he calls the

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Speaker 1: book The Kingdom by the Sea, referencing Poe, and Lolita

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00:18:08,960 --> 00:18:13,040
Speaker 1: is called Juanita Dark. Sure, he gains a reputation as

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Speaker 1: an American writer, publishing story after story with The New Yorker.

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Speaker 1: He starts teaching at Cornell in Upstate New York in

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Speaker 1: ninety eight, and Lolita comes out in nineteen and this

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Speaker 1: changes his life forever. So once Lolita comes out and

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Speaker 1: all of this publication stuff is settled, the bulk off

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Speaker 1: was left with the impressions of the public. And oh

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Speaker 1: did the public respond. Lolita blazes, however, with a perversity

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Speaker 1: of a most original kind. A fine book, a distinguished book,

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Speaker 1: all right, then a great book without a doubt. It

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Speaker 1: is the fifthiest book I've ever read share unrestrained pornography.

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Speaker 1: The first is that it is dull, dull, dull in

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Speaker 1: a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is

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Speaker 1: that it is repulsive. What makes the book flame, I think,

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Speaker 1: is first of all, a love affair with the real

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Speaker 1: America three d pages of sex in the head. The

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Speaker 1: first time I read Lolita, I thought it was one

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Speaker 1: of the funniest books I'd ever come on. The second

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Speaker 1: time I read it uncut, I thought it was one

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Speaker 1: of the saddest humbert is all of us. Lolita is

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Speaker 1: undeniably news, unfortunately bad news, highbrow pornography. Thank you so

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Speaker 1: much to my friends for some truly career defining performances.

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00:19:56,800 --> 00:20:01,000
Speaker 1: They're good stuff. So Lolita is public in Paris and

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Speaker 1: early win is when well regarded English critic Graham Green

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Speaker 1: declares Lolita as one of his favorite books of nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty five, which gets people curious. And then it's a

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Speaker 1: year's long battle for Lolita to see the light of

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Speaker 1: day in the United States and in England. There's hushed

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Speaker 1: talks of potential court cases, constantly changing obscenity laws, faulty

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00:20:20,160 --> 00:20:25,159
Speaker 1: translations into foreign languages, people literally smuggling Olympia Press copies

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00:20:25,200 --> 00:20:29,800
Speaker 1: in their suitcases overseas, then having Lolita seized in customs.

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00:20:29,840 --> 00:20:33,000
Speaker 1: It was a big dramatic thing. Eventually, once the hype

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00:20:33,040 --> 00:20:35,600
Speaker 1: grew big enough in the US, the same publishers that

341
00:20:35,600 --> 00:20:38,240
Speaker 1: were once turning the bulk off away were now banging

342
00:20:38,280 --> 00:20:40,480
Speaker 1: down his door trying to get the publishing rights to

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00:20:40,560 --> 00:20:43,880
Speaker 1: the book. So all in all, Lolita was banned as

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Speaker 1: obscene in France from nineteen fifty six to nineteen fifty nine,

345
00:20:48,119 --> 00:20:50,520
Speaker 1: even though that was the country where it was first published.

346
00:20:50,880 --> 00:20:53,600
Speaker 1: Like with that math, it was banned in England from

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five to fifty nine, Argentina in nineteen fifty nine,

348
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Speaker 1: and in New Zealand in nineteen sixty. And it wasn't

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00:21:00,880 --> 00:21:05,280
Speaker 1: even unbanned in South Africa until two for God's sake,

350
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Speaker 1: But in nineteen fifty nine what Nabukov has been waiting

351
00:21:08,920 --> 00:21:12,399
Speaker 1: for happens. Not only is his book finally published in

352
00:21:12,440 --> 00:21:16,160
Speaker 1: the US four years later by Walter Minton at Putnam's,

353
00:21:16,280 --> 00:21:19,359
Speaker 1: it's a massive hit, staying on the bestseller lists for

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Speaker 1: months and selling a hundred thousand copies in its first

355
00:21:23,160 --> 00:21:28,000
Speaker 1: three weeks. Quick fund sidebar an American show girl named

356
00:21:28,080 --> 00:21:31,399
Speaker 1: Rosemary Ridgwell was the one to get Lolita published. She

357
00:21:31,600 --> 00:21:34,560
Speaker 1: was an avid reader and aspiring opera singer who was

358
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Speaker 1: actually having an affair with the Putnam publisher, Walter Minton,

359
00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:42,919
Speaker 1: and she ends up getting credit for this after some negotiating.

360
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Speaker 1: She makes twenty two thousand dollars in nineteen sixties money

361
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Speaker 1: for her trouble. That's a hundred ninety thousand dollars today,

362
00:21:50,720 --> 00:21:55,040
Speaker 1: Go Rosemary. But in the US, Lda never gets a

363
00:21:55,119 --> 00:21:58,640
Speaker 1: formal blanket ban. And in nineteen fifty nine, not only

364
00:21:58,720 --> 00:22:01,640
Speaker 1: is his book finally public in the US four years later,

365
00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:04,200
Speaker 1: it's a massive hit and it stays on the best

366
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Speaker 1: seller list for months. Once Lolita is published in the States.

367
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Speaker 1: For your scorecard, about one out of every three reviews

368
00:22:12,080 --> 00:22:14,159
Speaker 1: is bad. The other two were good. And while it

369
00:22:14,280 --> 00:22:18,000
Speaker 1: is true that certain American public libraries banned Lolita from

370
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Speaker 1: their shelves, nothing lasted, and the public learning of these

371
00:22:21,000 --> 00:22:24,359
Speaker 1: bands usually just served to increase the book sales again,

372
00:22:24,440 --> 00:22:27,600
Speaker 1: And that's the story of most banned books. And what

373
00:22:27,680 --> 00:22:30,760
Speaker 1: I think is most noteworthy here is that America ended

374
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Speaker 1: up becoming perhaps more receptive to Lolita than almost any

375
00:22:34,560 --> 00:22:38,080
Speaker 1: other country, which Nabokov was thrilled about. But what he

376
00:22:38,119 --> 00:22:41,040
Speaker 1: couldn't have known is that America was going to take

377
00:22:41,119 --> 00:22:44,880
Speaker 1: this story wildly out of context for decades to come.

378
00:22:44,960 --> 00:22:48,040
Speaker 1: I'm talking a parents sending their daughter and a Lolita

379
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Speaker 1: constom to Nabulkov's door. Weird, And to get a little

380
00:22:51,320 --> 00:22:53,960
Speaker 1: more into Nabokov's head at this point in his career,

381
00:22:54,040 --> 00:22:56,879
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to speak to Dana Dragonoyu, an

382
00:22:56,920 --> 00:23:00,560
Speaker 1: associate professor of English at Carlton University and Ottawa and

383
00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:04,879
Speaker 1: a noted Nabokovian. And that's what scholars who specialize in

384
00:23:04,880 --> 00:23:06,760
Speaker 1: the bulk of are called. They're like twi Hearts or

385
00:23:06,800 --> 00:23:10,040
Speaker 1: the BTS Army, but they're adults and probably ones who

386
00:23:10,080 --> 00:23:13,240
Speaker 1: would resent that comparison. They are the bulk of super

387
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:17,720
Speaker 1: fans with credentials. She's written Vladimir Nabukof and the Poetics

388
00:23:17,760 --> 00:23:22,520
Speaker 1: of Liberalism, Lolita, Law, ethics and politics and more, and

389
00:23:22,560 --> 00:23:25,159
Speaker 1: she's genuinely the coolest. So here's a little bit of

390
00:23:25,160 --> 00:23:29,200
Speaker 1: our discussion. So he's writing Lolita, just in the little

391
00:23:29,240 --> 00:23:33,760
Speaker 1: interlude between other big projects, and then as she's writing it,

392
00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:36,159
Speaker 1: he knows that he's got a ticking time bomb on

393
00:23:36,240 --> 00:23:38,919
Speaker 1: his hands. He knows that, um, he's putting all of

394
00:23:38,960 --> 00:23:42,520
Speaker 1: this time into this novel that might actually never be published.

395
00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:46,280
Speaker 1: Edmund Wilson actually hates it. He thinks it's not a

396
00:23:46,320 --> 00:23:53,880
Speaker 1: great book. Um, Catherine White doesn't want to doesn't want

397
00:23:53,880 --> 00:23:56,679
Speaker 1: to cut it. Yeah, so um, he sends it to

398
00:23:56,760 --> 00:23:59,920
Speaker 1: a few publishers and they all say that they can't

399
00:24:00,080 --> 00:24:03,480
Speaker 1: under risk of landing in jail themselves or having their

400
00:24:03,920 --> 00:24:08,840
Speaker 1: UM their publication houses prosecuted. And so then it comes

401
00:24:08,880 --> 00:24:13,359
Speaker 1: to the attention of other literati, and they pick up

402
00:24:13,400 --> 00:24:16,600
Speaker 1: the book, and some love it something that it's a

403
00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:21,160
Speaker 1: resplendent book, and others think that it's pornographic. So UM,

404
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:25,200
Speaker 1: somebody by the name of Warden Brown, I think he

405
00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:29,080
Speaker 1: writes in a British sensationalist publication that this book is

406
00:24:29,119 --> 00:24:33,320
Speaker 1: offensive and it ought to be suppressed. And then somebody

407
00:24:33,359 --> 00:24:37,040
Speaker 1: picks up this story in the New York Times Review

408
00:24:37,080 --> 00:24:42,320
Speaker 1: of Books, and UM articulates its own opinion, and so

409
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:46,600
Speaker 1: a scandal begins to slowly bubble up. With a book

