Ok so I definitely don’t mean to judge different peoples interpretations of the book but I saw so many people (before I read it) talk about how they were taken in by Humbert and about how it’s a tragedy because you have empathy for him and I just… didn’t get that?
For me he was just such a fucking creep from the start. His pedophilia was so consistently woven through the narrative you were never allowed to forget it.
Every time I started to feel a bit bad for him, or think I could be taken in by the romance of it all, he would, in the same breath, sexually romanticise Lolita’s (or any other child’s) youth as a central part of his being all over again, and I would be brought right back to the horror of the whole situation.
Don’t get me wrong, Nabokov is a fucking artist and every line of the book bleed with passion and aching beauty… but it’s just so twisted by the context.
I’m just curious on others readings since I had such a different one than was advertised.
I was expecting, going into this, that I’d end up nodding along with a pedofile but honestly it felt like reading a very well done (and romanticised) thriller.
To reiterate! No judgment at all for empathising with Humbert. I’m aware that that is the intention and I also think part of my interpretation was that I was very prepared that he was an unreliable narrator and all that
by wtactualfboi