Speaker 1: Trigger warning. This podcast is about the book Lolita and
Speaker 1: discusses themes of pedophilia. Listener discretion is advised. December sixth,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three, finished Lolita, which was begun exactly five
Speaker 1: years ago. Vladimir Nabukov wrote to a friend that he
Speaker 1: had finished Lolita, a novel he had been working on
Speaker 1: for five years and when he was certain would be
Speaker 1: even more challenging to publish than it was to write.
Speaker 1: The book detailed the memoir of European pedophile Humbert. Humbert Hu,
Speaker 1: Nabukov referred to in later interviews as quote, a vain
Speaker 1: and cruel wretch who manages to appear touching and Dolores
Speaker 1: Lolita Hayes, a twelve year old American girl. He becomes
Speaker 1: obsessed with, abducts and rapes hundreds of times over the
Speaker 1: course of several years. The novel takes the perspective of Humbert,
Speaker 1: who is trying to convince you, the reader and his jury,
Speaker 1: that this is a love story. Nabokov would later say
Speaker 1: that the humbrid character was inspired by an ape who
Speaker 1: learned to draw. Nabokov says this the initial shiver of
Speaker 1: inspiration was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an
Speaker 1: ape in the Jardin de Plance, who, after months of
Speaker 1: coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing every charcoal
Speaker 1: by an animal. This sketch showed the bars of the
Speaker 1: poor creature's cage. Nabokov constructed Humbard's drawing of his own
Speaker 1: cage on index cards in the summers between teaching at
Speaker 1: Cornell University. He right in the back seat of the
Speaker 1: car after long days of his wife Vera, driving them
Speaker 1: from the east to west coast of the United States,
Speaker 1: stopping in motels that Nabokov used as inspiration on where
Speaker 1: Humbert brings Lalita after kidnapping her, trailing the quote sinuous
Speaker 1: trail of slime unquote, as Nabokov describes. A legend has
Speaker 1: it that Vera once caught him trying to destroy the
Speaker 1: manuscript and stopped him right in time. Not to mention,
Speaker 1: this wasn't even the first time he'd attempted to write
Speaker 1: about this theme or destroyed that attempt. Nabokov had written
Speaker 1: a novella called The Enchanter while living in the Russian
Speaker 1: emigrant community in Berlin nine very similar storyline, but Nabulkov
Speaker 1: destroys all copies of the story he thinks, before it's
Speaker 1: ever published. But now it's the end of ninety three
Speaker 1: and the Bookov's work is complete. He wants to publish
Speaker 1: it under a pseudonym. At first, worried that the themes
Speaker 1: of the book would lose him his teaching job at Cornell,
Speaker 1: whose income he was still very dependent on at this time,
Speaker 1: but he's advised that this would make it even less
Speaker 1: likely that Lolita would be published at all, and in fact,
Speaker 1: could be used to make him look guilty in a
Speaker 1: court of law if things went that far. Because this
Speaker 1: is still towards the end of the McCarthy era in
Speaker 1: the US, Nabokov wasn't the untouchable writer he's regarded as
Speaker 1: today at this time. In fact, Lolita's success would turn
Speaker 1: him into that. And it's not like there's no established
Speaker 1: precedent for books landing authors and publishers in court, no
Speaker 1: matter how well regarded the work is. James Joyce's Ulysses
Speaker 1: ran into censorship issues back in the twenties during its
Speaker 1: pre publication serialization in the US, leading to the United
Speaker 1: States Versus One book called Ulysses case of three very
Speaker 1: dramatic case name. The book went out, but not before
Speaker 1: a lot of money was spent on both sides, and
Speaker 1: similar situations had befallen erotic novel Forever Amber by Kathleen Windsor,
Speaker 1: as well as to Nabokov's friend, American writer Edmund Wilson's
Speaker 1: Memoirs of Heckate County in the fifties. All of these
Speaker 1: books end up prevailing in the courts, but the process
Speaker 1: was arduous and expensive on publishers, and many didn't want
Speaker 1: to take the financial and reputational risk, even on a
Speaker 1: writer they really liked. So Lolita is sent to American publishers,
Speaker 1: to Viking, to Simon and Schuster, to New Directions Double Day,
Speaker 1: and it's a resounding now across the board. Simon and
Speaker 1: Schuster says it's sheer pornography. Nabokov writes to his longtime
Speaker 1: editor Katherine White at The New Yorker, who also has
Speaker 1: rejected Lowlit to at this point, saying the following, I
Speaker 1: had to write that book for artistic reasons, and I
Speaker 1: don't really care much what happens to it next. But
Speaker 1: it turns out he does care because then it's on
Speaker 1: to the British publishers, but still no luck. In early
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five, still searching, he writes this to Edmund Wilson,
Speaker 1: I suppose it will be published by some shady firm
Speaker 1: with a Viennese dream name e g. Silo, And in
Speaker 1: April nineteen fifty five it reaches Olympia Press in Paris,
Speaker 1: run by Mario Gerodius. Olympia was famous for two things,
Speaker 1: publishing controversial scraps by famous writers like Miller, Beckett and
Speaker 1: Boroughs that they couldn't release elsewhere, and erotica porn book porn.
Speaker 1: It was book porn, and Gerodius accepted the title of Mr.
Speaker 1: Book porn with quote joy and pride end quote, and hey,
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with a little bit of book porn.
Speaker 1: That's not how I would classify Lolita the book at all,
Speaker 1: but the genre of erotica itself. I mean, who cares.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you who cares. It's Vladimir Nabokov. Reflecting on
Speaker 1: this time later, he says this, I had not been
Speaker 1: in Europe since nineteen forty, was not interested in pointo
Speaker 1: graphic books, and thus knew nothing about the obscene novelettes,
Speaker 1: would Mr Gerodius was hiring hacks to confect with assistants.
Speaker 1: I have pondered the painful question whether I would have
Speaker 1: agreed so cheerfully to his publishing Lolita had I been
Speaker 1: a wearer in May nineteen fifty five of what formed
Speaker 1: the supple backbone of his production. Alas, I probably would
Speaker 1: the less cheerfully. And he's right. Gerodius, in spite of
Speaker 1: giving Lolita the first of its many breaks that would
Speaker 1: turn it into a classic, did not get it and
Speaker 1: was quoted as saying it quote might bring about a
Speaker 1: change in social attitudes towards the kind of love described unquote,
Speaker 1: which was, as you know, definitely not the point of
Speaker 1: the book. To put it generously, The book of American
Speaker 1: academic friends advise him not to publish, thinking it will
Speaker 1: damage his reputation. There's a little bit of drama with
Speaker 1: copyright between the author and Olympia, and in September nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five, Lolita's first edition is published and everyone loves it.
Speaker 1: No notes the end, just kidding. This is Lolita Podcast.
Speaker 1: Welcome back. I'm Jamie Loftus. Nice to paras socially interact
Speaker 1: with you again. Here on Lolita Podcast. Last week in
Speaker 1: our first episode, we talked about some of the current
Speaker 1: prevalent schools of thought on Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and took
Speaker 1: an in depth look at the events of the book itself,
Speaker 1: because there's no use in knowing what happens in the
Speaker 1: adaptations if you don't know what you're comparing it against.
Speaker 1: And it goes without saying that. We have a lot
Speaker 1: to talk about. But today we're going to take it
Speaker 1: back in time a little bit to talk about nabokof
Speaker 1: to talk to several of the scholars in the Nabokov community,
Speaker 1: to talk about some of the finer points of the book,
Speaker 1: and to trace the journey of the book's first publication
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty five, through the long battle of Lolita
Speaker 1: as a band book, all the way up to the
Speaker 1: first film adaptation attempt in the early nineteen sixties. Brian Boyd,
Speaker 1: who has written the definitive two volume of Nabokov biography
Speaker 1: that I've been using, and we're also going to be
Speaker 1: talking to Brian in this episode as well. So, my friends,
Speaker 1: the time has come to ask who is Vladimir Nabokov.
Speaker 1: He is born on April twenty second, eighteen ninety nine
Speaker 1: in St. Petersburg to a very wealthy Russian noble family.
Speaker 1: But his family does require some explaining, so we're going
Speaker 1: to take it back a little bit before that. Nabokov's grandfather,
Speaker 1: Dmitri Nabokov is high up in the pre revolutionary government.
