Interesting analysis of how the word came to mean the exact opposite of what it was intended to mean.
The book is supposedly a parable or allegory about the United States and Europe. Lolita being America.
I’ve never read the book, but have seen the movie several times. I’ve seen TCM’s Robert Osborne complain how the movie with Peter Sellers trivialized with comedy the very serious nature of the book with its pedophilia.
Yet I think the movie had to have those light moments (Camp Climax for Girls) just to drive away that “eww” factor.
One thing I am surprised at: That a remake of the movie hasn’t been done showing all the “beauty and grace” that pedophilia brings. Showing a happy and content Lolita who suffered no harm at the hands of her older lover.
Interesting so far, I’ll have to finish it later.
A question for FR English scholars:
I have tried several times to read Lolita and failed each time. The book bores me more than the first what seems like 800 pages of James Michener’s Hawaii, where there are no characters and nothing happens except that an island forms very slowly. I cannot connect to any of the Lolita characters enough to care what happens to them, or why, or how, any more than I care about James Michener’s rock drying up in the Pacific. That is rare for me with classics, and I plan to try again to read it. Any suggestions on a good outline/companion/summary that would help me to in some way appreciate Nabokov’s work or his technique enough to understand whatever makes it worth reading?