410
00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:51,000
Speaker 1: off help, they publish a section of the book with

411
00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:54,880
Speaker 1: his afterward that the afterward which becomes on a book

412
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:58,360
Speaker 1: entitled Alita, and that gets published in the Anchor Review

413
00:24:58,840 --> 00:25:02,320
Speaker 1: as a kind of testing round. So then so so

414
00:25:02,480 --> 00:25:07,240
Speaker 1: after that, when UM American publishers realize that there's rama

415
00:25:07,280 --> 00:25:10,680
Speaker 1: surrounding this novel, they're starting to think that this could

416
00:25:10,720 --> 00:25:14,480
Speaker 1: be a moneymaker. But I also have found that even

417
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:17,439
Speaker 1: Nabokov seemed to be a little back and forth on

418
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:20,479
Speaker 1: you know, he he definitely said this is not a

419
00:25:20,480 --> 00:25:25,040
Speaker 1: moral story. He has mentioned aesthetics in regards to this book,

420
00:25:25,080 --> 00:25:28,919
Speaker 1: but then he also does seem to get frustrated in

421
00:25:29,080 --> 00:25:32,119
Speaker 1: some of his at least you know, personal writings when

422
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:36,640
Speaker 1: people seem to miss the point. So yeah, so so

423
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:42,000
Speaker 1: what he says on the pedagogical nature of books can

424
00:25:42,160 --> 00:25:45,919
Speaker 1: sometimes see contradictory. But if you put them all together, So,

425
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:49,720
Speaker 1: if you collate them all together and read them together,

426
00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:55,320
Speaker 1: the contradiction, uh disappears. Because what he's what he's ultimately

427
00:25:55,359 --> 00:26:01,480
Speaker 1: always saying, is that he doesn't approve of writings which

428
00:26:01,480 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 1: are exclusively pedagogical, which subordinate everything to the cautionary tale

429
00:26:06,920 --> 00:26:10,560
Speaker 1: or story, such as fables where the moral lesson is

430
00:26:10,600 --> 00:26:14,600
Speaker 1: so conspicuously obvious, and part of that so so so,

431
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:18,639
Speaker 1: part of this hostility which he has towards pedagogical like

432
00:26:18,760 --> 00:26:23,200
Speaker 1: straight up pedagogical literature, is personal. He was chased out

433
00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:28,439
Speaker 1: of Soviet Russia right during Lennon's push Lenon's seizure of power,

434
00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:34,320
Speaker 1: and after Nabokov luckily was able to escape, Lennon very

435
00:26:34,359 --> 00:26:39,520
Speaker 1: quickly clamped down on um all art and made socialist

436
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:42,800
Speaker 1: realists are to be the only acceptable way to write

437
00:26:42,840 --> 00:26:45,760
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union. Thank you so much to Dana

438
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:48,200
Speaker 1: Dragonoio for her time, and we'll be hearing more from

439
00:26:48,200 --> 00:26:52,160
Speaker 1: her later in the episode. So, after Lalita, the Bulk

440
00:26:52,200 --> 00:26:55,520
Speaker 1: of finally gets the literary success he's been chasing for

441
00:26:55,640 --> 00:26:59,240
Speaker 1: over three decades, he makes enough money to retire from teaching,

442
00:26:59,280 --> 00:27:02,040
Speaker 1: and rightful to time, he leaves the US and moves

443
00:27:02,040 --> 00:27:05,840
Speaker 1: into Montro Palace hotel in Switzerland. He writes the screenplay

444
00:27:05,880 --> 00:27:09,400
Speaker 1: to the nineteen sixty two Lolita movie directed by Stanley Kubrick.

445
00:27:09,840 --> 00:27:14,680
Speaker 1: Kind of, that's another episode, And most importantly, Nabuko finally

446
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:16,919
Speaker 1: has time to turn out some more hits in the

447
00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 1: novel space. He releases Pale Fire and Ada, the closest

448
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:24,439
Speaker 1: cousin of Lolita and Nabukov's catalog because it deals with

449
00:27:24,480 --> 00:27:29,000
Speaker 1: another huge cultural taboo incest and that story, which is

450
00:27:29,040 --> 00:27:31,600
Speaker 1: a whole other podcast. A brother and sister, Atta and

451
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:35,320
Speaker 1: Van carry on a lifelong ancestral affair without shame. It's

452
00:27:35,400 --> 00:27:39,720
Speaker 1: very intense, and in ninety seven Nabokov dies surrounded by

453
00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:42,800
Speaker 1: his family, and that's his life. We'll be right back

454
00:27:44,160 --> 00:27:55,639
Speaker 1: ye now. When it comes to his personal politics, Nabukov

455
00:27:55,720 --> 00:28:01,240
Speaker 1: definitely falls under the category of problematic face favorite term

456
00:28:01,280 --> 00:28:04,160
Speaker 1: I hate but feels appropriate. Here he states more than

457
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:07,119
Speaker 1: once that he considers women writers to be inferior and

458
00:28:07,160 --> 00:28:09,640
Speaker 1: didn't want to work with female translators. Here's a quote

459
00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:13,480
Speaker 1: on that, referencing Jane Austin. I dislike Jane and m

460
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:16,560
Speaker 1: prejudiced in fact against all women writers. They are in

461
00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:22,879
Speaker 1: another class, okay, king disappointing. Nabokov makes similar comments about

462
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:27,680
Speaker 1: working with female translators as well, And it's always interesting

463
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 1: to note that Vera Nabokov, his wife, is his closest

464
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 1: collaborator throughout his entire career, typing up everything he ever wrote,

465
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:39,080
Speaker 1: giving him notes, managing his image, and so on and

466
00:28:39,120 --> 00:28:41,920
Speaker 1: so on, and he knew how integral her work and

467
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:45,560
Speaker 1: support was to his success. When asked by the publication

468
00:28:45,640 --> 00:28:48,680
Speaker 1: The Listener in nineteen sixty nine, could you say how

469
00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:51,560
Speaker 1: important your wife has been as a collaborator in your work,

470
00:28:51,840 --> 00:28:56,800
Speaker 1: Nabokov cleverly replies I could not, and Vera was firm,

471
00:28:56,920 --> 00:28:59,920
Speaker 1: as we learn in Stacy Shifts Puliser, winning by our

472
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:03,080
Speaker 1: graphy of her in remaining on the sidelines of her

473
00:29:03,120 --> 00:29:07,880
Speaker 1: husband's career. So it's complicated, but Nabukov definitely comes up

474
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:10,720
Speaker 1: short in giving women their due, and I wouldn't really

475
00:29:10,760 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 1: call him a feminist writer, but then on other issues

476
00:29:14,280 --> 00:29:17,440
Speaker 1: he's extremely progressive. Some of the other things that stood

477
00:29:17,440 --> 00:29:20,560
Speaker 1: out to me just as interesting when researching his life

478
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:23,960
Speaker 1: were things like this, his devoted study of butterflies, his

479
00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:27,280
Speaker 1: deep love and partnership with his wife vera uh story

480
00:29:27,320 --> 00:29:29,800
Speaker 1: about when he was a kid when he had a

481
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:32,600
Speaker 1: French tutor, and he wrote a mean poem about his

482
00:29:32,800 --> 00:29:35,520
Speaker 1: how his French male tutor had a big gass, and

483
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:37,320
Speaker 1: then the tutor was mad at first, but then he

484
00:29:37,360 --> 00:29:39,280
Speaker 1: thought it was kind of funny, and then they were friends.

485
00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:41,440
Speaker 1: He was also a great dad. There's a lot of

486
00:29:41,440 --> 00:29:44,680
Speaker 1: great stories about him and his son Dmitri. I really

487
00:29:44,720 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 1: like how loyal he is to his Russian roots. Um

488
00:29:47,440 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 1: In addition to all of his fiction, he did this

489
00:29:49,960 --> 00:29:55,200
Speaker 1: seminal translation of Russia's great poet Alexander Pushkin's magnum Opus,

490
00:29:55,240 --> 00:29:58,080
Speaker 1: which is called Eugene on Agen. He translated it into

491
00:29:58,120 --> 00:30:01,960
Speaker 1: English and considered that work and Lolita to be his

492
00:30:02,040 --> 00:30:06,240
Speaker 1: biggest contributions to society. Nabokov wasn't active in politics in

493
00:30:06,280 --> 00:30:08,720
Speaker 1: a day to day sense most speculate because of how

494
00:30:08,760 --> 00:30:12,240
Speaker 1: political careers had torn his family apart and killed his father,

495
00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:15,480
Speaker 1: But he spoke out against anti Semitism at every phase

496
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:18,720
Speaker 1: of his life and was pretty strongly anti racist as well.

497
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:22,320
Speaker 1: He lectured at Spellman College and American Liberal Arts College

498
00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:24,600
Speaker 1: for Black women, and he formed a friendship with the

499
00:30:24,600 --> 00:30:28,160
Speaker 1: college's president, Florence Read that lasted for years. This is

500
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 1: further expanded on in Nabokov's short essay on a book

501
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:35,120
Speaker 1: entitled Lolita, included at the end of most editions of

502
00:30:35,160 --> 00:30:38,000
Speaker 1: the book. Referencing how the subject matter of Lolita put

503
00:30:38,000 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: off publishers at first, he says this the refusal to

504
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 1: buy the book was based not on my treatment of

505
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:46,720
Speaker 1: the theme, but on the theme itself. For there are

506
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:49,800
Speaker 1: at least three themes which are utterly taboo as far

507
00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:53,280
Speaker 1: as most American publishers are concerned. The two others are

508
00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:56,880
Speaker 1: a Negro white marriage which is a complete and glorious success,

509
00:30:56,920 --> 00:31:00,400
Speaker 1: resulting in lots of children and grandchildren. And the total

510
00:31:00,440 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 1: atheist who lives a happy and useful life and dies

511
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:05,280
Speaker 1: in his sleep at the age of a hundred and six.