Speaker 1: He's the Minister of Justice under the liberal Ish Czar's
Speaker 1: Alexander's two and three. He is a bureaucratic liberal. But
Speaker 1: even this was enough to get labeled as a radical
Speaker 1: every once in a while. Think of how people called
Speaker 1: Joe Biden a radical when he was running, and it's like, honey,
Speaker 1: I wish uh sorry for getting political. Moving on, Dmitri
Speaker 1: is considered radical for saying wild things like there should
Speaker 1: be fair trials for all. His writer grandson would actually
Speaker 1: continue this line of thought later in his life, saying
Speaker 1: that he pitied both JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald after
Speaker 1: watching media coverage of the president's assassination in the US
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. Dmitri Nabokov is prominent in pre
Speaker 1: revolutionary Russia and then a buck Offs have a number
Speaker 1: of brushes, but literary fame before the famous novelist in
Speaker 1: the family is born. Dmitri encounters writer and founder of
Speaker 1: socialist realism Nikolai Schernishevski, who under Alexander was intimidated by
Speaker 1: being mock executed but then told just kidding, You're not
Speaker 1: being executed, but get out, and then he was exiled.
Speaker 1: And there's a bunch of this in pre revolutionary Russia. Anyways,
Speaker 1: Dmitri has an affair with an older woman and then
Speaker 1: marries her daughter to keep things above board. And the
Speaker 1: woman he marries is Vladimir Nabokov's grandmother, but she's also
Speaker 1: Vladimir Nabokov's mother because Vladimir Nabokov and his father have
Speaker 1: the exact same name, which becomes messy for the author
Speaker 1: and for me right now. So to differentiate, I am
Speaker 1: going to call the father of Lowlit to author Vladimir Nabakov,
Speaker 1: Daddy Vlad to make things easier, thank you. That is
Speaker 1: a very elegant solution. I was in mensa, so Daddy
Speaker 1: Vlad pretty cool guy born in eighteen seventy. His politics
Speaker 1: are pretty far to the left of his father, Dmitri.
Speaker 1: He's arrested as a student protester he was outspoken against
Speaker 1: anti Semitism and went on to be a successful defender
Speaker 1: of Russian Jews. During his legal career. He also defended
Speaker 1: queer people, ex convicts, and political insurgents from legal oppression. Overall,
Speaker 1: I would have dated him, but he was still from
Speaker 1: a bougie family, and he marries accordingly. Daddy Vlad marries
Speaker 1: Elena rukov Shnakova, daughter of landowners so rich her dad
Speaker 1: opened a school for only his kids. Elena is very
Speaker 1: intelligent and is educated in the natural sciences. They're married
Speaker 1: and have five kids, the oldest of whom is Vladimir Nabokov,
Speaker 1: or Volodia as he's known as a kid. Daddy Vlad
Speaker 1: starts working as an editor at Provo, a left leaning journal,
Speaker 1: and Volodia is pretty uninterested in politics as a young person.
Speaker 1: He has another brush with literary fame. A young Volodia
Speaker 1: and Daddy Vlad meat writer Leo Tolstoy, Hello in passing
Speaker 1: when Volodia is only ten, and here I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: Vladimir Nabokov sounds like an absolute braddy rich kid while
Speaker 1: he's growing up, and Nabokov scholars will defend this, but Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's very bright, but he seems like kind of a jerk.
Speaker 1: He had like valet Is driving him to school. It's
Speaker 1: not for me. Very spoiled by his parents, Volodia had
Speaker 1: nanny's and private tutors and literally teethed on his mother's
Speaker 1: jewels growing up. For reference, he's about the same age
Speaker 1: as the Romanov Children's Anastasia to all those so he
Speaker 1: wasn't royalty, but that same time and that same vibe
Speaker 1: like teething on jewels, A cocky, rich kid. Nabokov speaks Russian,
Speaker 1: English and French from a young age, and later says
Speaker 1: this of himself in his autobiography, speak memory. I think
Speaker 1: I was born like that. A precocious genius and humble too.
Speaker 1: Volodia is also diagnosed with synesthesia as a kid, a
Speaker 1: condition where letters and numbers are associated with colors, and
Speaker 1: that's something that his eventual wife, Vera will share Daddy.
Speaker 1: Vlad is elected into the first Duma Council in nineteen
Speaker 1: o six, but then is sent to prison and solitary
Speaker 1: confinement in nineteen o eight for his association with the
Speaker 1: Provo Journal. He comes back find but Volodia remembers this
Speaker 1: time very clearly. Nabokov has four younger siblings, one of
Speaker 1: whom is a childhood friend to iron Rand, which I
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about at all, and one of
Speaker 1: which is his brother Sergei, which I do as Volodia
Speaker 1: does something both pretty unforgivable and very of his time
Speaker 1: and outs his brother as a gay man to their parents,
Speaker 1: which results in Sergey's being sent away to a boarding school.
Speaker 1: The relationship doesn't completely heal for some time, and Sergey,
Speaker 1: after many happy years with his lover, dies in a
Speaker 1: concentration camp in nineteen forty five after speaking out against Hitler.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen sixteen, Volodia falls in love with a
Speaker 1: girl named Valentina, who later dumps him. He self publishes
Speaker 1: a poetry collection as a teen Emo king, then inherits
Speaker 1: two million pounds in nineteen seventeen, money from his uncle,
Speaker 1: who Brian Boyd mentions in his biography of Nabokov molested
Speaker 1: him as a child. One of his experiences seems to
Speaker 1: be replicated in pretty close detail later in Lolita, in
Speaker 1: a scene where Humbert Humbert bounces Dolores on his lap
Speaker 1: in order to pleasure himself. In nineteen seventeen, the February
Speaker 1: Revolution happens in Russia and Daddy Vlad is made secretary
Speaker 1: to the provisional government, but is forced to flee with
Speaker 1: the family when the Bolshevik Revolution starts. He then serves
Speaker 1: as the Minister of Justice in nineteen eighteen in the
Speaker 1: Crimean regional government, and the Nabokov family finally settles in Berlin,
Speaker 1: Germany permanently in nineteen nineteen, and at this point they
Speaker 1: are entirely stripped of their court titles and all of
Speaker 1: their money, and in fact, a necklace of pearls that
Speaker 1: Nabokov Tethon as a baby are sold so they can
Speaker 1: make rent in Germany. This is a huge shift in
Speaker 1: Nabokov's life. He goes on to attend Cambridge University in
Speaker 1: England with his brother Sergei, while Daddy Flad begins editing
Speaker 1: Russian immigrant newspaper rule Back in Berlin, Nabokov begins publishing
Speaker 1: poetry in his dad's paper, so no nepotism there, and
Speaker 1: he uses a pen name, Vladimir Syrian, which is a
Speaker 1: pseudonym meant to distance him and prevent confusion with his
Speaker 1: dad in a way that kind of evokes Nick Cage's
Speaker 1: relationship to the Coppola's for me, like he just kind
Speaker 1: of got rid of the name and hopes that no
Speaker 1: one would notice. I get it. You don't want to
Speaker 1: seem like nepotism, but like you are, and we know
Speaker 1: that anyways. Like Nick Cage, this ends up being kind
Speaker 1: of a wash because Syrian is a legitimately talented writer
Speaker 1: and becomes popular locally. Then in Daddy Vlad is suddenly murdered,
Speaker 1: completely altering the direction of the family's life. He attends
Speaker 1: a former colleagues speaking engagement in the hope of repairing
Speaker 1: their lapsed friendship. A gunman shoots at the speaker. Daddy
Speaker 1: Vlad tries to interfere, and he's hit and killed. Nabokov's
Speaker 1: journals from this night are devastating. What has happened? Tell
Speaker 1: me what's happened, she asks, Seizing him by the sleeves,
Speaker 1: he spreads out his hands, something terrible. He sobs, cannot finish,
Speaker 1: so it's all over, He says nothing. Hessen too says nothing.
Speaker 1: Their teeth chatter, their eyes dart a lot, and mother understood.
Speaker 1: I thought she would faint. So that's it, she repeated, quietly.
