So I’ve finally read Lolita and I know this has been said many times before already but I really don’t understand how anyone could interpret this book as endorsing or romanticizing pedophilia.
Since that (mis)interpretation of Lolita is so common and has even been repeated by respected critics several times, I thought that there must be some truth to it but I really didn’t feel that at all.
As a CSA survivor myself, I recognized the many manipulation tactics Humbert uses to mislead both Dolores and the reader, and I don’t feel the book was minimizing my experience.
Obviously it was a difficult read, downright triggering for me, but I also found it oddly validating in how thoroughly Nabokov illustrates Humbert’s monstrosity, and by extension, all child abusers. It’s a disturbing and important masterpiece, and it saddens me that it’s pop cultural reputation is so inaccurate to what the book is actually like
by 87penguinstapdancing