512
00:31:07,160 --> 00:31:10,320
Speaker 1: And finally, what I love about Nabokov is that he

513
00:31:10,640 --> 00:31:15,800
Speaker 1: was so judge, at least in the literary criticism sense,

514
00:31:16,040 --> 00:31:18,719
Speaker 1: the way that you and me gossip about like people

515
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:22,800
Speaker 1: in our lives. Nibukov would just completely go off about authors,

516
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 1: like really aggressively, and it's kind of funny, like he

517
00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:30,640
Speaker 1: he likes James Joyce sometimes, and he likes Alexander Pushkin

518
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:33,920
Speaker 1: who was obviously dead, and Shakespeare who was super dead,

519
00:31:34,160 --> 00:31:37,640
Speaker 1: and Charles Dickens super super dead. But everyone else, ever,

520
00:31:38,040 --> 00:31:41,080
Speaker 1: he would just say they were trash, like he couldn't relax.

521
00:31:41,120 --> 00:31:43,640
Speaker 1: I lost count of examples of him just being judge

522
00:31:43,880 --> 00:31:49,160
Speaker 1: about other authors. F Scott Fitzgerald, Nabokov says trash. Boris

523
00:31:49,200 --> 00:31:52,360
Speaker 1: Pastor Nak, who was a Russian writer who wrote Doctor Javago,

524
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:57,160
Speaker 1: was literally afraid of Nabokov. When they were translating Javago

525
00:31:57,240 --> 00:32:00,840
Speaker 1: into English, someone suggested that Nabokov should be the translator,

526
00:32:00,880 --> 00:32:03,760
Speaker 1: and Pastor n was like, no, I don't think he

527
00:32:03,800 --> 00:32:06,560
Speaker 1: would want to, And then Nabako was asked and was like, no,

528
00:32:06,800 --> 00:32:09,920
Speaker 1: I absolutely don't want to. That book is trash. Henry

529
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:14,640
Speaker 1: James garbage, Miguel Cervantes gag. But he did teach Don

530
00:32:14,720 --> 00:32:18,720
Speaker 1: Quixote in his class. Jane Austen also taught her hated

531
00:32:18,720 --> 00:32:22,720
Speaker 1: her work, thought she was born Virginia Woolf. No thank you.

532
00:32:22,960 --> 00:32:26,360
Speaker 1: These two examples are arguably also him being sexist freud

533
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:32,320
Speaker 1: Kinsey grow up and her famously he hated Dostoyevsky, possibly

534
00:32:32,520 --> 00:32:35,680
Speaker 1: one of the most famous Russian authors of all time.

535
00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:39,360
Speaker 1: Put him in the trash can, says Nabokov. So he

536
00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:42,360
Speaker 1: would hate my writing. He would hate your writing. It's

537
00:32:42,360 --> 00:32:44,840
Speaker 1: all very dramatic, and I love how judge he was.

538
00:32:44,880 --> 00:32:48,840
Speaker 1: It's very funny. So that's Nabokov, definitely a strange and

539
00:32:48,840 --> 00:32:53,600
Speaker 1: complicated literary figure. But you'll notice, unlike the post Carrol's

540
00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:57,560
Speaker 1: and Dante's that Humbert Humbert harps on in Lolita, Nabokov

541
00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:02,280
Speaker 1: was not a Humbert Humbert type. So how does he

542
00:33:02,320 --> 00:33:06,040
Speaker 1: write as Humbert and why. It's also important to note

543
00:33:06,040 --> 00:33:09,520
Speaker 1: that Lolita was not Nabokov's first attempt to address the

544
00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:12,959
Speaker 1: theme of pedophilia by a long shot. He outlines Humberd's

545
00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:15,800
Speaker 1: approach to marrying a woman to get sexual access to

546
00:33:15,880 --> 00:33:18,920
Speaker 1: her child in the Russian language novel The Gift in

547
00:33:18,960 --> 00:33:21,480
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen thirties, then tries his hand at writing

548
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 1: the account of a pedophile again in the nine Russian

549
00:33:25,200 --> 00:33:28,400
Speaker 1: language novella The Enchanter, written in Paris the year before

550
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:31,760
Speaker 1: Nabukhov moves to the US. For a long time, Nbako

551
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:35,560
Speaker 1: thought that The Enchanter had been destroyed entirely, but in

552
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:38,480
Speaker 1: the sixties a copy resurfaced in his papers, and that

553
00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:42,720
Speaker 1: was later translated from Russian to English by his son Dmitri, who,

554
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:45,560
Speaker 1: by the way, is a bachelor king piece of work

555
00:33:45,600 --> 00:33:47,840
Speaker 1: all his own. He was like an opera singer, a

556
00:33:47,920 --> 00:33:50,920
Speaker 1: legacy keeper. He once got into huge trouble with his

557
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:54,400
Speaker 1: dad for judging a lolita contest in Italy while he

558
00:33:54,440 --> 00:33:57,280
Speaker 1: was in his twenties, which was exactly as problematic as

559
00:33:57,360 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 1: it sounded. The Enchanter oscillates between first and third person

560
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 1: narration and follows a nameless protagonist to Nabakov calls Arthur

561
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:08,040
Speaker 1: later in life, who, like Humbert, is attracted to young girls.

562
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:10,960
Speaker 1: He runs into a nameless girl in the park marries

563
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:13,279
Speaker 1: her mother to gain access to her. The mother dies

564
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:16,000
Speaker 1: soon after. In this story, she is sick and close

565
00:34:16,040 --> 00:34:18,360
Speaker 1: to death when he marries her instead of running in

566
00:34:18,400 --> 00:34:21,320
Speaker 1: front of a car like Charlotte. The protagonist then abducts

567
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:23,960
Speaker 1: the daughter under the guise of being her guardian, intending

568
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:26,200
Speaker 1: to take her on a long road trip. Their first

569
00:34:26,280 --> 00:34:29,000
Speaker 1: night away, while she's sleeping, he attempts to rape her,

570
00:34:29,200 --> 00:34:32,560
Speaker 1: but she wakes up, screams, and the protagonist panics and

571
00:34:32,719 --> 00:34:36,120
Speaker 1: full of shame, runs into traffic and is killed. It's

572
00:34:36,160 --> 00:34:38,920
Speaker 1: not his best and the similarities are mainly in the

573
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:41,759
Speaker 1: outline of the story, but this does prove that Lolita

574
00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:45,239
Speaker 1: wasn't a passing lark. Thematically, Nabokov had an interest in

575
00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:49,040
Speaker 1: telling a story with a pedophile protagonist deceiving everyone around them,

576
00:34:49,120 --> 00:34:51,880
Speaker 1: the devil in plain sight. And that's a pretty heavy

577
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:54,879
Speaker 1: theme for a writer that never swore, but there it is.

578
00:34:55,160 --> 00:34:57,920
Speaker 1: And it's even more interesting that Nabokov claims to have

579
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:00,680
Speaker 1: destroyed this story. But fifteen whole year years later, we

580
00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:03,320
Speaker 1: find a lot of the ideas in the Enchanter still

581
00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:06,640
Speaker 1: intact in Lolita. I'm going to kick it over to

582
00:35:06,680 --> 00:35:10,960
Speaker 1: another expert here, maybe the expert. Brian Boyd wrote the

583
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:15,239
Speaker 1: seminal biography of Nabokov, working directly with Vladimir Nabokov's wife

584
00:35:15,320 --> 00:35:19,000
Speaker 1: Vera and his son Dmitry Nabokov for over ten years

585
00:35:19,040 --> 00:35:23,080
Speaker 1: to get it done. He is the Nebukovian. He first

586
00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:25,799
Speaker 1: found Lolita at a bookstand his parents owned in New

587
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:28,120
Speaker 1: Zealand as a young teen and sort of snuck it

588
00:35:28,160 --> 00:35:31,040
Speaker 1: out as a literary contraband it was then then later

589
00:35:31,080 --> 00:35:34,239
Speaker 1: on he discovered Nabokov's novel Pale Fire and really fell

590
00:35:34,280 --> 00:35:36,719
Speaker 1: in love with all of Nabokov's work. And I've got

591
00:35:36,719 --> 00:35:38,960
Speaker 1: to say I was afraid the Nabokovians were going to

592
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:41,800
Speaker 1: be really intimidating, but they have been nothing but kind

593
00:35:41,920 --> 00:35:44,200
Speaker 1: and shared a ton of resources with me that were

594
00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:47,800
Speaker 1: extremely helpful in realizing this series. And they're really excited

595
00:35:47,840 --> 00:35:51,440
Speaker 1: about new perspectives and active criticism of Nabokov's work. So

596
00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:54,399
Speaker 1: here's some of Brian Boyd and my discussion about The

597
00:35:54,480 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: Enchanter and Lolita. I mean, he did he. I guess

598
00:35:59,640 --> 00:36:02,600
Speaker 1: he so passionate about freedom that he liked to break restrictions.

599
00:36:03,000 --> 00:36:06,360
Speaker 1: That was part of it, I think um and especially

600
00:36:06,440 --> 00:36:10,360
Speaker 1: that artistic freedom. And well, I did a review of

601
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:13,280
Speaker 1: The Enchanted, which was probably the harshest that's appeared anywhere.