Speaker 1: She seemed to reason it out with herself, how can
Speaker 1: it be? And then, lad do you understand? In ninety three,
Speaker 1: Nabokov meets his future wife Vera, a Russian Jew from
Speaker 1: the upper class who I absolutely love, and there's a
Speaker 1: very beautiful biography written about her by Stacy Schiff that
Speaker 1: I highly recommend. They're married in nine in Berlin, and
Speaker 1: Nabokov as Syrian, continues to write again, occasionally benefiting from
Speaker 1: nepotism due to the tragically killed daddy Vlatt. Now firmly
Speaker 1: a member of the middle class, he begins working to
Speaker 1: support the family and speaking to his early work, I
Speaker 1: think this is really interesting and encouraging for those of
Speaker 1: us that are also writers in our twenties. A lot
Speaker 1: of his early stories are just okay. As he continues
Speaker 1: to thrive in the emigrade writing communities, he writes stories
Speaker 1: like the Potato Elf. He was not a great writer immediately,
Speaker 1: which I find to be cool and realistic and comforting
Speaker 1: and never is really discussed about the great writer canon.
Speaker 1: Vladimir and Vera were very active in the Russian emigrane community.
Speaker 1: They tutored and did setitary work, respectively to make ends
Speaker 1: meet while they were living there. They end up living
Speaker 1: in Berlin for twenty years, and Vladimir publishes early novels,
Speaker 1: including ones that I really like, like The Defense and
Speaker 1: The Gift, but he never really likes Germany and only
Speaker 1: has a basic grasp on the language. In nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: when their son Dmitri is only two years old, Vera
Speaker 1: loses her job because of the increasing anti Semitism in Berlin.
Speaker 1: And that same year, and I still cannot wrap my
Speaker 1: head around this, but that same year, the man who
Speaker 1: had murdered Daddy, vlad In, is promoted to be second
Speaker 1: in command of the Russian emigrade group in Berlin, and
Speaker 1: so the Nabokov's get the funk out of there. They
Speaker 1: then spent some time in Paris, where Nabokov has a
Speaker 1: brief affair. Vera finds out it ends, although there's enough
Speaker 1: drama in there alone for a decent indie movie. He
Speaker 1: writes his first English language novel, and mere weeks before
Speaker 1: the Germans bomb Paris, Vladimir, Vira and Dmitri managed to
Speaker 1: get to the US. To get there, they have half
Speaker 1: of their ticket paid for by a Jewish rescue organization
Speaker 1: that was arranged due to all of the great work
Speaker 1: that Daddy Flatt had done back in the day, and
Speaker 1: they crowdfund the rest from their rich friends. And in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty they get to New York and I mean,
Speaker 1: it's all a pretty amazing story. They get to the US,
Speaker 1: and Nibulkov loves it. They're vowing to become, for all
Speaker 1: intents and purposes, a fully American writer, although he remains
Speaker 1: extremely nostalgic for Russia, both in memory and in language.
Speaker 1: For the rest of his career, he volunteers at the
Speaker 1: American Museum of Natural History and expands his studies on lepidoptery.
Speaker 1: And this is a good point to mention that Nabokov
Speaker 1: was also a full on butterfly scientist. That's what lepidoptery is,
Speaker 1: stemming from a boyhood interest and ultimately taking up quite
Speaker 1: a bit of his time in the nineteen forties while
Speaker 1: teaching classes in Russian and literature at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: He also worked as the curator of lepidoptery at Harvard
Speaker 1: University and ultimately contributed work to that field that remains
Speaker 1: relevant today. Wild Stuff. In nine he first has the
Speaker 1: idea for Lolita although at this time he calls the
Speaker 1: book The Kingdom by the Sea, referencing Poe, and Lolita
Speaker 1: is called Juanita Dark. Sure, he gains a reputation as
Speaker 1: an American writer, publishing story after story with The New Yorker.
Speaker 1: He starts teaching at Cornell in Upstate New York in
Speaker 1: ninety eight, and Lolita comes out in nineteen and this
Speaker 1: changes his life forever. So once Lolita comes out and
Speaker 1: all of this publication stuff is settled, the bulk off
Speaker 1: was left with the impressions of the public. And oh
Speaker 1: did the public respond. Lolita blazes, however, with a perversity
Speaker 1: of a most original kind. A fine book, a distinguished book,
Speaker 1: all right, then a great book without a doubt. It
Speaker 1: is the fifthiest book I've ever read share unrestrained pornography.
Speaker 1: The first is that it is dull, dull, dull in
Speaker 1: a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is
Speaker 1: that it is repulsive. What makes the book flame, I think,
Speaker 1: is first of all, a love affair with the real
Speaker 1: America three d pages of sex in the head. The
Speaker 1: first time I read Lolita, I thought it was one
Speaker 1: of the funniest books I'd ever come on. The second
Speaker 1: time I read it uncut, I thought it was one
Speaker 1: of the saddest humbert is all of us. Lolita is
Speaker 1: undeniably news, unfortunately bad news, highbrow pornography. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much to my friends for some truly career defining performances.
Speaker 1: They're good stuff. So Lolita is public in Paris and
Speaker 1: early win is when well regarded English critic Graham Green
Speaker 1: declares Lolita as one of his favorite books of nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five, which gets people curious. And then it's a
Speaker 1: year's long battle for Lolita to see the light of
Speaker 1: day in the United States and in England. There's hushed
Speaker 1: talks of potential court cases, constantly changing obscenity laws, faulty
Speaker 1: translations into foreign languages, people literally smuggling Olympia Press copies
Speaker 1: in their suitcases overseas, then having Lolita seized in customs.
Speaker 1: It was a big dramatic thing. Eventually, once the hype
Speaker 1: grew big enough in the US, the same publishers that
Speaker 1: were once turning the bulk off away were now banging
Speaker 1: down his door trying to get the publishing rights to
Speaker 1: the book. So all in all, Lolita was banned as
Speaker 1: obscene in France from nineteen fifty six to nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: even though that was the country where it was first published.
Speaker 1: Like with that math, it was banned in England from
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five to fifty nine, Argentina in nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: and in New Zealand in nineteen sixty. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: even unbanned in South Africa until two for God's sake,
Speaker 1: But in nineteen fifty nine what Nabukov has been waiting
Speaker 1: for happens. Not only is his book finally published in
Speaker 1: the US four years later by Walter Minton at Putnam's,
Speaker 1: it's a massive hit, staying on the bestseller lists for
Speaker 1: months and selling a hundred thousand copies in its first
Speaker 1: three weeks. Quick fund sidebar an American show girl named
Speaker 1: Rosemary Ridgwell was the one to get Lolita published. She
Speaker 1: was an avid reader and aspiring opera singer who was
Speaker 1: actually having an affair with the Putnam publisher, Walter Minton,
Speaker 1: and she ends up getting credit for this after some negotiating.
Speaker 1: She makes twenty two thousand dollars in nineteen sixties money
Speaker 1: for her trouble. That's a hundred ninety thousand dollars today,
Speaker 1: Go Rosemary. But in the US, Lda never gets a
Speaker 1: formal blanket ban. And in nineteen fifty nine, not only
Speaker 1: is his book finally public in the US four years later,
Speaker 1: it's a massive hit and it stays on the best
Speaker 1: seller list for months. Once Lolita is published in the States.
Speaker 1: For your scorecard, about one out of every three reviews
Speaker 1: is bad. The other two were good. And while it
Speaker 1: is true that certain American public libraries banned Lolita from
Speaker 1: their shelves, nothing lasted, and the public learning of these
Speaker 1: bands usually just served to increase the book sales again,
Speaker 1: And that's the story of most banned books. And what
Speaker 1: I think is most noteworthy here is that America ended
Speaker 1: up becoming perhaps more receptive to Lolita than almost any
Speaker 1: other country, which Nabokov was thrilled about. But what he
Speaker 1: couldn't have known is that America was going to take
Speaker 1: this story wildly out of context for decades to come.
Speaker 1: I'm talking a parents sending their daughter and a Lolita
Speaker 1: constom to Nabulkov's door. Weird, And to get a little
Speaker 1: more into Nabokov's head at this point in his career,
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to speak to Dana Dragonoyu, an
Speaker 1: associate professor of English at Carlton University and Ottawa and
Speaker 1: a noted Nabokovian. And that's what scholars who specialize in
Speaker 1: the bulk of are called. They're like twi Hearts or
Speaker 1: the BTS Army, but they're adults and probably ones who
Speaker 1: would resent that comparison. They are the bulk of super
Speaker 1: fans with credentials. She's written Vladimir Nabukof and the Poetics
Speaker 1: of Liberalism, Lolita, Law, ethics and politics and more, and
Speaker 1: she's genuinely the coolest. So here's a little bit of
Speaker 1: our discussion. So he's writing Lolita, just in the little
Speaker 1: interlude between other big projects, and then as she's writing it,
Speaker 1: he knows that he's got a ticking time bomb on
Speaker 1: his hands. He knows that, um, he's putting all of
Speaker 1: this time into this novel that might actually never be published.
