| | I read Nabokov's Lolita because it was a friend's favorite book. It made me feel unclean, as if I'd breathed in some poison and had to cough it out, in such an unmatched degree of repugnance, that it seemed to me that there were some books that should never be written. (Kubrick's film does not capture this.) Had I let it go at that, I would have agreed that the book was about the "murder ... of a ... soul". Thanks to Nafisi, I saw that I'd missed something important -- failed to observe the observer -- and therefore missed seeing that the girl had overcome evil; "attempted murder" would be a better metaphor (if not something relating to, say, the image of a flower through asphalt). Wouldn't the influence of Humbert's memories count as psychotic, though? I still don't want to re-read that book!
I have a hard time reconciling "good people" with "child rapists". If there really is some shred of good in them, these people must be either repressing (to conform) or fighting (against deep misunderstanding) what they know. In the former case, reality doesn't have primacy. In the latter, reality has primacy, as far as intent goes, but the integration of it doesn't.
A Persian friend points out that Nafisi's book gives only part of the story. She said something to the effect that over 40% of university students studying engineering are female. Nafisi's book makes it seem as if the universities died. As did Lolita, Iranians are, at least to a degree, overcoming the evil theocrats' attempt to murder their souls.
BTW, there's a Nabokov (Nah-BAW-cuff, and no reverse akan'e) museum in St. Petersburg; apparently, contrary to my ("Eyewitness") travel guide, it's not merely in the planning stages, per some local free info I failed to peruse when there. Other minor museums were worth the trouble (Pushkin great, Akhmatova haunting), so Nabokov's probably is, too.
|
|