602
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:16,960
Speaker 1: It was appeared with the title that I suggested pre

603
00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:22,600
Speaker 1: hash fair enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I think

604
00:36:22,600 --> 00:36:27,879
Speaker 1: it's a terrible little story. Really, Dmitri Nabokov's translation does

605
00:36:27,880 --> 00:36:30,799
Speaker 1: it much of a service. Would have been much better

606
00:36:30,840 --> 00:36:33,120
Speaker 1: if if it had been translated while in the Boca

607
00:36:33,320 --> 00:36:36,200
Speaker 1: was alive and could revise to me to his translation.

608
00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:41,320
Speaker 1: But it isn't that very clogged late Norbakov Russian pro style.

609
00:36:42,040 --> 00:36:46,720
Speaker 1: So there was that, and the fact that really nobody

610
00:36:46,800 --> 00:36:49,760
Speaker 1: was realized in the character in the characterization, the setting

611
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:54,960
Speaker 1: wasn't realized very well. Um, it's also different from Lolita,

612
00:36:55,040 --> 00:36:57,920
Speaker 1: which is so funny. You alone, My students found out

613
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:01,520
Speaker 1: had to a lot of them have found that increasingly

614
00:37:01,560 --> 00:37:07,439
Speaker 1: hard to see. Um, beautifully detailed about America, and it's

615
00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:09,880
Speaker 1: just got so many strands going in it, with the

616
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:14,120
Speaker 1: relationship between Humbled and Charlotte and Humbled and cruelty, and

617
00:37:14,840 --> 00:37:17,320
Speaker 1: the l term cruelty and so on. The blography like

618
00:37:17,800 --> 00:37:21,840
Speaker 1: posing challenges for his readers, and and here one of

619
00:37:21,840 --> 00:37:26,960
Speaker 1: the great challenges is to read it independently of Humbled

620
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:31,640
Speaker 1: to see, and so many people fail that test. I

621
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:35,120
Speaker 1: don't know if he kind of figured out what what

622
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:37,880
Speaker 1: a high percentage of readers would fail it. But you

623
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:41,640
Speaker 1: take those early readers like Lionel Trilling and Robertson Davies

624
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:45,360
Speaker 1: and the things they say about you know, Trilling is

625
00:37:45,400 --> 00:37:48,279
Speaker 1: saying it's it's a book about love, and Davey is

626
00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:53,239
Speaker 1: saying he thinks it's a seduction of a man by

627
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:57,760
Speaker 1: a corrupt girl. And you know, it's just snaggering that

628
00:37:57,880 --> 00:38:02,800
Speaker 1: these highly literate, highly educate did highly imagine the readers

629
00:38:02,880 --> 00:38:06,520
Speaker 1: could read it so badly on it does I think

630
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 1: did show a lot of the kind of predatory assumptance

631
00:38:11,640 --> 00:38:15,120
Speaker 1: in the male psyche time. Absolutely, I and I and

632
00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:19,279
Speaker 1: I found it really interesting. And again just with like

633
00:38:19,360 --> 00:38:23,240
Speaker 1: there's right off the bat kind of this bizarre misinterpretation

634
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:26,200
Speaker 1: that is not the author's fault. Well, I used to

635
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:29,200
Speaker 1: tell my students paying a picture of Nbakov and then

636
00:38:29,239 --> 00:38:38,000
Speaker 1: contrast with Humbert So say that, yeah, there's this famous

637
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:41,839
Speaker 1: rugby player who's was six ft five and I said

638
00:38:41,840 --> 00:38:46,200
Speaker 1: that Dmitri Nebakov was was six five years as tall

639
00:38:46,200 --> 00:38:51,120
Speaker 1: as as journal learner. Um, Dmitri is not the leader

640
00:38:51,200 --> 00:38:56,439
Speaker 1: and the back was not humbuged, and just just emphasizing that,

641
00:38:56,640 --> 00:39:02,040
Speaker 1: and and then inviting them to stressing how much the

642
00:39:02,120 --> 00:39:05,760
Speaker 1: bak of his on Lolita's side, and trying to read

643
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:12,680
Speaker 1: the novel from the angle. Yeah, the challenge of not

644
00:39:12,800 --> 00:39:17,360
Speaker 1: being seduced by Humbert's rhetoric. Thank you so much to Brian,

645
00:39:17,440 --> 00:39:19,640
Speaker 1: and we're gonna be talking to him a lot throughout

646
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:23,000
Speaker 1: the series. So Lolita is, of course far more nuanced

647
00:39:23,040 --> 00:39:25,480
Speaker 1: than the Enchanter, and that's great news. We talked a

648
00:39:25,480 --> 00:39:28,120
Speaker 1: little bit analytically about the book in the last episode,

649
00:39:28,160 --> 00:39:29,719
Speaker 1: but I have a few more things that I'd like

650
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:31,799
Speaker 1: to hit on here. Now. If you're in a Book

651
00:39:31,800 --> 00:39:34,080
Speaker 1: of fan that loves his use of language, we could

652
00:39:34,080 --> 00:39:35,880
Speaker 1: be here all day. So I'm going to try to

653
00:39:35,920 --> 00:39:38,439
Speaker 1: stay focused thematically, but I will mention a few uses

654
00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:42,160
Speaker 1: of language that are especially fun to me. Protagonist Humbert.

655
00:39:42,200 --> 00:39:46,000
Speaker 1: Humbert writes Lolita under observation and a sanatorium and later

656
00:39:46,040 --> 00:39:48,480
Speaker 1: in a jail cell, which the Book of would explain

657
00:39:48,719 --> 00:39:51,759
Speaker 1: is the animal drawing its own cage. Stylistically, Lolita is

658
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:54,560
Speaker 1: kind of a whole of mirrors language wise. We see

659
00:39:54,600 --> 00:39:57,480
Speaker 1: the same phrases pop up over and over while humbered

660
00:39:57,520 --> 00:40:00,120
Speaker 1: plays with language to lure the readers in their a

661
00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:03,400
Speaker 1: great essay on this in the collection The Magician's Doubts

662
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:06,360
Speaker 1: by Michael Wood. The hotel where Humbert first rapes Dolores

663
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:09,400
Speaker 1: is called The Enchanted Hunters. Later on, Dolores isn't a

664
00:40:09,400 --> 00:40:12,440
Speaker 1: clare quiality play. That's the writer that eventually abducts her

665
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:14,920
Speaker 1: out of humbert subduction, and the play is called The

666
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:18,400
Speaker 1: Hunted Enchanters. And when Dolores sees Humbert again, pregnant and

667
00:40:18,440 --> 00:40:21,600
Speaker 1: poor at seventeen, she lives on Hunter Road. There's a

668
00:40:21,680 --> 00:40:24,320
Speaker 1: character who co writes qualities plays with him named Vivian

669
00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:28,239
Speaker 1: dark Bloom. Mix those letters around and yes it's an

670
00:40:28,280 --> 00:40:30,920
Speaker 1: anagram for Vladimir and a Bukoff. There's all of the

671
00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:33,719
Speaker 1: po references, and a Buckov manages to insert some of

672
00:40:33,760 --> 00:40:37,799
Speaker 1: his opinions on pop psychologists like Kinsey and Freud. Through

673
00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 1: Humbert's telling psychiatrists at the sanatoriums. He stays at some

674
00:40:41,680 --> 00:40:44,600
Speaker 1: of the popular theories of his day instead of what

675
00:40:44,680 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 1: he was actually going through, making the psychologists feel accomplished

676
00:40:48,160 --> 00:40:51,000
Speaker 1: and Humbert feel like he's deceived them. And let's hit

677
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:53,040
Speaker 1: on that for a moment. Why did in a book

678
00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:56,000
Speaker 1: off he Freud so much. We're going to really unpack

679
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:58,920
Speaker 1: this in a future episode, but I wanted to quickly

680
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:02,200
Speaker 1: share this insight for Lucia Williams, who will be talking

681
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 1: with throughout this show. She's a former professor of psychology

682
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:09,920
Speaker 1: at the Universidad Federal Day Sal Carlos in Brazil, where

683
00:41:09,920 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 1: she coordinated LAPREV, the Laboratory of Violence Analysis and Protection.

684
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:18,240
Speaker 1: The paper of hers I am siting here is called

685
00:41:18,360 --> 00:41:22,480
Speaker 1: reading Lolita to Understand Child Sexual Abuse, and the reasoning

686
00:41:22,680 --> 00:41:26,719
Speaker 1: is this quote. Nabokov was intuitively right, even in his

687
00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:29,960
Speaker 1: antipathy for Sigmund Freud, who could have advanced knowledge on

688
00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:33,319
Speaker 1: the impact of child sexual abuse in human development and

689
00:41:33,400 --> 00:41:36,360
Speaker 1: did not for it. Came back from Paris shocked with

690
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:40,080
Speaker 1: the maltreated children he saw examined by child abuse pioneer

691
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:44,520
Speaker 1: Ambrosia Tardieu, a French pathologist and expert in forensic medicine.

692
00:41:44,719 --> 00:41:48,440
Speaker 1: In his Assault on Truth, Jeffrey M. Masson describes how

693
00:41:48,520 --> 00:41:52,320
Speaker 1: Freud was forced by Viennese society to abandon his proposed

694
00:41:52,480 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 1: seduction theory, in which hysteria occurred as a result of

695
00:41:56,719 --> 00:42:00,319
Speaker 1: premature sexual experiences, as no one could believe that so

696
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:05,040
Speaker 1: many respectable gentlemen could indeed sexually abuse their own daughters.

