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zing

Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 12:58 pm
by Lawrence
The girls will have to say how much zing they got from early teenage sexual experimentation but Elizabeth Taylor's character in Butterfield 8 said she loved it. Any opinion us fellas might express about Lolita's attitude would be pure guess.

Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 1:34 pm
by realiz
Quote realiz:
I think that Lolita saw him as a god.
Oops, I meant to say here that she did NOT see him as a god.

As for early teenage experimentation...this was not the case. Having a 40 years old man have sex with you for 3 hours when you are in his charge is not really experimentation. As for the rest of the book, it was very clear that Lolita did not enjoy the sex with him.

If she had loved it, and I guess there could be situations like this where that would happen, after all an older man would know more about seduction and unducing pleasure for woman than a young teen, this book would still be about the exploitation of a young girl.

Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 5:49 pm
by giselle
This seems like a great book with lots of food for thought. I'm disappointed with not participating in this discussion because i'm still waiting for my book, a price you pay for living a long way from anywhere. However, I have read many of the posts on Lolita and I'm intrigued and sickened by how depraved Humbert is. The victimization of Lolita is so cruel that I feel nauseated contemplating it.

Some of us parents, whether of boys or girls, have had some kind of scare that one of our kids may have fallen victim to a predator and I think this would personalize and bring close to home the story of Humbert. Just look at the panicked face of a parent who has lost a child in a shopping mall or a theme park .. this is not just about the kid wandering off but about what can happen to the child, the threats that he or she may face and high up on the threat list is "predator".

One question I will think about as I read Lolita is whether or not it is possible for the reader to set aside emotions and be objective, almost clinical .. or is the emotional pull of the story simply too strong. And would the experience of reading the story be different from an "objective" point of view?

Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 7:21 pm
by realiz
giselle,
I hope you get your copy soon, so that you can join in the discussion. We need more opinions here. I think setting aside emotions in this story and looking at it 'clinically' would cause an even lower opinion of Humbert.

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 12:29 pm
by giselle
i think they sent my book by dog sled. but i will read it when it arrives. i have started reading The Things They Carried in hopes of participating in the next fiction discussion.

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 12:34 pm
by realiz
That is the book I am waiting for right now. I think I made a mistake of ordering too many books in one order and asking for bulk shipping.

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 1:21 pm
by Ophelia
Giselle wrote:
I'm disappointed with not participating in this discussion because I'm still waiting for my book, a price you pay for living a long way from anywhere.
Where do you live, Giselle?
Anyway, I sympathize, I can get books in French quickly (though I don't order many) but books in English are sometimes a problem.
Have you tried the link I gave to read Lolita on the net? I don't like doing that, but this is how Raving Lunatic and I started before our copies arrived.

www.booktalk.org/read-lolita-on-the-web-t5603.html

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 1:38 pm
by Ophelia
Giselle wrote:
The victimization of Lolita is so cruel that I feel nauseated contemplating it.

Some of us parents, whether of boys or girls, have had some kind of scare that one of our kids may have fallen victim to a predator and I think this would personalize and bring close to home the story of Humbert. Just look at the panicked face of a parent who has lost a child in a shopping mall or a theme park .. this is not just about the kid wandering off but about what can happen to the child, the threats that he or she may face and high up on the threat list is "predator".

One question I will think about as I read Lolita is whether or not it is possible for the reader to set aside emotions and be objective, almost clinical .. or is the emotional pull of the story simply too strong. And would the experience of reading the story be different from an "objective" point of view?

My view is that Nabokov is not writing a book about a child who becomes the victim of a predator. Other writers have done that, for example a book by Jodi Picoult I didn't finish (she isn't that great a writer, that's all).
I understand what you mean about parents panicking at the supermarket, and I think if I were a parent I would be more likely to concentrate on that aspect of things. But I don't think that's why Nabokov wrote his his book, I still can't put it in words but it's more complex than that.