Speaker 1: Edmund Wilson actually hates it. He thinks it's not a
Speaker 1: great book. Um, Catherine White doesn't want to doesn't want
Speaker 1: to cut it. Yeah, so um, he sends it to
Speaker 1: a few publishers and they all say that they can't
Speaker 1: under risk of landing in jail themselves or having their
Speaker 1: UM their publication houses prosecuted. And so then it comes
Speaker 1: to the attention of other literati, and they pick up
Speaker 1: the book, and some love it something that it's a
Speaker 1: resplendent book, and others think that it's pornographic. So UM,
Speaker 1: somebody by the name of Warden Brown, I think he
Speaker 1: writes in a British sensationalist publication that this book is
Speaker 1: offensive and it ought to be suppressed. And then somebody
Speaker 1: picks up this story in the New York Times Review
Speaker 1: of Books, and UM articulates its own opinion, and so
Speaker 1: a scandal begins to slowly bubble up. With a book
Speaker 1: off help, they publish a section of the book with
Speaker 1: his afterward that the afterward which becomes on a book
Speaker 1: entitled Alita, and that gets published in the Anchor Review
Speaker 1: as a kind of testing round. So then so so
Speaker 1: after that, when UM American publishers realize that there's rama
Speaker 1: surrounding this novel, they're starting to think that this could
Speaker 1: be a moneymaker. But I also have found that even
Speaker 1: Nabokov seemed to be a little back and forth on
Speaker 1: you know, he he definitely said this is not a
Speaker 1: moral story. He has mentioned aesthetics in regards to this book,
Speaker 1: but then he also does seem to get frustrated in
Speaker 1: some of his at least you know, personal writings when
Speaker 1: people seem to miss the point. So yeah, so so
Speaker 1: what he says on the pedagogical nature of books can
Speaker 1: sometimes see contradictory. But if you put them all together, So,
Speaker 1: if you collate them all together and read them together,
Speaker 1: the contradiction, uh disappears. Because what he's what he's ultimately
Speaker 1: always saying, is that he doesn't approve of writings which
Speaker 1: are exclusively pedagogical, which subordinate everything to the cautionary tale
Speaker 1: or story, such as fables where the moral lesson is
Speaker 1: so conspicuously obvious, and part of that so so so,
Speaker 1: part of this hostility which he has towards pedagogical like
Speaker 1: straight up pedagogical literature, is personal. He was chased out
Speaker 1: of Soviet Russia right during Lennon's push Lenon's seizure of power,
Speaker 1: and after Nabokov luckily was able to escape, Lennon very
Speaker 1: quickly clamped down on um all art and made socialist
Speaker 1: realists are to be the only acceptable way to write
Speaker 1: in the Soviet Union. Thank you so much to Dana
Speaker 1: Dragonoio for her time, and we'll be hearing more from
Speaker 1: her later in the episode. So, after Lalita, the Bulk
Speaker 1: of finally gets the literary success he's been chasing for
Speaker 1: over three decades, he makes enough money to retire from teaching,
Speaker 1: and rightful to time, he leaves the US and moves
Speaker 1: into Montro Palace hotel in Switzerland. He writes the screenplay
Speaker 1: to the nineteen sixty two Lolita movie directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Speaker 1: Kind of, that's another episode, And most importantly, Nabuko finally
Speaker 1: has time to turn out some more hits in the
Speaker 1: novel space. He releases Pale Fire and Ada, the closest
Speaker 1: cousin of Lolita and Nabukov's catalog because it deals with
Speaker 1: another huge cultural taboo incest and that story, which is
Speaker 1: a whole other podcast. A brother and sister, Atta and
Speaker 1: Van carry on a lifelong ancestral affair without shame. It's
Speaker 1: very intense, and in ninety seven Nabokov dies surrounded by
Speaker 1: his family, and that's his life. We'll be right back
Speaker 1: ye now. When it comes to his personal politics, Nabukov
Speaker 1: definitely falls under the category of problematic face favorite term
Speaker 1: I hate but feels appropriate. Here he states more than
Speaker 1: once that he considers women writers to be inferior and
Speaker 1: didn't want to work with female translators. Here's a quote
Speaker 1: on that, referencing Jane Austin. I dislike Jane and m
Speaker 1: prejudiced in fact against all women writers. They are in
Speaker 1: another class, okay, king disappointing. Nabokov makes similar comments about
Speaker 1: working with female translators as well, And it's always interesting
Speaker 1: to note that Vera Nabokov, his wife, is his closest
Speaker 1: collaborator throughout his entire career, typing up everything he ever wrote,
Speaker 1: giving him notes, managing his image, and so on and
Speaker 1: so on, and he knew how integral her work and
Speaker 1: support was to his success. When asked by the publication
Speaker 1: The Listener in nineteen sixty nine, could you say how
Speaker 1: important your wife has been as a collaborator in your work,
Speaker 1: Nabokov cleverly replies I could not, and Vera was firm,
Speaker 1: as we learn in Stacy Shifts Puliser, winning by our
Speaker 1: graphy of her in remaining on the sidelines of her
Speaker 1: husband's career. So it's complicated, but Nabukov definitely comes up
Speaker 1: short in giving women their due, and I wouldn't really
Speaker 1: call him a feminist writer, but then on other issues
Speaker 1: he's extremely progressive. Some of the other things that stood
Speaker 1: out to me just as interesting when researching his life
Speaker 1: were things like this, his devoted study of butterflies, his
Speaker 1: deep love and partnership with his wife vera uh story
Speaker 1: about when he was a kid when he had a
Speaker 1: French tutor, and he wrote a mean poem about his
Speaker 1: how his French male tutor had a big gass, and
Speaker 1: then the tutor was mad at first, but then he
Speaker 1: thought it was kind of funny, and then they were friends.
Speaker 1: He was also a great dad. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: great stories about him and his son Dmitri. I really
Speaker 1: like how loyal he is to his Russian roots. Um
Speaker 1: In addition to all of his fiction, he did this
Speaker 1: seminal translation of Russia's great poet Alexander Pushkin's magnum Opus,
Speaker 1: which is called Eugene on Agen. He translated it into
Speaker 1: English and considered that work and Lolita to be his
Speaker 1: biggest contributions to society. Nabokov wasn't active in politics in
Speaker 1: a day to day sense most speculate because of how
Speaker 1: political careers had torn his family apart and killed his father,
Speaker 1: But he spoke out against anti Semitism at every phase
Speaker 1: of his life and was pretty strongly anti racist as well.
Speaker 1: He lectured at Spellman College and American Liberal Arts College
Speaker 1: for Black women, and he formed a friendship with the
Speaker 1: college's president, Florence Read that lasted for years. This is
Speaker 1: further expanded on in Nabokov's short essay on a book
Speaker 1: entitled Lolita, included at the end of most editions of
Speaker 1: the book. Referencing how the subject matter of Lolita put
Speaker 1: off publishers at first, he says this the refusal to
Speaker 1: buy the book was based not on my treatment of
Speaker 1: the theme, but on the theme itself. For there are
Speaker 1: at least three themes which are utterly taboo as far
Speaker 1: as most American publishers are concerned. The two others are
Speaker 1: a Negro white marriage which is a complete and glorious success,
Speaker 1: resulting in lots of children and grandchildren. And the total
Speaker 1: atheist who lives a happy and useful life and dies
Speaker 1: in his sleep at the age of a hundred and six.
Speaker 1: And finally, what I love about Nabokov is that he
Speaker 1: was so judge, at least in the literary criticism sense,
Speaker 1: the way that you and me gossip about like people
Speaker 1: in our lives. Nibukov would just completely go off about authors,
Speaker 1: like really aggressively, and it's kind of funny, like he
Speaker 1: he likes James Joyce sometimes, and he likes Alexander Pushkin
Speaker 1: who was obviously dead, and Shakespeare who was super dead,
Speaker 1: and Charles Dickens super super dead. But everyone else, ever,
Speaker 1: he would just say they were trash, like he couldn't relax.
