:INFO
The Most Beautifully Written Book With the Worst Narrator
Lolita requires you to hold two things at the same time: the extraordinary beauty of Nabokov's prose and the complete moral failure of the person producing it. Humbert Humbert is a pedophile who presents himself as a lover and uses the language of literature to construct a case for his own victimhood. The novel is the most complete demonstration I know of the idea that beautiful language can be in the service of something monstrous, and reading it is a lesson in how literature can implicate you.


:NOTE
The beauty of the prose is the trap. Nabokov intended it and it works.


:QUOTE [quotetype:plain, subtitle:Vladimir Nabokov]
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.


:JOURNEY
Reading Lolita
4 Implicating prose
3 Numbing by design
4 Curtain lifted
5 Reality breaks through

:NOTE
The novel is frequently discussed as primarily a linguistic achievement. It is also a precise account of abuse framed to seem like love, and reading it critically requires keeping that distinction in view throughout.


:POLL
Do you think Lolita is a masterpiece, a problematic book, or both?
A masterpiece precisely because of the discomfort it creates
Both, and the tension between them is what makes it last
Problematic in ways that outweigh its literary achievement
I have not read it and am uncertain whether I want to