697
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:09,239
Speaker 1: As a result, Freud abandoned his theory and started defending

698
00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:12,840
Speaker 1: that the patient's report was a mere fabrication based on

699
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:17,759
Speaker 1: underlying repressed sexual urges unquote. There's a ton more. But

700
00:42:17,840 --> 00:42:21,800
Speaker 1: something Nbakov struggled with after Lalita became popular was critics

701
00:42:21,800 --> 00:42:25,640
Speaker 1: and readers conflating Humbert's attitudes with his own. Now, well,

702
00:42:25,680 --> 00:42:28,680
Speaker 1: I personally don't hate all of the fictional John Ray

703
00:42:28,760 --> 00:42:31,880
Speaker 1: juniors forward warning the reader that Humbert is a pedophile

704
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:34,880
Speaker 1: who's not to be trusted. Nabakov thought that John Ray Jr.

705
00:42:35,040 --> 00:42:37,160
Speaker 1: Was a little bit over the top, and his moralizing

706
00:42:37,320 --> 00:42:39,560
Speaker 1: something I would guess he would feel about a lot

707
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:43,719
Speaker 1: of culture today. I politely disagree. But speaking to this point.

708
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:47,200
Speaker 1: In conversation with Russian Jewish American author Herbert Gould the

709
00:42:47,280 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 1: following exchange, Gold says that his quote sense of the

710
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:54,440
Speaker 1: immorality of the relationship between Humbert, Humbert and Lalita is

711
00:42:54,600 --> 00:42:59,279
Speaker 1: very strong unquote. Nabakov replies, no, it is not my

712
00:42:59,480 --> 00:43:03,080
Speaker 1: sense of morality of the Humbered Humbered Lolita relationship that

713
00:43:03,239 --> 00:43:07,000
Speaker 1: is strong. It is humbled since he cares I do not.

714
00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:10,000
Speaker 1: Herbert says later on that some might find Humbered to

715
00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:13,959
Speaker 1: be quote touching, to which Nabokov says this, I would

716
00:43:13,960 --> 00:43:17,240
Speaker 1: put it differently. Humbered Humbert is a vain and cruel

717
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:21,040
Speaker 1: wretch who manages to appear touching that epithet. And it's

718
00:43:21,120 --> 00:43:24,600
Speaker 1: true tear erudized sense can only apply to my poor

719
00:43:24,640 --> 00:43:28,319
Speaker 1: little girl. And let's talk about that girl, Dolores the

720
00:43:28,520 --> 00:43:32,400
Speaker 1: book Dolores, because Humberts descriptions of her very often obscure

721
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:34,759
Speaker 1: the resilient young girl who never should have been put

722
00:43:34,760 --> 00:43:38,360
Speaker 1: in these circumstances to begin with. Dolores, in being declared

723
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:41,200
Speaker 1: the Lada by Humbert, suffers the fate that many of

724
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:45,760
Speaker 1: Nabokov's female characters do. She's fixated on, misunderstood and lusted

725
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:49,160
Speaker 1: after by a male protagonist that doesn't actually care who

726
00:43:49,239 --> 00:43:51,799
Speaker 1: she is or how she feels. And there's a lot

727
00:43:51,800 --> 00:43:54,760
Speaker 1: of reasons why readers often complate the actions and opinions

728
00:43:54,760 --> 00:43:57,480
Speaker 1: of character with their authors. And again, we could talk

729
00:43:57,520 --> 00:43:59,840
Speaker 1: about death of the author theory all day, but I

730
00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:03,239
Speaker 1: have an idea of why this might happen to Nibakov specifically,

731
00:44:03,360 --> 00:44:06,719
Speaker 1: and that is because virtually all of Nabakov's protagonists and

732
00:44:06,880 --> 00:44:10,000
Speaker 1: narrators are men, with the exception of one short story.

733
00:44:10,280 --> 00:44:13,840
Speaker 1: Many of them are Russian emigres or new to a country,

734
00:44:13,920 --> 00:44:16,880
Speaker 1: like Nabakov was in Germany and then in America, and

735
00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:21,520
Speaker 1: they're often also academics like Professor Nabakov. Like any writer,

736
00:44:21,719 --> 00:44:24,320
Speaker 1: Nabakov pulled from what he knew in order to write,

737
00:44:24,400 --> 00:44:27,600
Speaker 1: and like any good writer, his characters are not him.

738
00:44:27,640 --> 00:44:30,280
Speaker 1: It's interesting reading interviews with him from this time because

739
00:44:30,280 --> 00:44:33,759
Speaker 1: it often seems like people come into a discussion with

740
00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:40,920
Speaker 1: the assumption that writing about Humbert is automatically condoning it. Ye.

741
00:44:48,680 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 1: When asked why he named his criminal protagonist Humbert Humbert,

742
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:57,960
Speaker 1: Nabokov told Playboy in that it's quote very nasty, very suggestive.

743
00:44:58,320 --> 00:45:01,200
Speaker 1: It is a hateful name for a hateful person. But

744
00:45:01,280 --> 00:45:04,120
Speaker 1: let's get back to Nabokov's women. Also the name of

745
00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 1: an incredible essay collection recommended to me by Dana. Here's

746
00:45:08,080 --> 00:45:11,160
Speaker 1: a little bit more of our discussion there is, like

747
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:14,000
Speaker 1: you're saying, a lot of focus in his work on

748
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:20,520
Speaker 1: children suffering and then also women suffering, even the references

749
00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:23,840
Speaker 1: to you know, his feelings on anti Semitism. You know,

750
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:26,880
Speaker 1: it's like all the people that Humbert doesn't want us

751
00:45:26,920 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 1: to like, um make an anti Semitic comment at some point.

752
00:45:30,920 --> 00:45:34,279
Speaker 1: So you mentioned that, yes, the misogyny. He was very

753
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:38,440
Speaker 1: progressive on race for a man is of his time,

754
00:45:38,640 --> 00:45:43,600
Speaker 1: like exceptionally so and um in part he inherited that

755
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:47,799
Speaker 1: from his father. Uh. So Nabokov himself comes from a

756
00:45:48,040 --> 00:45:54,680
Speaker 1: very kind of Caucasian aristocratic, upper middle class UM background.

757
00:45:55,400 --> 00:45:57,799
Speaker 1: So I I think that would be true that that

758
00:45:58,000 --> 00:46:01,640
Speaker 1: women typically suffer in his fiction. Um, and for a

759
00:46:01,719 --> 00:46:07,560
Speaker 1: vast array of reason. So ums many commits suicide. Uh,

760
00:46:07,680 --> 00:46:11,719
Speaker 1: some are killed in freak accidents caused by men. So

761
00:46:11,800 --> 00:46:14,239
Speaker 1: the fact that Charlotte dies in the car accident, there's

762
00:46:14,239 --> 00:46:16,960
Speaker 1: no reason why she should have died in that car accident,

763
00:46:17,040 --> 00:46:23,040
Speaker 1: had um had humbered, humbled, not placed, all those other

764
00:46:23,239 --> 00:46:28,520
Speaker 1: things which led to that outcome. So Um, he doesn't, Um,

765
00:46:28,640 --> 00:46:33,600
Speaker 1: he doesn't acknowledge his contribution to her grizzly faith. But

766
00:46:33,680 --> 00:46:40,680
Speaker 1: it's there, right, it's all of those variables he put there. Um. Now,

767
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:43,719
Speaker 1: why why is there this? Why is there kind of

768
00:46:43,840 --> 00:46:49,400
Speaker 1: proliferation of angelic women who perish and suffer in the

769
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:55,000
Speaker 1: book of and kind of shallow viragos who are opportunists

770
00:46:55,040 --> 00:47:01,080
Speaker 1: and destroy men, because there are many of those as well. Um, well,

771
00:47:01,120 --> 00:47:03,520
Speaker 1: it's it's I would argue, and this is my argument,

772
00:47:03,719 --> 00:47:07,080
Speaker 1: but it's not imprint yet. That um that that Nabokov

773
00:47:07,239 --> 00:47:11,000
Speaker 1: was born and raised in a kind of culture of

774
00:47:11,160 --> 00:47:17,160
Speaker 1: honor and courtesy. That is a legacy of of medievalism,

775
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:21,960
Speaker 1: the medieval literature which he studied at Cambridge. His tripos

776
00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:25,560
Speaker 1: at Cambridge was in the Romance languages, so uh, the

777
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:29,799
Speaker 1: literature of France in the Middle Ages. Um. And Nabokov

778
00:47:29,960 --> 00:47:34,960
Speaker 1: grew up in an aristocratic family and Russia, where Um,

779
00:47:34,960 --> 00:47:40,440
Speaker 1: honor and gender ethics were very important. Men did certain things,

780
00:47:40,480 --> 00:47:45,879
Speaker 1: women did certain other things. If a woman's honor was impugned,

781
00:47:46,080 --> 00:47:49,840
Speaker 1: a man was expected to rise to her defense. His

782
00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:53,480
Speaker 1: father almost fought in a duel in the bakov himself

783
00:47:53,520 --> 00:47:57,719
Speaker 1: almost fought in a couple of duels. Uh. There's an anecdote,

784
00:47:57,760 --> 00:48:00,000
Speaker 1: for instance, that that Brian Boyd tells when a bok

785
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:04,680
Speaker 1: I was very young living in Berlin. Um, a violinist

786
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:08,840
Speaker 1: of Romanian extraction was well known to be a wife abuser,

787
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:12,960
Speaker 1: and then his wife died and she was full of bruises,

788
00:48:13,280 --> 00:48:17,279
Speaker 1: and the suspicion was that either he killed her or

789
00:48:17,320 --> 00:48:20,560
Speaker 1: that she committed suicide because she couldn't stand you abuse anymore.