Speaker 1: I lost count of examples of him just being judge
Speaker 1: about other authors. F Scott Fitzgerald, Nabokov says trash. Boris
Speaker 1: Pastor Nak, who was a Russian writer who wrote Doctor Javago,
Speaker 1: was literally afraid of Nabokov. When they were translating Javago
Speaker 1: into English, someone suggested that Nabokov should be the translator,
Speaker 1: and Pastor n was like, no, I don't think he
Speaker 1: would want to, And then Nabako was asked and was like, no,
Speaker 1: I absolutely don't want to. That book is trash. Henry
Speaker 1: James garbage, Miguel Cervantes gag. But he did teach Don
Speaker 1: Quixote in his class. Jane Austen also taught her hated
Speaker 1: her work, thought she was born Virginia Woolf. No thank you.
Speaker 1: These two examples are arguably also him being sexist freud
Speaker 1: Kinsey grow up and her famously he hated Dostoyevsky, possibly
Speaker 1: one of the most famous Russian authors of all time.
Speaker 1: Put him in the trash can, says Nabokov. So he
Speaker 1: would hate my writing. He would hate your writing. It's
Speaker 1: all very dramatic, and I love how judge he was.
Speaker 1: It's very funny. So that's Nabokov, definitely a strange and
Speaker 1: complicated literary figure. But you'll notice, unlike the post Carrol's
Speaker 1: and Dante's that Humbert Humbert harps on in Lolita, Nabokov
Speaker 1: was not a Humbert Humbert type. So how does he
Speaker 1: write as Humbert and why. It's also important to note
Speaker 1: that Lolita was not Nabokov's first attempt to address the
Speaker 1: theme of pedophilia by a long shot. He outlines Humberd's
Speaker 1: approach to marrying a woman to get sexual access to
Speaker 1: her child in the Russian language novel The Gift in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen thirties, then tries his hand at writing
Speaker 1: the account of a pedophile again in the nine Russian
Speaker 1: language novella The Enchanter, written in Paris the year before
Speaker 1: Nabukhov moves to the US. For a long time, Nbako
Speaker 1: thought that The Enchanter had been destroyed entirely, but in
Speaker 1: the sixties a copy resurfaced in his papers, and that
Speaker 1: was later translated from Russian to English by his son Dmitri, who,
Speaker 1: by the way, is a bachelor king piece of work
Speaker 1: all his own. He was like an opera singer, a
Speaker 1: legacy keeper. He once got into huge trouble with his
Speaker 1: dad for judging a lolita contest in Italy while he
Speaker 1: was in his twenties, which was exactly as problematic as
Speaker 1: it sounded. The Enchanter oscillates between first and third person
Speaker 1: narration and follows a nameless protagonist to Nabakov calls Arthur
Speaker 1: later in life, who, like Humbert, is attracted to young girls.
Speaker 1: He runs into a nameless girl in the park marries
Speaker 1: her mother to gain access to her. The mother dies
Speaker 1: soon after. In this story, she is sick and close
Speaker 1: to death when he marries her instead of running in
Speaker 1: front of a car like Charlotte. The protagonist then abducts
Speaker 1: the daughter under the guise of being her guardian, intending
Speaker 1: to take her on a long road trip. Their first
Speaker 1: night away, while she's sleeping, he attempts to rape her,
Speaker 1: but she wakes up, screams, and the protagonist panics and
Speaker 1: full of shame, runs into traffic and is killed. It's
Speaker 1: not his best and the similarities are mainly in the
Speaker 1: outline of the story, but this does prove that Lolita
Speaker 1: wasn't a passing lark. Thematically, Nabokov had an interest in
Speaker 1: telling a story with a pedophile protagonist deceiving everyone around them,
Speaker 1: the devil in plain sight. And that's a pretty heavy
Speaker 1: theme for a writer that never swore, but there it is.
Speaker 1: And it's even more interesting that Nabokov claims to have
Speaker 1: destroyed this story. But fifteen whole year years later, we
Speaker 1: find a lot of the ideas in the Enchanter still
Speaker 1: intact in Lolita. I'm going to kick it over to
Speaker 1: another expert here, maybe the expert. Brian Boyd wrote the
Speaker 1: seminal biography of Nabokov, working directly with Vladimir Nabokov's wife
Speaker 1: Vera and his son Dmitry Nabokov for over ten years
Speaker 1: to get it done. He is the Nebukovian. He first
Speaker 1: found Lolita at a bookstand his parents owned in New
Speaker 1: Zealand as a young teen and sort of snuck it
Speaker 1: out as a literary contraband it was then then later
Speaker 1: on he discovered Nabokov's novel Pale Fire and really fell
Speaker 1: in love with all of Nabokov's work. And I've got
Speaker 1: to say I was afraid the Nabokovians were going to
Speaker 1: be really intimidating, but they have been nothing but kind
Speaker 1: and shared a ton of resources with me that were
Speaker 1: extremely helpful in realizing this series. And they're really excited
Speaker 1: about new perspectives and active criticism of Nabokov's work. So
Speaker 1: here's some of Brian Boyd and my discussion about The
Speaker 1: Enchanter and Lolita. I mean, he did he. I guess
Speaker 1: he so passionate about freedom that he liked to break restrictions.
Speaker 1: That was part of it, I think um and especially
Speaker 1: that artistic freedom. And well, I did a review of
Speaker 1: The Enchanted, which was probably the harshest that's appeared anywhere.
Speaker 1: It was appeared with the title that I suggested pre
Speaker 1: hash fair enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: it's a terrible little story. Really, Dmitri Nabokov's translation does
Speaker 1: it much of a service. Would have been much better
Speaker 1: if if it had been translated while in the Boca
Speaker 1: was alive and could revise to me to his translation.
Speaker 1: But it isn't that very clogged late Norbakov Russian pro style.
Speaker 1: So there was that, and the fact that really nobody
Speaker 1: was realized in the character in the characterization, the setting
Speaker 1: wasn't realized very well. Um, it's also different from Lolita,
Speaker 1: which is so funny. You alone, My students found out
Speaker 1: had to a lot of them have found that increasingly
Speaker 1: hard to see. Um, beautifully detailed about America, and it's
Speaker 1: just got so many strands going in it, with the
Speaker 1: relationship between Humbled and Charlotte and Humbled and cruelty, and
Speaker 1: the l term cruelty and so on. The blography like
Speaker 1: posing challenges for his readers, and and here one of
Speaker 1: the great challenges is to read it independently of Humbled
Speaker 1: to see, and so many people fail that test. I
Speaker 1: don't know if he kind of figured out what what
Speaker 1: a high percentage of readers would fail it. But you
Speaker 1: take those early readers like Lionel Trilling and Robertson Davies
Speaker 1: and the things they say about you know, Trilling is
Speaker 1: saying it's it's a book about love, and Davey is
Speaker 1: saying he thinks it's a seduction of a man by
Speaker 1: a corrupt girl. And you know, it's just snaggering that
Speaker 1: these highly literate, highly educate did highly imagine the readers
Speaker 1: could read it so badly on it does I think
Speaker 1: did show a lot of the kind of predatory assumptance
Speaker 1: in the male psyche time. Absolutely, I and I and
Speaker 1: I found it really interesting. And again just with like
Speaker 1: there's right off the bat kind of this bizarre misinterpretation
Speaker 1: that is not the author's fault. Well, I used to
Speaker 1: tell my students paying a picture of Nbakov and then
Speaker 1: contrast with Humbert So say that, yeah, there's this famous
Speaker 1: rugby player who's was six ft five and I said
Speaker 1: that Dmitri Nebakov was was six five years as tall
Speaker 1: as as journal learner. Um, Dmitri is not the leader
Speaker 1: and the back was not humbuged, and just just emphasizing that,
Speaker 1: and and then inviting them to stressing how much the
Speaker 1: bak of his on Lolita's side, and trying to read
Speaker 1: the novel from the angle. Yeah, the challenge of not
Speaker 1: being seduced by Humbert's rhetoric. Thank you so much to Brian,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna be talking to him a lot throughout
Speaker 1: the series. So Lolita is, of course far more nuanced
Speaker 1: than the Enchanter, and that's great news. We talked a
Speaker 1: little bit analytically about the book in the last episode,
Speaker 1: but I have a few more things that I'd like
Speaker 1: to hit on here. Now. If you're in a Book
Speaker 1: of fan that loves his use of language, we could
Speaker 1: be here all day. So I'm going to try to
Speaker 1: stay focused thematically, but I will mention a few uses
Speaker 1: of language that are especially fun to me. Protagonist Humbert.
