Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita II

"don't like books about child rape..."


"It's hard to have respect for this book or the author of it when all this book is trying to do is convince you that Humbert is genuine and this is true love and somehow this relationship should be seen as acceptable. That's why we have laws on child rape: because there is no excuse good enough to justify it being good, and even if there was such an excuse, it doesn't make the act itself good for the child. Any portrayal of child rape is inexcusable, just like any act of child rape gets is inexcusable in real life. Why else would so much time be spent on showing us how Humbert, the man with the weirdest name i've ever heard by the way, loves Lolita, if not to try to win people over so they'll throw their morals and respect for the law out the window? ... Furthermore, the story has made the destruction of a wholesome and healthy parental and community unit look like a positive thing, like it's benefting the child to live with a crazed wealthy sex offender ... Art is part of real life too, and should be treated the same way you'd treat any real life event."


"There are too many words and the paragraphs are far too long."


"took forever to Finnish"


"A colleague of mine pointed out that Nabokov was a Russian immigrant and that his style of writing reflects conventions and structures found in many Russian novels. However, Lolita is not a work written in Russian for Russians. It is a novel written in English for American popular consumption. Shouldn't the style reflect this?"


"Why the hype, they say it's a classic a must read, I don't see it! The guy is sick in the head and basically kidnaps, blackmails. brian washes and has sex with an 12 yr old"

BRIAN, THE WORLD'S MOST HYGIENIC CHILD RAPIST


"As a professor of English and as a feminist (and the mother of a young girl), I have never been able to ignore the troubling content nor the blatent misogyny in this text to appreciate Nabokov's clever narrative structure. If men think this is a love story, then, goddess help us all."


"I can't imagine that if you changed the premise and put Lolita at the age of consent, that many people would find this book worthy at all."


"I read the summary and I read the reviews and thought this book would be fabulous. The perfect book for my vacation; an adult story line to keep you interested and an arousing theme to keep you entertained on the beach. Well I was wrong! The author strings you along through the first quarter of the book with his dreaming of this young girl, finally gets her and doesn't tell you about it! Instead, he drowns on about the sites they saw across the US! What a bore! I've got half way through this book and have absolutely no desire to continue reading it! I was so looking forward to enjoying this novel. What a disappointment!"


"It took me FIVE MONTHS to read this book, and I am a fast reader."

NO YOU'RE NOT

"The book took me two years to read"

WAIT MAYBE YOU ARE


"There seems to be a lolita movement, where women try to look like young girls to be sexy. So I don't recommend this book if you want to gain any wisdom. So many better books out there."


"Perhaps it is the highly praised talent of the author that made me feel uncomfortable and uneasy from page one. I am not a book critic or literature professor, but to me that is not a good thing."


"I always like to read classics to see if they live up to the hype. I guess I just wanted more perversion..."


"I can understand the main character's passion though, as I can vividly recall the tide of emotions that raked my soul during my own adolescent loves. A different time (in which everyone died young), a different culture and mood, who knows what may have been in centuries past? Another time (when everyone died young), another culture and mood, who know what secrets the past holds? Now it is just too taboo."


"Maybe it was all the French I can't understand or pronounce and therefore don't care about."


"If this was read in court by a defendant, we would demand that he be jailed, castrated, killed, yet call it literature and we shout 'Masterpiece!'."


"The Narrator is the bad guy. (which I kind of like as a theory--too bad that the bad guy is actually *bad*)"


"Likewise, the writing is all very coy. Sex happens, and I miss it. While I understand that such censoring was necessary back when this was written, I'm afraid that my modern tastes find it all very disruptive, unappealing. I want to hear the story, not some behind-the-curtain facsimile of it."


"It was read to me by a very strong accent....I felt dirty listening to it. I guess it was like watching a trainwreck."


"Bottom line - I wanted this book to be dirty. It wasn't."


"this book is tell about a lecture who falling in love with the girl. yeah, you are right. he is phedophile, and there are many things that hide by the words."