790
00:48:20,920 --> 00:48:24,480
Speaker 1: So Nibakov goes to the club where the violinist is

791
00:48:24,600 --> 00:48:28,080
Speaker 1: still playing and he beats them up. So so this

792
00:48:28,200 --> 00:48:34,319
Speaker 1: act of vigilante justice right. But um, More broadly, I

793
00:48:34,360 --> 00:48:40,000
Speaker 1: think your question UM can be answered very productively because Nabokov,

794
00:48:40,160 --> 00:48:47,160
Speaker 1: like many Russian writers, was fascinated with with childhood, but

795
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:51,440
Speaker 1: not not in a sexual way, but as a kind

796
00:48:51,480 --> 00:48:57,200
Speaker 1: of test case for innocence and vulnerability. So in Nabokov's

797
00:48:57,280 --> 00:49:02,360
Speaker 1: own work, UH children um figure very frequently in his fiction,

798
00:49:03,080 --> 00:49:07,759
Speaker 1: and most frequently as victims. So the figure of the

799
00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:14,200
Speaker 1: suffering child haunts Nabokov's imagination from the well, I I

800
00:49:14,560 --> 00:49:19,919
Speaker 1: would say, from the moment that uh Nazism begins, and

801
00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:22,800
Speaker 1: and and and his mind is haunted by children being

802
00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:26,520
Speaker 1: burned in gas ovens, and so from then on to

803
00:49:27,160 --> 00:49:29,840
Speaker 1: the end of Vada. So that's like the entirety of

804
00:49:29,960 --> 00:49:34,920
Speaker 1: his greatest career, the child becomes iconic in his imagination.

805
00:49:36,160 --> 00:49:39,680
Speaker 1: Brian Boyd also points out the narrative significance that children

806
00:49:39,760 --> 00:49:43,960
Speaker 1: have within Nabokov's work, Well, I think really it was

807
00:49:44,040 --> 00:49:47,280
Speaker 1: because for him the innocence of childhood was so important.

808
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:52,400
Speaker 1: I think he was drist out almost by by the

809
00:49:52,440 --> 00:49:57,440
Speaker 1: way child was sexualized too early in America, and he

810
00:49:57,520 --> 00:50:02,560
Speaker 1: felt uneasy about Dmitri being off at at summer camps

811
00:50:02,560 --> 00:50:08,319
Speaker 1: and so on, the corruption with young young children. I'm

812
00:50:08,360 --> 00:50:11,800
Speaker 1: interested in in your thoughts on the female characters, that

813
00:50:11,920 --> 00:50:15,040
Speaker 1: doomed women there are, There are a lot of doomed

814
00:50:15,040 --> 00:50:20,440
Speaker 1: men in you think you think of the illusion defense

815
00:50:20,480 --> 00:50:23,200
Speaker 1: and the suicide that that that whole book leads to

816
00:50:23,400 --> 00:50:29,800
Speaker 1: so painfully inexorably, or or Field's father and the gift

817
00:50:29,880 --> 00:50:34,360
Speaker 1: to you know, presum only has been killed or killed

818
00:50:34,400 --> 00:50:38,920
Speaker 1: summer in Central Asia, or Martin in Glory, who presumably

819
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:41,480
Speaker 1: has been killed with trying to cross the border into Russia.

820
00:50:41,880 --> 00:50:46,560
Speaker 1: Or David the boy who has tortured in that ghastly

821
00:50:46,600 --> 00:50:49,080
Speaker 1: Wayne in Ben Sinister and then his father who goes

822
00:50:49,120 --> 00:50:52,759
Speaker 1: mad and runs towards people in the shot you know, uh,

823
00:50:52,800 --> 00:50:56,719
Speaker 1: and the bok of knew he had the best friend

824
00:50:56,719 --> 00:51:00,279
Speaker 1: of his childhood, his cousin jury shot with his head

825
00:51:00,360 --> 00:51:04,960
Speaker 1: ripped off by machine guns in nine and then his

826
00:51:04,960 --> 00:51:12,759
Speaker 1: his father's murder Ino you know, Edmund White complains that

827
00:51:12,760 --> 00:51:15,680
Speaker 1: that there's too much violent death in the Baca. The

828
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:18,879
Speaker 1: Baka head lived it. And of course as Shade gets

829
00:51:18,920 --> 00:51:23,480
Speaker 1: shot and in pale fire and there's a huge person

830
00:51:23,520 --> 00:51:27,200
Speaker 1: gets burnt in transparent thing. So okay, there are doomed women,

831
00:51:27,239 --> 00:51:31,560
Speaker 1: but there are doomed people of every kind. Thank you

832
00:51:31,600 --> 00:51:34,800
Speaker 1: so much again to Brian Boyd and to Dina Dragonaiu

833
00:51:35,000 --> 00:51:38,160
Speaker 1: for all of that wonderful insight. So, as many have

834
00:51:38,280 --> 00:51:41,719
Speaker 1: noted in the past, Dolores is not completely absent in

835
00:51:41,760 --> 00:51:45,080
Speaker 1: the text of Lolita, but she is absolutely sidelined by

836
00:51:45,160 --> 00:51:48,319
Speaker 1: Humbert in order to better serve his own narrative. There

837
00:51:48,400 --> 00:51:51,160
Speaker 1: is far more said by Humbert about what he fixates

838
00:51:51,200 --> 00:51:55,440
Speaker 1: and projects onto her, his physical desire, extremely specific details

839
00:51:55,480 --> 00:51:58,759
Speaker 1: about her appearance, his paranoia, and his blame when she's

840
00:51:58,760 --> 00:52:02,399
Speaker 1: physically absent, than about Dolores herself. That is to say,

841
00:52:02,520 --> 00:52:05,160
Speaker 1: we hear a lot about Lolita, who was a fantasy,

842
00:52:05,520 --> 00:52:09,680
Speaker 1: not Dolores, who is very real in enduring a personal tragedy.

843
00:52:10,160 --> 00:52:12,840
Speaker 1: Where we do find Lores is in some of her dialogue.

844
00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:15,680
Speaker 1: She says stuff like I must go now, kiddo, beaute

845
00:52:15,719 --> 00:52:19,719
Speaker 1: swankswell peach sab stinker, jerk, super luscious, goon, drip you

846
00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:23,080
Speaker 1: dull bulb a lot of stuff, as well as descriptions

847
00:52:23,120 --> 00:52:27,200
Speaker 1: of what she likes. However, when Humpert describes Dolores's interest

848
00:52:27,400 --> 00:52:31,160
Speaker 1: to us, it's mostly just to call them annoying, a

849
00:52:31,160 --> 00:52:35,520
Speaker 1: combination of naivete and deception, of charm and vulgarity, of

850
00:52:35,560 --> 00:52:39,239
Speaker 1: blue sulks and rosy mirth. Lolita, when she chose could

851
00:52:39,280 --> 00:52:42,560
Speaker 1: be a most exasperating brat, I was not really quite

852
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:46,880
Speaker 1: prepared for her fits of disorganized boredom, intense and vehement gripping,

853
00:52:47,280 --> 00:52:50,680
Speaker 1: her sprawling, droopy, dopey eyed style, and what is called

854
00:52:51,000 --> 00:52:55,080
Speaker 1: goofing off, a kind of diffused clowning which she thought

855
00:52:55,120 --> 00:52:59,160
Speaker 1: was tough in a boyish hoodlum way. Mentally, I found

856
00:52:59,160 --> 00:53:02,719
Speaker 1: her to be a disgustingly conventional way. What Humbert is

857
00:53:02,760 --> 00:53:06,960
Speaker 1: so snobbishly describing here is a regular kid. I mean,

858
00:53:07,040 --> 00:53:09,319
Speaker 1: if you needed any more evidence that this isn't a

859
00:53:09,320 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 1: love story. He does not like the parts of Dolores

860
00:53:12,280 --> 00:53:15,520
Speaker 1: that he cannot sexualize or control, and there are a

861
00:53:15,520 --> 00:53:19,520
Speaker 1: few references to the extremely deep despair that Dolores, who

862
00:53:19,560 --> 00:53:23,040
Speaker 1: again is just a kid, is feeling about her situation.

863
00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:26,840
Speaker 1: There's references to the Knights, she spends crying, a few

864
00:53:27,040 --> 00:53:30,880
Speaker 1: moments with her friends, and this really devastating scene that

865
00:53:30,960 --> 00:53:33,319
Speaker 1: Humbert reflects on at the end of the book, when

866
00:53:33,360 --> 00:53:37,960
Speaker 1: Dolores sees her friend Avis have an innocuous, affectionate interaction

867
00:53:38,000 --> 00:53:41,880
Speaker 1: with her dad while Dolores is holding a kitchen knife. Suddenly,

868
00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:44,680
Speaker 1: as Avis clung to her father's neck and ear while

869
00:53:44,800 --> 00:53:47,279
Speaker 1: with a casual arm, the man enveloped his lumpy and

870
00:53:47,360 --> 00:53:51,080
Speaker 1: large offspring. I saw Lolita's smile lose all its light

871
00:53:51,160 --> 00:53:54,520
Speaker 1: and become a frozen little shadow of itself. And the

872
00:53:54,560 --> 00:53:56,600
Speaker 1: fruit knife slipped off the table and struck her with

873
00:53:56,640 --> 00:53:59,880
Speaker 1: a silver handle, a freak blow on the ankle. And

874
00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:03,040
Speaker 1: while you do need to look for these passages, there's

875
00:54:03,120 --> 00:54:06,840
Speaker 1: so much here. There's a reminder of how unhappy do

876
00:54:06,840 --> 00:54:11,640
Speaker 1: loris is, that she's also experiencing grief from losing her parents,

877
00:54:11,640 --> 00:54:14,800
Speaker 1: her inability to communicate with the people in her life

878
00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:18,520
Speaker 1: about this despair out of fear and trauma. There's a

879
00:54:18,560 --> 00:54:22,160
Speaker 1: lot and then a buck offs themselves grew protective of Lolita.