Speaker 1: Humbert writes Lolita under observation and a sanatorium and later
Speaker 1: in a jail cell, which the Book of would explain
Speaker 1: is the animal drawing its own cage. Stylistically, Lolita is
Speaker 1: kind of a whole of mirrors language wise. We see
Speaker 1: the same phrases pop up over and over while humbered
Speaker 1: plays with language to lure the readers in their a
Speaker 1: great essay on this in the collection The Magician's Doubts
Speaker 1: by Michael Wood. The hotel where Humbert first rapes Dolores
Speaker 1: is called The Enchanted Hunters. Later on, Dolores isn't a
Speaker 1: clare quiality play. That's the writer that eventually abducts her
Speaker 1: out of humbert subduction, and the play is called The
Speaker 1: Hunted Enchanters. And when Dolores sees Humbert again, pregnant and
Speaker 1: poor at seventeen, she lives on Hunter Road. There's a
Speaker 1: character who co writes qualities plays with him named Vivian
Speaker 1: dark Bloom. Mix those letters around and yes it's an
Speaker 1: anagram for Vladimir and a Bukoff. There's all of the
Speaker 1: po references, and a Buckov manages to insert some of
Speaker 1: his opinions on pop psychologists like Kinsey and Freud. Through
Speaker 1: Humbert's telling psychiatrists at the sanatoriums. He stays at some
Speaker 1: of the popular theories of his day instead of what
Speaker 1: he was actually going through, making the psychologists feel accomplished
Speaker 1: and Humbert feel like he's deceived them. And let's hit
Speaker 1: on that for a moment. Why did in a book
Speaker 1: off he Freud so much. We're going to really unpack
Speaker 1: this in a future episode, but I wanted to quickly
Speaker 1: share this insight for Lucia Williams, who will be talking
Speaker 1: with throughout this show. She's a former professor of psychology
Speaker 1: at the Universidad Federal Day Sal Carlos in Brazil, where
Speaker 1: she coordinated LAPREV, the Laboratory of Violence Analysis and Protection.
Speaker 1: The paper of hers I am siting here is called
Speaker 1: reading Lolita to Understand Child Sexual Abuse, and the reasoning
Speaker 1: is this quote. Nabokov was intuitively right, even in his
Speaker 1: antipathy for Sigmund Freud, who could have advanced knowledge on
Speaker 1: the impact of child sexual abuse in human development and
Speaker 1: did not for it. Came back from Paris shocked with
Speaker 1: the maltreated children he saw examined by child abuse pioneer
Speaker 1: Ambrosia Tardieu, a French pathologist and expert in forensic medicine.
Speaker 1: In his Assault on Truth, Jeffrey M. Masson describes how
Speaker 1: Freud was forced by Viennese society to abandon his proposed
Speaker 1: seduction theory, in which hysteria occurred as a result of
Speaker 1: premature sexual experiences, as no one could believe that so
Speaker 1: many respectable gentlemen could indeed sexually abuse their own daughters.
Speaker 1: As a result, Freud abandoned his theory and started defending
Speaker 1: that the patient's report was a mere fabrication based on
Speaker 1: underlying repressed sexual urges unquote. There's a ton more. But
Speaker 1: something Nbakov struggled with after Lalita became popular was critics
Speaker 1: and readers conflating Humbert's attitudes with his own. Now, well,
Speaker 1: I personally don't hate all of the fictional John Ray
Speaker 1: juniors forward warning the reader that Humbert is a pedophile
Speaker 1: who's not to be trusted. Nabakov thought that John Ray Jr.
Speaker 1: Was a little bit over the top, and his moralizing
Speaker 1: something I would guess he would feel about a lot
Speaker 1: of culture today. I politely disagree. But speaking to this point.
Speaker 1: In conversation with Russian Jewish American author Herbert Gould the
Speaker 1: following exchange, Gold says that his quote sense of the
Speaker 1: immorality of the relationship between Humbert, Humbert and Lalita is
Speaker 1: very strong unquote. Nabakov replies, no, it is not my
Speaker 1: sense of morality of the Humbered Humbered Lolita relationship that
Speaker 1: is strong. It is humbled since he cares I do not.
Speaker 1: Herbert says later on that some might find Humbered to
Speaker 1: be quote touching, to which Nabokov says this, I would
Speaker 1: put it differently. Humbered Humbert is a vain and cruel
Speaker 1: wretch who manages to appear touching that epithet. And it's
Speaker 1: true tear erudized sense can only apply to my poor
Speaker 1: little girl. And let's talk about that girl, Dolores the
Speaker 1: book Dolores, because Humberts descriptions of her very often obscure
Speaker 1: the resilient young girl who never should have been put
Speaker 1: in these circumstances to begin with. Dolores, in being declared
Speaker 1: the Lada by Humbert, suffers the fate that many of
Speaker 1: Nabokov's female characters do. She's fixated on, misunderstood and lusted
Speaker 1: after by a male protagonist that doesn't actually care who
Speaker 1: she is or how she feels. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of reasons why readers often complate the actions and opinions
Speaker 1: of character with their authors. And again, we could talk
Speaker 1: about death of the author theory all day, but I
Speaker 1: have an idea of why this might happen to Nibakov specifically,
Speaker 1: and that is because virtually all of Nabakov's protagonists and
Speaker 1: narrators are men, with the exception of one short story.
Speaker 1: Many of them are Russian emigres or new to a country,
Speaker 1: like Nabakov was in Germany and then in America, and
Speaker 1: they're often also academics like Professor Nabakov. Like any writer,
Speaker 1: Nabakov pulled from what he knew in order to write,
Speaker 1: and like any good writer, his characters are not him.
Speaker 1: It's interesting reading interviews with him from this time because
Speaker 1: it often seems like people come into a discussion with
Speaker 1: the assumption that writing about Humbert is automatically condoning it. Ye.
Speaker 1: When asked why he named his criminal protagonist Humbert Humbert,
Speaker 1: Nabokov told Playboy in that it's quote very nasty, very suggestive.
Speaker 1: It is a hateful name for a hateful person. But
Speaker 1: let's get back to Nabokov's women. Also the name of
Speaker 1: an incredible essay collection recommended to me by Dana. Here's
Speaker 1: a little bit more of our discussion there is, like
Speaker 1: you're saying, a lot of focus in his work on
Speaker 1: children suffering and then also women suffering, even the references
Speaker 1: to you know, his feelings on anti Semitism. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like all the people that Humbert doesn't want us
Speaker 1: to like, um make an anti Semitic comment at some point.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned that, yes, the misogyny. He was very
Speaker 1: progressive on race for a man is of his time,
Speaker 1: like exceptionally so and um in part he inherited that
Speaker 1: from his father. Uh. So Nabokov himself comes from a
Speaker 1: very kind of Caucasian aristocratic, upper middle class UM background.
Speaker 1: So I I think that would be true that that
Speaker 1: women typically suffer in his fiction. Um, and for a
Speaker 1: vast array of reason. So ums many commits suicide. Uh,
Speaker 1: some are killed in freak accidents caused by men. So
Speaker 1: the fact that Charlotte dies in the car accident, there's
Speaker 1: no reason why she should have died in that car accident,
Speaker 1: had um had humbered, humbled, not placed, all those other
Speaker 1: things which led to that outcome. So Um, he doesn't, Um,
Speaker 1: he doesn't acknowledge his contribution to her grizzly faith. But
Speaker 1: it's there, right, it's all of those variables he put there. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: why why is there this? Why is there kind of
Speaker 1: proliferation of angelic women who perish and suffer in the
Speaker 1: book of and kind of shallow viragos who are opportunists
Speaker 1: and destroy men, because there are many of those as well. Um, well,
Speaker 1: it's it's I would argue, and this is my argument,
Speaker 1: but it's not imprint yet. That um that that Nabokov
Speaker 1: was born and raised in a kind of culture of
Speaker 1: honor and courtesy. That is a legacy of of medievalism,
Speaker 1: the medieval literature which he studied at Cambridge. His tripos
Speaker 1: at Cambridge was in the Romance languages, so uh, the
Speaker 1: literature of France in the Middle Ages. Um. And Nabokov
Speaker 1: grew up in an aristocratic family and Russia, where Um,
Speaker 1: honor and gender ethics were very important. Men did certain things,
Speaker 1: women did certain other things. If a woman's honor was impugned,
Speaker 1: a man was expected to rise to her defense. His
Speaker 1: father almost fought in a duel in the bakov himself
Speaker 1: almost fought in a couple of duels. Uh. There's an anecdote,
Speaker 1: for instance, that that Brian Boyd tells when a bok
Speaker 1: I was very young living in Berlin. Um, a violinist
Speaker 1: of Romanian extraction was well known to be a wife abuser,
Speaker 1: and then his wife died and she was full of bruises,
Speaker 1: and the suspicion was that either he killed her or
Speaker 1: that she committed suicide because she couldn't stand you abuse anymore.