Of course I can't be only analytical with Mr Humbert -- I read his prose a few pages at a time, but I feel sure that Nabokov (who was a father) was not a parent writing for other parents in Lolita, or to denounce the exploitation of children by predators. Also in the 50's kids were safe from outsiders (not that H was one) so this climate of fear did not exist.

Another problem with Nabokov is that he probably gave lectures about Lolita but I have a feeling that they would be no help in getting us to understand what the main point was for him.


[/quote]The victimization of Lolita is so cruel that I feel nauseated contemplating it.

Some of us parents, whether of boys or girls, have had some kind of scare that one of our kids may have fallen victim to a predator and I think this would personalize and bring close to home the story of Humbert. Just look at the panicked face of a parent who has lost a child in a shopping mall or a theme park .. this is not just about the kid wandering off but about what can happen to the child, the threats that he or she may face and high up on the threat list is "predator".

One question I will think about as I read Lolita is whether or not it is possible for the reader to set aside emotions and be objective, almost clinical .. or is the emotional pull of the story simply too strong. And would the experience of reading the story be different from an "objective" point of view?

Charles Mc grath wrote in the New York Times:
But "Lolita" is more than just a dirty book; it's an upsetting one. And it disturbs us more than ever because pedophilia has moved from the murky, seldom-visited basement of our collective consciousness to the forefront of our moral awareness. We know now that it happens more often than anyone imagined, and with far worse consequences.
I'm trying to push aside all this knowledge we now have about pedophiles and kidnappers, because too much of that knowledge is an obstacle to my reading of thre book. I'm not saying that knowledge is irrelevant, but we are 21st century readers and this is not a 21st century story.

thank you

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 2:35 pm
by giselle
thank you ophelia, i'll be able to read Lolita now before the discussion is over. i have already bought and paid for my copy so i don't feel bad about downloading.

a general thought on your comment re interpretation of Lolita and how we as readers find meaning in our reading ... does it matter whether we approach interp. from the author's point of view or the reader's point of view? since i know nothing about Nabokov i default to the latter ... so does this mean i have missed the point of the book? does it mean that i take my own meaning and that is sufficient and who cares what the author meant? or does it enrich the reading experience to find out more by research into the author's intentions?

a related thought i have is about emotionalism and meaning ... Nabokov may not have been writing about predator/victim but from what i can glean from the posts, the book generates substantial emotional reaction ... so does this reaction bring us closer to understanding the authors meaning or does it muddy the waters?

reading a book

Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 2:42 pm
by Lawrence
giselle
The question you ask is answered to my satisfaction by the following quotation:
In a treatise written by Bart D. Ehrman, entitled, Misquoting Jesus, we find, after 216 pages of a very careful explanation of how the Bible we read today got to be the way it is, he concludes:

The more I studied, the more I saw that reading a text necessarily involves interpreting a text. I suppose when I started my studies I had a rather unsophisticated view of reading: that the point of reading a text is simply to let the text 'speak for itself,' to uncover the meaning inherent in its words. The reality, I came to see, is that meaning is not inherent and texts do not speak for themselves. If texts could speak for themselves, then everyone honestly and openly reading a text would agree on what the text says. But interpretations of texts abound, and people in fact do not agree on what the texts mean. This is obviously true of the texts of scripture: simply look at the hundreds, or even thousands, of ways people interpret the book of Revelation, or consider all the different Christian denominations, filled with intelligent and well-meaning people who base their views of how the church should be organized and function on the Bible, yet all of them coming to radically different conclusions (Baptists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Appalachian snake-handlers, Greek Orthodox, and on and on.)
Or think back on the last time you were involved in a heated debate in which the Bible was invoked, and someone volunteered an interpretation of a scripture verse that left you wondering, how did he (or she) come up with that? We hear this all around us in discussions of homosexuality, women in the church, abortion, divorce, and even American foreign policy, with both sides quoting the same Bible