880
00:54:22,239 --> 00:54:25,279
Speaker 1: I already showed you this quote from Vera last episode,

881
00:54:25,400 --> 00:54:28,200
Speaker 1: but here it is in a bit longer form. I

882
00:54:28,320 --> 00:54:32,560
Speaker 1: wish someone would notice the tender description of the child's helplessness,

883
00:54:32,560 --> 00:54:35,879
Speaker 1: her pathetic dependence on the monstrous h h and her

884
00:54:35,920 --> 00:54:40,560
Speaker 1: heartrending courage, all along culminating in that squalid but essentially

885
00:54:40,600 --> 00:54:44,360
Speaker 1: pure and healthy marriage and her dog. They all missed

886
00:54:44,360 --> 00:54:47,360
Speaker 1: the fact that the horrid little brat Lolita is essentially

887
00:54:47,520 --> 00:54:50,680
Speaker 1: very good. Indeed, or she would not have straightened out

888
00:54:50,680 --> 00:54:53,960
Speaker 1: after being crushed so terribly and found a decent life

889
00:54:54,000 --> 00:54:56,960
Speaker 1: with poor Dick more to her liking than the other kind.

890
00:54:58,239 --> 00:55:00,480
Speaker 1: I also want to take another opportunity here to give

891
00:55:00,600 --> 00:55:05,120
Speaker 1: Charlotte Hayes her due. While she's portrayed as flighty, selfish

892
00:55:05,160 --> 00:55:08,400
Speaker 1: and cruel to her daughter, a degree of which definitely

893
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:13,719
Speaker 1: appears true, try and look through Humbert's language here. Charlotte

894
00:55:13,920 --> 00:55:16,799
Speaker 1: is a single parent at a time where this was

895
00:55:17,000 --> 00:55:20,480
Speaker 1: not made easy in the late nineteen forties. She's still

896
00:55:20,760 --> 00:55:24,600
Speaker 1: mourning her husband, as well as something that's only mentioned once,

897
00:55:24,880 --> 00:55:27,120
Speaker 1: the death of a two year old boy who had

898
00:55:27,160 --> 00:55:31,920
Speaker 1: been Dolores's baby brother, and Dolores likely had unresolved issues

899
00:55:31,960 --> 00:55:35,440
Speaker 1: around a trauma like this as well. So while Charlotte

900
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:39,520
Speaker 1: does seem unkind and distant to her daughter, relatable even

901
00:55:39,600 --> 00:55:43,759
Speaker 1: considering all that, there's a context to this all its own,

902
00:55:44,160 --> 00:55:46,560
Speaker 1: and so whether you like her or not, she is

903
00:55:46,680 --> 00:55:49,680
Speaker 1: far more complicated and going through a lot more than

904
00:55:49,760 --> 00:55:53,680
Speaker 1: Humbert is comfortable with or interested in acknowledging, And the

905
00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:56,040
Speaker 1: book of himself found for the first time in his

906
00:55:56,160 --> 00:55:59,359
Speaker 1: career a character he had written was being taken out

907
00:55:59,440 --> 00:56:02,680
Speaker 1: of his authorial control. He says the following to the

908
00:56:02,719 --> 00:56:06,680
Speaker 1: writer Graham Green in n before Lolita had even been

909
00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:10,480
Speaker 1: published in the United States. My poor Lolita is having

910
00:56:10,520 --> 00:56:13,800
Speaker 1: a rough time, Nabokov wrote to Green. The pity is

911
00:56:13,840 --> 00:56:15,799
Speaker 1: that if I had made her a boy, or a

912
00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:19,799
Speaker 1: cow or a bicycle, Philistines might never have flinched. Where

913
00:56:19,800 --> 00:56:23,080
Speaker 1: there's this exchange from the Paris Review. Humbert was fond

914
00:56:23,160 --> 00:56:27,080
Speaker 1: of little girls, not simply young girls, nymphets our girl children,

915
00:56:27,239 --> 00:56:31,120
Speaker 1: not starlets and sex kittens. Lolita was twelve, not eighteen,

916
00:56:31,160 --> 00:56:33,600
Speaker 1: when Humbert met her. You may remember that by the

917
00:56:33,600 --> 00:56:35,920
Speaker 1: time she is fourteen, he refers to her as his

918
00:56:36,239 --> 00:56:39,560
Speaker 1: aging mistress, and it is understandable that the press and

919
00:56:39,640 --> 00:56:42,799
Speaker 1: people in the Bokov circle had a difficult time understanding

920
00:56:42,800 --> 00:56:45,719
Speaker 1: how a writer who was by all accounts nothing like

921
00:56:45,840 --> 00:56:49,439
Speaker 1: Humbert in his criminality, plugged himself into such a sick

922
00:56:49,480 --> 00:56:52,520
Speaker 1: protagonist mind. And in fact, there were even parents of

923
00:56:52,560 --> 00:56:55,239
Speaker 1: students at Cornell who were nervous to let their kids

924
00:56:55,280 --> 00:56:59,000
Speaker 1: take classes from Nabokov. What we know about Nubukov's ability

925
00:56:59,120 --> 00:57:02,640
Speaker 1: to create hu Bert comes down to his research. He

926
00:57:02,680 --> 00:57:05,560
Speaker 1: looked at a number of case studies of American pedophiles,

927
00:57:05,560 --> 00:57:08,200
Speaker 1: some of which will discuss in a future episode, and

928
00:57:08,320 --> 00:57:10,920
Speaker 1: also later said that he had listened to how girls

929
00:57:10,920 --> 00:57:14,000
Speaker 1: spoke to each other on buses and in public parks,

930
00:57:14,040 --> 00:57:17,920
Speaker 1: and he wrote a character early into Lolita's publication history.

931
00:57:18,040 --> 00:57:21,480
Speaker 1: Nabokov also attempted to control what appeared on the cover

932
00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:26,000
Speaker 1: of his book, saying this, I want pure colors, melting clouds,

933
00:57:26,040 --> 00:57:29,480
Speaker 1: accurately drawn details, a sunburst above a receding road with

934
00:57:29,520 --> 00:57:33,080
Speaker 1: a light reflected in furrows and ruts, after rain, and

935
00:57:33,440 --> 00:57:36,880
Speaker 1: no girls. If you've ever seen a cover of Lolita,

936
00:57:37,160 --> 00:57:40,680
Speaker 1: you will know that this wish was definitely not respected,

937
00:57:41,000 --> 00:57:44,280
Speaker 1: and that there's been a wide variety of We will

938
00:57:44,320 --> 00:57:46,800
Speaker 1: will get to that in a future episode. Even later

939
00:57:46,800 --> 00:57:49,360
Speaker 1: in his career, Nabokov would go on to take public

940
00:57:49,440 --> 00:57:52,880
Speaker 1: issue with how the Dictionary defined the word nymphete, a

941
00:57:52,960 --> 00:57:56,760
Speaker 1: word that he invented, whose definition he was still ultimately

942
00:57:56,880 --> 00:58:01,960
Speaker 1: unable to control. Lolita had grown too big, and so eventually,

943
00:58:02,120 --> 00:58:05,200
Speaker 1: as time went on, Nabakov kind of stopped trying and

944
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:08,600
Speaker 1: moved on to write other work. Lolita had secured for

945
00:58:08,680 --> 00:58:11,400
Speaker 1: him the life he had always wanted. He could write

946
00:58:11,440 --> 00:58:14,720
Speaker 1: full time. He was acclaimed as a great American writer.

947
00:58:15,160 --> 00:58:18,240
Speaker 1: So when Stanley Kubrick and James Harris bought the rights

948
00:58:18,320 --> 00:58:21,400
Speaker 1: to the movie in ninety eight and invited Nabokov to

949
00:58:21,440 --> 00:58:25,640
Speaker 1: write the screenplay, after a while he said yes. And

950
00:58:25,720 --> 00:58:28,960
Speaker 1: it's about here that we're going to say goodbye to

951
00:58:29,120 --> 00:58:32,760
Speaker 1: Dolores for now. As far as I'm concerned, she exists

952
00:58:32,960 --> 00:58:35,800
Speaker 1: solely in the book. What we find and what global

953
00:58:35,840 --> 00:58:38,440
Speaker 1: culture takes away from this book, at least in the

954
00:58:38,480 --> 00:58:42,720
Speaker 1: general sense, is just Lolita, the fantasy that a pedophile

955
00:58:42,760 --> 00:58:44,960
Speaker 1: is trying to sell us, not the girl that is

956
00:58:44,960 --> 00:58:49,400
Speaker 1: suffering behind it. I really love Dolores. Justice for Dolores,

957
00:58:49,560 --> 00:58:51,800
Speaker 1: and and I'm very attached to her. She is a

958
00:58:51,880 --> 00:58:54,919
Speaker 1: kid that is able to find these moments of joy

959
00:58:55,000 --> 00:58:58,960
Speaker 1: for herself during an inhuman experience. And even inside of

960
00:58:58,960 --> 00:59:02,240
Speaker 1: this horrifying account by a pedophile with a vested interest

961
00:59:02,280 --> 00:59:06,600
Speaker 1: in winning your sympathy, Dolores still shines through in these moments.

962
00:59:08,120 --> 00:59:11,360
Speaker 1: Nabokov has his flaws and we should not ignore them.