Speaker 1: So Nibakov goes to the club where the violinist is
Speaker 1: still playing and he beats them up. So so this
Speaker 1: act of vigilante justice right. But um, More broadly, I
Speaker 1: think your question UM can be answered very productively because Nabokov,
Speaker 1: like many Russian writers, was fascinated with with childhood, but
Speaker 1: not not in a sexual way, but as a kind
Speaker 1: of test case for innocence and vulnerability. So in Nabokov's
Speaker 1: own work, UH children um figure very frequently in his fiction,
Speaker 1: and most frequently as victims. So the figure of the
Speaker 1: suffering child haunts Nabokov's imagination from the well, I I
Speaker 1: would say, from the moment that uh Nazism begins, and
Speaker 1: and and and his mind is haunted by children being
Speaker 1: burned in gas ovens, and so from then on to
Speaker 1: the end of Vada. So that's like the entirety of
Speaker 1: his greatest career, the child becomes iconic in his imagination.
Speaker 1: Brian Boyd also points out the narrative significance that children
Speaker 1: have within Nabokov's work, Well, I think really it was
Speaker 1: because for him the innocence of childhood was so important.
Speaker 1: I think he was drist out almost by by the
Speaker 1: way child was sexualized too early in America, and he
Speaker 1: felt uneasy about Dmitri being off at at summer camps
Speaker 1: and so on, the corruption with young young children. I'm
Speaker 1: interested in in your thoughts on the female characters, that
Speaker 1: doomed women there are, There are a lot of doomed
Speaker 1: men in you think you think of the illusion defense
Speaker 1: and the suicide that that that whole book leads to
Speaker 1: so painfully inexorably, or or Field's father and the gift
Speaker 1: to you know, presum only has been killed or killed
Speaker 1: summer in Central Asia, or Martin in Glory, who presumably
Speaker 1: has been killed with trying to cross the border into Russia.
Speaker 1: Or David the boy who has tortured in that ghastly
Speaker 1: Wayne in Ben Sinister and then his father who goes
Speaker 1: mad and runs towards people in the shot you know, uh,
Speaker 1: and the bok of knew he had the best friend
Speaker 1: of his childhood, his cousin jury shot with his head
Speaker 1: ripped off by machine guns in nine and then his
Speaker 1: his father's murder Ino you know, Edmund White complains that
Speaker 1: that there's too much violent death in the Baca. The
Speaker 1: Baka head lived it. And of course as Shade gets
Speaker 1: shot and in pale fire and there's a huge person
Speaker 1: gets burnt in transparent thing. So okay, there are doomed women,
Speaker 1: but there are doomed people of every kind. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much again to Brian Boyd and to Dina Dragonaiu
Speaker 1: for all of that wonderful insight. So, as many have
Speaker 1: noted in the past, Dolores is not completely absent in
Speaker 1: the text of Lolita, but she is absolutely sidelined by
Speaker 1: Humbert in order to better serve his own narrative. There
Speaker 1: is far more said by Humbert about what he fixates
Speaker 1: and projects onto her, his physical desire, extremely specific details
Speaker 1: about her appearance, his paranoia, and his blame when she's
Speaker 1: physically absent, than about Dolores herself. That is to say,
Speaker 1: we hear a lot about Lolita, who was a fantasy,
Speaker 1: not Dolores, who is very real in enduring a personal tragedy.
Speaker 1: Where we do find Lores is in some of her dialogue.
Speaker 1: She says stuff like I must go now, kiddo, beaute
Speaker 1: swankswell peach sab stinker, jerk, super luscious, goon, drip you
Speaker 1: dull bulb a lot of stuff, as well as descriptions
Speaker 1: of what she likes. However, when Humpert describes Dolores's interest
Speaker 1: to us, it's mostly just to call them annoying, a
Speaker 1: combination of naivete and deception, of charm and vulgarity, of
Speaker 1: blue sulks and rosy mirth. Lolita, when she chose could
Speaker 1: be a most exasperating brat, I was not really quite
Speaker 1: prepared for her fits of disorganized boredom, intense and vehement gripping,
Speaker 1: her sprawling, droopy, dopey eyed style, and what is called
Speaker 1: goofing off, a kind of diffused clowning which she thought
Speaker 1: was tough in a boyish hoodlum way. Mentally, I found
Speaker 1: her to be a disgustingly conventional way. What Humbert is
Speaker 1: so snobbishly describing here is a regular kid. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you needed any more evidence that this isn't a
Speaker 1: love story. He does not like the parts of Dolores
Speaker 1: that he cannot sexualize or control, and there are a
Speaker 1: few references to the extremely deep despair that Dolores, who
Speaker 1: again is just a kid, is feeling about her situation.
Speaker 1: There's references to the Knights, she spends crying, a few
Speaker 1: moments with her friends, and this really devastating scene that
Speaker 1: Humbert reflects on at the end of the book, when
Speaker 1: Dolores sees her friend Avis have an innocuous, affectionate interaction
Speaker 1: with her dad while Dolores is holding a kitchen knife. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: as Avis clung to her father's neck and ear while
Speaker 1: with a casual arm, the man enveloped his lumpy and
Speaker 1: large offspring. I saw Lolita's smile lose all its light
Speaker 1: and become a frozen little shadow of itself. And the
Speaker 1: fruit knife slipped off the table and struck her with
Speaker 1: a silver handle, a freak blow on the ankle. And
Speaker 1: while you do need to look for these passages, there's
Speaker 1: so much here. There's a reminder of how unhappy do
Speaker 1: loris is, that she's also experiencing grief from losing her parents,
Speaker 1: her inability to communicate with the people in her life
Speaker 1: about this despair out of fear and trauma. There's a
Speaker 1: lot and then a buck offs themselves grew protective of Lolita.
Speaker 1: I already showed you this quote from Vera last episode,
Speaker 1: but here it is in a bit longer form. I
Speaker 1: wish someone would notice the tender description of the child's helplessness,
Speaker 1: her pathetic dependence on the monstrous h h and her
Speaker 1: heartrending courage, all along culminating in that squalid but essentially
Speaker 1: pure and healthy marriage and her dog. They all missed
Speaker 1: the fact that the horrid little brat Lolita is essentially
Speaker 1: very good. Indeed, or she would not have straightened out
Speaker 1: after being crushed so terribly and found a decent life
Speaker 1: with poor Dick more to her liking than the other kind.
Speaker 1: I also want to take another opportunity here to give
Speaker 1: Charlotte Hayes her due. While she's portrayed as flighty, selfish
Speaker 1: and cruel to her daughter, a degree of which definitely
Speaker 1: appears true, try and look through Humbert's language here. Charlotte
Speaker 1: is a single parent at a time where this was
Speaker 1: not made easy in the late nineteen forties. She's still
Speaker 1: mourning her husband, as well as something that's only mentioned once,
Speaker 1: the death of a two year old boy who had
Speaker 1: been Dolores's baby brother, and Dolores likely had unresolved issues
Speaker 1: around a trauma like this as well. So while Charlotte
Speaker 1: does seem unkind and distant to her daughter, relatable even
Speaker 1: considering all that, there's a context to this all its own,
Speaker 1: and so whether you like her or not, she is
Speaker 1: far more complicated and going through a lot more than
Speaker 1: Humbert is comfortable with or interested in acknowledging, And the
Speaker 1: book of himself found for the first time in his
Speaker 1: career a character he had written was being taken out
Speaker 1: of his authorial control. He says the following to the
Speaker 1: writer Graham Green in n before Lolita had even been
Speaker 1: published in the United States. My poor Lolita is having
Speaker 1: a rough time, Nabokov wrote to Green. The pity is
Speaker 1: that if I had made her a boy, or a
Speaker 1: cow or a bicycle, Philistines might never have flinched. Where
Speaker 1: there's this exchange from the Paris Review. Humbert was fond
Speaker 1: of little girls, not simply young girls, nymphets our girl children,
Speaker 1: not starlets and sex kittens. Lolita was twelve, not eighteen,
Speaker 1: when Humbert met her. You may remember that by the
Speaker 1: time she is fourteen, he refers to her as his
Speaker 1: aging mistress, and it is understandable that the press and
Speaker 1: people in the Bokov circle had a difficult time understanding
Speaker 1: how a writer who was by all accounts nothing like
Speaker 1: Humbert in his criminality, plugged himself into such a sick
Speaker 1: protagonist mind. And in fact, there were even parents of
Speaker 1: students at Cornell who were nervous to let their kids
Speaker 1: take classes from Nabokov. What we know about Nubukov's ability
Speaker 1: to create hu Bert comes down to his research. He
Speaker 1: looked at a number of case studies of American pedophiles,
Speaker 1: some of which will discuss in a future episode, and
Speaker 1: also later said that he had listened to how girls
Speaker 1: spoke to each other on buses and in public parks,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a character early into Lolita's publication history.
