A Prose by Any Other Name

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“You may notice that a book’s first sentence can often tell 

you what sort of story your book contains” 

– Lemony Snicket

Indeed, the first sentence of a book can tell a lot about its content, which is why the first sentence of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita can be quite overwhelming for some readers. It’s not often that a book welcomes you with an extended foreword, which is clearly there to showcase the writer’s literary achievements:

"Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male," such were the two titles under which the writer of the present note received the strange pages it preambulates.”

Alas, poor Readers! The worst has yet to come. For you see, not only is the title of this article shamelessly ripping off poor William Shakespeare, but it is also the style of writing that Nabokov has chosen to tell the story. Knowing this, you ask yourself: Do I want to continue reading this book? If you managed to survive the Foreword without using the book as firewood, then there is still hope. The story starts in a similar pacing found in the Foreword, with Humbert Humbert, our unreliable narrator, expressing his affection to a woman named “Lolita”. After a while, the reader starts to realize that dialogue does not exist in this universe and all the events that happened is told from Humbert’s erratic perspective.

In fact, you can say that this entire book is unreliable. The long, over-exaggerated and extravagant prose gives the setting of a Dickensian England, but in reality this was set much closer to 1950s America. It is hinted throughout that Humbert is addressing a court; he used words like “Ladies and gentlemen” and “Your Honor” but actually, it’s a memoir; a long confession letter written when he is in his dying hours. Readers must keep in mind that reading “Lolita” is similar to reading a personal diary in that memory a flimsy concept. Events jump around, so nothing is in a linear timeline.

The characters would often misread each other’s actions and intentions, for instance: Charlotte assumed that Humbert married her for love, when really he did it to be closer to Charlotte’s daughter “Lolita” (or Dolores), and eventually had a sexual relationship with her. Action and pornographic images in this book are very tamed because they are either mentioned in a quick verse or fragmented throughout the paragraphs. Humbert’s recalled events are not boring per se; rather the amount of description is sometimes unnecessarily poetic. For example, Humbert’s thought on drowning Charlotte in the lake are highly romanticize but in the end it amounted to nothing because he dismissed the thought after forming it due to conviction. Readers can interpret this as sets an ironic mood or pointless.

Overall, “Lolita” is a love story gone wrong. Readers with great interest in poetic writing will highly enjoy this story. But to those who cannot even read past the first sentence: Expectation is the root of all heartache. I hope that fireplace keeps you warm.