963
00:59:11,880 --> 00:59:14,360
Speaker 1: But close readers of the book and the scholars who

964
00:59:14,400 --> 00:59:18,440
Speaker 1: have been discussing, guarding, and cataloging the entirety of Nabokov's

965
00:59:18,440 --> 00:59:21,919
Speaker 1: work over the years, the Nabokovians, I love to say

966
00:59:21,920 --> 00:59:25,440
Speaker 1: that have not found a shred of pro pedophilia within

967
00:59:25,480 --> 00:59:28,640
Speaker 1: the text itself. There really is no good faith interpretation

968
00:59:28,680 --> 00:59:31,160
Speaker 1: of the work that will say so, although there's plenty

969
00:59:31,200 --> 00:59:34,240
Speaker 1: of bad faith interpreters out there, the discussion academically has

970
00:59:34,240 --> 00:59:38,240
Speaker 1: actually begun to actively encourage a feminist reading and teaching

971
00:59:38,320 --> 00:59:41,600
Speaker 1: of the text. Dana Dragonoio with the mic drop here

972
00:59:42,600 --> 00:59:47,880
Speaker 1: the novel Um and even Humbert. Humbert does led through

973
00:59:47,920 --> 00:59:53,880
Speaker 1: the cracks uh knowledge about her actions and activities, which

974
00:59:54,320 --> 00:59:58,840
Speaker 1: Um really tell us beyond any reasonable doubt that she

975
00:59:59,040 --> 01:00:02,720
Speaker 1: was trying to make an escape from him. So we're

976
01:00:02,760 --> 01:00:06,160
Speaker 1: told that she's squirreling money away that he gives her

977
01:00:06,200 --> 01:00:09,280
Speaker 1: for the various sexual acts that he imposes upon her.

978
01:00:10,160 --> 01:00:13,560
Speaker 1: She squirrels away money not to buy confectionery, but to

979
01:00:13,640 --> 01:00:17,040
Speaker 1: run away. She's trying to get away from him, and

980
01:00:17,080 --> 01:00:20,520
Speaker 1: then he takes away that money like the depths of

981
01:00:20,680 --> 01:00:25,560
Speaker 1: his villainies kind of uh. He makes promises which she

982
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:30,760
Speaker 1: uh he which he breaks the moment that she has

983
01:00:30,880 --> 01:00:34,400
Speaker 1: uh you know, had had had sex with him, So

984
01:00:34,440 --> 01:00:37,560
Speaker 1: he makes promises that he retracts um and the minute

985
01:00:37,600 --> 01:00:40,880
Speaker 1: that she can get away from him, she leaves him.

986
01:00:40,960 --> 01:00:44,120
Speaker 1: So so we see a a we know because he

987
01:00:44,200 --> 01:00:48,040
Speaker 1: admits it that she's crying every night. Um. He tells

988
01:00:48,120 --> 01:00:52,160
Speaker 1: us that he had trained himself to ignore her sobs

989
01:00:52,200 --> 01:00:57,280
Speaker 1: in the night every night. Um uh. He admits that

990
01:00:57,520 --> 01:01:00,600
Speaker 1: she only gets reconciled to him only because had nowhere

991
01:01:00,600 --> 01:01:05,800
Speaker 1: else to go. So um. There's not a single moment

992
01:01:05,920 --> 01:01:09,560
Speaker 1: in the novel which suggests to us that Lolita was

993
01:01:09,640 --> 01:01:14,840
Speaker 1: actually um enjoying her life with him. It was totally

994
01:01:16,960 --> 01:01:20,520
Speaker 1: a condition of imprisonment. Um. We do. We don't even

995
01:01:20,560 --> 01:01:24,400
Speaker 1: have the Stockholm syndrome. She she doesn't even suffer from

996
01:01:24,480 --> 01:01:28,600
Speaker 1: the Stockholm syndrome. Right, she never she never worns something

997
01:01:28,600 --> 01:01:31,560
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah, she never wants to be there. She

998
01:01:31,680 --> 01:01:34,200
Speaker 1: she never wants to be there. And and the irony

999
01:01:34,200 --> 01:01:36,640
Speaker 1: of irony is the kind of tragic irony that that

1000
01:01:36,720 --> 01:01:41,680
Speaker 1: she makes her escape with somebody who's even worse than Humbered.

1001
01:01:41,920 --> 01:01:44,960
Speaker 1: So how to teach Lolita? What can you teach us?

1002
01:01:45,520 --> 01:01:48,640
Speaker 1: A debate that hasn't been put to rest, and it

1003
01:01:50,000 --> 01:01:56,800
Speaker 1: relates to um. The question of how uh Lolita suppressed

1004
01:01:56,880 --> 01:02:00,480
Speaker 1: in the novel Uh isn't is a debate that is

1005
01:02:00,520 --> 01:02:04,000
Speaker 1: now of several decades standing, and it began with a

1006
01:02:04,080 --> 01:02:07,720
Speaker 1: number of feminist scholars who noticed that there is a

1007
01:02:07,840 --> 01:02:13,640
Speaker 1: temporal discrepancy in Humbert's account. There's three days missing, Um,

1008
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:17,240
Speaker 1: three days missing in the chronology that he gives us.

1009
01:02:17,280 --> 01:02:20,440
Speaker 1: And if those three days that are missing is not

1010
01:02:20,560 --> 01:02:25,800
Speaker 1: simply a typo, but Nabokov intentionally put it there, that

1011
01:02:25,920 --> 01:02:31,040
Speaker 1: means that Humbert never receives a letter from Dolly, never

1012
01:02:31,120 --> 01:02:34,560
Speaker 1: goes to Colmont to meet her in her pregnant state,

1013
01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:38,160
Speaker 1: and never marries Quilty. And there was never an equality

1014
01:02:38,240 --> 01:02:45,120
Speaker 1: to begin with. So that flow to the possibility that

1015
01:02:45,200 --> 01:02:49,040
Speaker 1: Dolly got away from him much earlier. We don't know

1016
01:02:49,120 --> 01:02:51,680
Speaker 1: really what happens to her. Even if she's dead, she

1017
01:02:51,800 --> 01:02:56,880
Speaker 1: might even be alive and well. And um. This this

1018
01:02:57,120 --> 01:03:02,000
Speaker 1: argument has its sympathizers and it's the tractors. Brian Boyd

1019
01:03:02,120 --> 01:03:06,800
Speaker 1: has showed that it's almost certainly a typo. Nabokov was

1020
01:03:06,920 --> 01:03:11,280
Speaker 1: very careless with his dates. Um. But those who are

1021
01:03:11,280 --> 01:03:14,160
Speaker 1: in favor of this theory will point out that when

1022
01:03:14,160 --> 01:03:17,720
Speaker 1: when the book was translated into Russian, uh and the

1023
01:03:17,840 --> 01:03:21,200
Speaker 1: Book of Uh does not in the Book of does

1024
01:03:21,240 --> 01:03:25,880
Speaker 1: not correct the error, but in fact underscores it, leaves

1025
01:03:25,880 --> 01:03:30,000
Speaker 1: the air in place and draws attention to it. So

1026
01:03:30,160 --> 01:03:36,160
Speaker 1: if it's intentional, if it's intentional, the destiny of Dolly

1027
01:03:36,640 --> 01:03:40,360
Speaker 1: could be something very different than the tragic destiny that

1028
01:03:40,680 --> 01:03:43,600
Speaker 1: Humbert inscribed in the book. So, if you are an

1029
01:03:43,600 --> 01:03:46,640
Speaker 1: adult still out here saying this is a love story,

1030
01:03:47,320 --> 01:03:49,880
Speaker 1: let me be perfectly clear how I feel about it.

1031
01:03:50,400 --> 01:03:53,960
Speaker 1: You missed the fucking point. But hey, you are certainly

1032
01:03:53,960 --> 01:03:57,480
Speaker 1: not alone there. So in the early nineteen sixties, then

1033
01:03:57,480 --> 01:04:00,000
Speaker 1: a book of come back to the US from Swiss

1034
01:04:00,000 --> 01:04:03,360
Speaker 1: Island so that Vladimir can write the screenplay for Stanley

1035
01:04:03,400 --> 01:04:09,720
Speaker 1: Kubrick's Lolita. What was about to happen was well, yeah,

1036
01:04:09,840 --> 01:04:12,960
Speaker 1: next week on Lolita Podcast. This has been a production

1037
01:04:13,040 --> 01:04:15,840
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. My name's Jamie Loftus, I right

1038
01:04:15,920 --> 01:04:19,360
Speaker 1: and host the show. My producers are the wonderful Sophie Lifterman,

1039
01:04:19,520 --> 01:04:23,600
Speaker 1: Miles Gray, Beth and Macaluso and Jack O'Brien. My editor

1040
01:04:23,760 --> 01:04:27,680
Speaker 1: is the amazing Isaac Taylor. Additional research and transcription work

1041
01:04:27,720 --> 01:04:31,000
Speaker 1: from Ben Loftus. Music is by Zoe Blade and her

1042
01:04:31,120 --> 01:04:34,120
Speaker 1: theme is from Brad Dicker. Thank you so much to

1043
01:04:34,160 --> 01:04:37,000
Speaker 1: my guest voices on this episode, as well as Ziz

1044
01:04:37,080 --> 01:04:40,920
Speaker 1: Vora as Humbert Humbert, Robert Evans as Vladimir in the

1045
01:04:40,960 --> 01:04:45,560
Speaker 1: bukup Anna Hostia Sharene, Lani Unis, Grace Thomas, and Miles Gray.

1046
01:04:46,080 --> 01:04:47,000
Speaker 1: We'll see you next week.