Speaker 1: Nabokov also attempted to control what appeared on the cover
Speaker 1: of his book, saying this, I want pure colors, melting clouds,
Speaker 1: accurately drawn details, a sunburst above a receding road with
Speaker 1: a light reflected in furrows and ruts, after rain, and
Speaker 1: no girls. If you've ever seen a cover of Lolita,
Speaker 1: you will know that this wish was definitely not respected,
Speaker 1: and that there's been a wide variety of We will
Speaker 1: will get to that in a future episode. Even later
Speaker 1: in his career, Nabokov would go on to take public
Speaker 1: issue with how the Dictionary defined the word nymphete, a
Speaker 1: word that he invented, whose definition he was still ultimately
Speaker 1: unable to control. Lolita had grown too big, and so eventually,
Speaker 1: as time went on, Nabakov kind of stopped trying and
Speaker 1: moved on to write other work. Lolita had secured for
Speaker 1: him the life he had always wanted. He could write
Speaker 1: full time. He was acclaimed as a great American writer.
Speaker 1: So when Stanley Kubrick and James Harris bought the rights
Speaker 1: to the movie in ninety eight and invited Nabokov to
Speaker 1: write the screenplay, after a while he said yes. And
Speaker 1: it's about here that we're going to say goodbye to
Speaker 1: Dolores for now. As far as I'm concerned, she exists
Speaker 1: solely in the book. What we find and what global
Speaker 1: culture takes away from this book, at least in the
Speaker 1: general sense, is just Lolita, the fantasy that a pedophile
Speaker 1: is trying to sell us, not the girl that is
Speaker 1: suffering behind it. I really love Dolores. Justice for Dolores,
Speaker 1: and and I'm very attached to her. She is a
Speaker 1: kid that is able to find these moments of joy
Speaker 1: for herself during an inhuman experience. And even inside of
Speaker 1: this horrifying account by a pedophile with a vested interest
Speaker 1: in winning your sympathy, Dolores still shines through in these moments.
Speaker 1: Nabokov has his flaws and we should not ignore them.
Speaker 1: But close readers of the book and the scholars who
Speaker 1: have been discussing, guarding, and cataloging the entirety of Nabokov's
Speaker 1: work over the years, the Nabokovians, I love to say
Speaker 1: that have not found a shred of pro pedophilia within
Speaker 1: the text itself. There really is no good faith interpretation
Speaker 1: of the work that will say so, although there's plenty
Speaker 1: of bad faith interpreters out there, the discussion academically has
Speaker 1: actually begun to actively encourage a feminist reading and teaching
Speaker 1: of the text. Dana Dragonoio with the mic drop here
Speaker 1: the novel Um and even Humbert. Humbert does led through
Speaker 1: the cracks uh knowledge about her actions and activities, which
Speaker 1: Um really tell us beyond any reasonable doubt that she
Speaker 1: was trying to make an escape from him. So we're
Speaker 1: told that she's squirreling money away that he gives her
Speaker 1: for the various sexual acts that he imposes upon her.
Speaker 1: She squirrels away money not to buy confectionery, but to
Speaker 1: run away. She's trying to get away from him, and
Speaker 1: then he takes away that money like the depths of
Speaker 1: his villainies kind of uh. He makes promises which she
Speaker 1: uh he which he breaks the moment that she has
Speaker 1: uh you know, had had had sex with him, So
Speaker 1: he makes promises that he retracts um and the minute
Speaker 1: that she can get away from him, she leaves him.
Speaker 1: So so we see a a we know because he
Speaker 1: admits it that she's crying every night. Um. He tells
Speaker 1: us that he had trained himself to ignore her sobs
Speaker 1: in the night every night. Um uh. He admits that
Speaker 1: she only gets reconciled to him only because had nowhere
Speaker 1: else to go. So um. There's not a single moment
Speaker 1: in the novel which suggests to us that Lolita was
Speaker 1: actually um enjoying her life with him. It was totally
Speaker 1: a condition of imprisonment. Um. We do. We don't even
Speaker 1: have the Stockholm syndrome. She she doesn't even suffer from
Speaker 1: the Stockholm syndrome. Right, she never she never worns something
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah, she never wants to be there. She
Speaker 1: she never wants to be there. And and the irony
Speaker 1: of irony is the kind of tragic irony that that
Speaker 1: she makes her escape with somebody who's even worse than Humbered.
Speaker 1: So how to teach Lolita? What can you teach us?
Speaker 1: A debate that hasn't been put to rest, and it
Speaker 1: relates to um. The question of how uh Lolita suppressed
Speaker 1: in the novel Uh isn't is a debate that is
Speaker 1: now of several decades standing, and it began with a
Speaker 1: number of feminist scholars who noticed that there is a
Speaker 1: temporal discrepancy in Humbert's account. There's three days missing, Um,
Speaker 1: three days missing in the chronology that he gives us.
Speaker 1: And if those three days that are missing is not
Speaker 1: simply a typo, but Nabokov intentionally put it there, that
Speaker 1: means that Humbert never receives a letter from Dolly, never
Speaker 1: goes to Colmont to meet her in her pregnant state,
Speaker 1: and never marries Quilty. And there was never an equality
Speaker 1: to begin with. So that flow to the possibility that
Speaker 1: Dolly got away from him much earlier. We don't know
Speaker 1: really what happens to her. Even if she's dead, she
Speaker 1: might even be alive and well. And um. This this
Speaker 1: argument has its sympathizers and it's the tractors. Brian Boyd
Speaker 1: has showed that it's almost certainly a typo. Nabokov was
Speaker 1: very careless with his dates. Um. But those who are
Speaker 1: in favor of this theory will point out that when
Speaker 1: when the book was translated into Russian, uh and the
Speaker 1: Book of Uh does not in the Book of does
Speaker 1: not correct the error, but in fact underscores it, leaves
Speaker 1: the air in place and draws attention to it. So
Speaker 1: if it's intentional, if it's intentional, the destiny of Dolly
Speaker 1: could be something very different than the tragic destiny that
Speaker 1: Humbert inscribed in the book. So, if you are an
Speaker 1: adult still out here saying this is a love story,
Speaker 1: let me be perfectly clear how I feel about it.
Speaker 1: You missed the fucking point. But hey, you are certainly
Speaker 1: not alone there. So in the early nineteen sixties, then
Speaker 1: a book of come back to the US from Swiss
Speaker 1: Island so that Vladimir can write the screenplay for Stanley
Speaker 1: Kubrick's Lolita. What was about to happen was well, yeah,
Speaker 1: next week on Lolita Podcast. This has been a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. My name's Jamie Loftus, I right
Speaker 1: and host the show. My producers are the wonderful Sophie Lifterman,
Speaker 1: Miles Gray, Beth and Macaluso and Jack O'Brien. My editor
Speaker 1: is the amazing Isaac Taylor. Additional research and transcription work
Speaker 1: from Ben Loftus. Music is by Zoe Blade and her
Speaker 1: theme is from Brad Dicker. Thank you so much to
Speaker 1: my guest voices on this episode, as well as Ziz
Speaker 1: Vora as Humbert Humbert, Robert Evans as Vladimir in the
Speaker 1: bukup Anna Hostia Sharene, Lani Unis, Grace Thomas, and Miles Gray.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next week.