Lolita

[guerillablack]

Has anyone read this infamous book by vladimir nabokov?I'm reading it for my english class and at first it was a dread reading it, because of his wordchoice and style. Half the words i have never seen before in my life!As i get to page 150, i think i'm getting the hang of it and his prose doesn't bother me as much as before. The story though and the way it is executed is truely amazing. I don't think i ever read a first person narrative quite like this before.

[Aurorus Ruber]

I've often wondered whether it could be used as an anti-conservative weapon, you know, cause the whole pædophilia thing would be scary to them, but I doubt conservatives are that flimsy or even if most know about the book.

[pandora]

Read "Reading Lolita in Tehran" the writer is a genius and her word choice is almost as superb.

I think Lolita is a very dark penetrating insight into the role of domination in our culture. I can not read it as it really fucks with my head, the young girl and her innocence, the way he pulls her out of the classroom to service his knob like a scullery maid knobbing a brass tackery. The whole thing really fucks with me, but I understand the symbology which has a lot to do with a fuck of a lot more than the domination of one man over a little girl.

It has to do with the domination of the bougeoius over the worker class such to the extent that as an upper class well educated male, a Brahmin if you will, he can pick up this "piece of trash" this lovely, beautiful little girl that no one gives a fuck to save and do with what he wills, and toss her out when he is done using her.

It is a synomyn for consumer culture in general where nothing is sacred anymore. By the end the little girl is trained to service him the same as if she were working in a factory, there is not emotion in it, he controls her room and board as it were. Which is why the book is so popular in Tehran where men still control the property.

She has no where to go, and it is this powerlessness that turns him on so much, that he, this washed up novelist can dominate someone weaker than him, but there is the rub :lol:

Because she is not weaker than him, she may not read and write as he does, nor does he show any benovelance to see that he does, as she is simply a product ( of her environment or otherwise) and he does not as an upper class man feel any sort of responsiblity to take care of her.

But she wins in the end, because of her youth :lol: she can go on and have a life, but he is really washed up and a loser. Although if I remember correctly she gets married young and has children, but the fact is she has a choice as to where to go when she leaves him, not many options, but she has her youth, he does not. As much as he feels he can devour her youth, like many withered Capitalist bastards feel they can do with young girls and boys in the sex industry, etc. he can not. In the end he is old and she is young. And as much as he tries to shatter her innocence, in the end she still possesses it, even more so because she only did what she was told, and did not do so out any real lust or perversion, but simply out of habit and function. So in the end she is pure. It is afterwards where she choses her own fate that this changes.

Beautiful story, I really respect the implications towards society, but using the symbology of a young girl corrupted by an old man really pisses me off. It would probably use a young man corrupted by an older man or woman today. Still I wish there was a way to refer to the implications of global politics without the sexual implications, perhaps by refering to the use of household servents and treatment of them by a shameless upper class patron. I can handle the scrubbing of floors better than enforced sexual acts much better. There is something so personal about sex, and so spectaularly innocent about children's sexual curiosity that to subvert and muddy that specialness to serve ones own ends really is a grievous act, i would almost say a sin, although I am not religious and certainly not a Christian, but it is the noun and verb which has the most grievous tone to the matter.