Nabokov tactfully and gracefully smatters an infinite amount of puns throughout the text. One interesting pun I noticed was on page 137 where Humbert (HH) refers to a lake as “Lake Climax.” Because of many previous puns in the text, we cannot know whether or not this lake is actually identified as such. However the mention of the lake’s name, with regards to Lolita’s escapades at Camp Q with Barbra Burke and Charlie Holmes spurns curiosity. Another pun of equal value occurs on page 157 where HH refers to a Mexican border town as “Conception Park.” Again, this pun calls question to HH’s motive (as if this is a surprise) and illustrates a boundary that HH himself might not be willing to cross. HH daydreams of crossing the border in to Mexico, but their journey never crosses this border. Conception Park, with its virile allusion to sex and conception, helps HH set up a metaphorical boundary as well.

On Guns

After HH takes possession of the gun, and after Lolita’s departure from the main story line, I felt that the gun took on a more direct role in HH’s evolving master plan. It’s like the gun spoke to HH, and programmed in a sick outline of deterministic events. On page 268 HH refers to his pistol as, “solid death in my hip pocket.” This is a direct foreshadowing for events to come. Another aside HH plops in the middle of his departure from Lolita occurs on page 280 stating, “Then I pulled out my automatic…” This aside, placed firmly in the middle of his goodbye, further illustrates HH’s growing instability. A third gun reference happens shortly after on page 292 where HH refers to his gun as, “Full Blued. Aching to be discharged.” I’m no expert on guns, but from what I’ve seen, blueing is a more traditional sort of “old world” finish on barrels and slides. Most modern hand guns are made of solid color steel or stainless steel. The blueing is created by dipping the barrel (or other treated parts) in chemicals which cast on to the metal an eerie, almost gasoline-like effect. (A parallel treatment (from the art world, for example) is marbleized wall paper where, because of the random nature of dyes suspended in solution, no two pieces are identical.)

Even throughout the whole story Humbert refers to young girls as “nymphets” including his focus of desire, Dolly, to whom he called “Lolita.” This is also reminiscent of Greek literature where young Grecian men chase after mythological nymphs. After reading the end of the book,it seemed that the characters were destined to end tragically.Even in the beginning the story begins with tragedy. Humbert lost his mother at age 3 and his wife Valeria to a Russian colonel. He lost Anabel, the true love of his life and the catalyst for his desire for Lolita,Charlotte lost a baby son and her husband and Rita suffered 3 divorces. Finally in the end of the story, Lolita dies giving childbirth and even the baby dies.The book is really a collection of misery yet Nabokov does offer elements of humor especially during times when Lolita innocently seduces Humbert and how Humbert passionately professes his love with very colorful words.

What is most ingenious about this particular book, despite being written in 1955, is the type of interactivity that is created in a metafictional format. For example there is an interchange from 3rd person to 1st person in several chapters of the narrative when Humbert pleads for the reader’s sympathy and explains to the reader about his plight and that he has just reason to love Lolita.

It was very fascinating how much the narrative forces us to use our imagination. As long as the reader is seeking a good story, the author is willing to provide one but only if the reader is clever to find it or imagine it.
Through out the narrative Nabokov reveals to us some but yet conceals others to keep us pulled to the novel and interacted with the narrative, which I think played a big part in finishing the whole book to get to the end.

While reading the book I felt as if I was reading two stories in one. Because at one point Nabokov makes you disgusted by Humbert and at other you feel pity for him. Where Humbert in one paragraph he feels sorry and realizes that Lolita is not an object for him own and in the next paragraph he talks about revenge from the person who took something that is his but yet he doesn’t realize he is hurting her; which goes back to the revealed and hidden parts.

I think the author did a good job manipulating my focus through out the story, where sometimes i had to slow down and indulge in the details and descriptions of the narrative.
The author was very clever in making the reader expect something but yet surprises him with a totally different thing. Some parts of the novel where unexpected yet many parts where very predictable.
This narrative pulled me to the story and got me through finishing the book. The way the story was written makes you get over the disgusting parts and focus on the narrative and the plot.

How often do we come across a book in which unspeakable content turns our stomachs while incredible narration keeps us glued to the pages? (If I’m the only one, I’ll take it as a sign and seek help.)

I attribute this addictive quality to good writing, or course, but more specifically to the narrator’s varied use of person. He moves between first and third person with a fluidity that keeps us from jumping on his manipulation, but in a way that allows us to immerse ourselves in the narrator’s story without getting too close to Humbert’s criminal activity.

The fictional non-fiction character John Ray, Jr., PhD. brings us into the story at a two-person distance from Humbert’s actions, for which Jr. (J.R.) tells us the monster has suffered punishment. Then, throughout part one, the narrator speaks of Humbert’s longings and Humbert’s illicit actions, but of his (the narrator’s) memories.

This separation works two fold: first, it distances the narrator from his earlier actions, second, it allows us to distance ourselves from those same actions by reading about the monster Humbert instead stepping into the narrative “I” until the narrator has some more humane emotions/moments.

Throughout part one, our narrator tells us about Humbert Humbert following in a young prostitute’s wake, about Humbert striking V, and about Humbert holding Lolita in his lap when she is just a child. Humbert has a pet and plans to pull the bigger Haze under the lake, but the narrator can’t kill the woman.

As we come into part two, the narrator becomes accountable for his actions, to some degree, and uses the “I” to describe some of his actions with his young hostage. Of course, the occasional Humbert comes in when things are really bad, but he progressively loses the third person in favor of the first as his feelings for Lo become warmer. He stops calling her his pet, his monkey, etc. as he progresses toward what comes across as remorse, or as close to remorse as narrator Humbert can come.

The funny thing is that the narrator can’t stand the thought that Quilty kidnapped, raped and sodomized a girl of such a young age, which he told us Humbert had already done. The loving father avenging his stepdaughter is all first person, but Humbert’s attraction to new nymphettes brings back the third.

The narrator keeping himself out of the “bad” parts allows us to stay with him, even though we know he is H.H., as he tells us about the horrible Humbert. And the knowledge that Jr. introduced us to the story because H.H. died in a facility brings us to it with a sense of final justice before we get started.

So, are we (or am I, should I say) more likely to empathize with a pedophile because he really did love her (uck!) or is Nabokov just able to manipulate me (us?) into taking H.H.’s words without associating them too closely with his actions?

A note on the French: from my observation the instances in which the French is misused or misspelled are those in which it is (mis)used by characters other than HH (such as the Russian taxi driver or Charlotte Haze).

…now I am going to wash my brain with soap…not because of the text…but because of the [con]text.

The one thing that became quite clear for me, as I read the book (going from whatever page I happened to be, to its designated link in the Notes section at the end), could be stated in the following questions: Would I be reading the same Lolita without these annotations? Would I make sense of the story as I did without their help? Would I have been aware of the multiple literary allusions included in this book? (Some of which could be considered relevant in the process of understanding the novel, while some could be of importance exclusively to researchers or experts in literary subjects)

The answer is obviously no. It would have been a completely different experience, and I’m not sure if I would have appreciated all the details the book has to offer without them. For example, there’s no way I could have found on my own that Vivian Darkbloom is an anagram of Vladimir Nabokov, not on a first reading, or even a second one (a fact that could be considered crucial, from a certain point of view). But on the other hand, by revealing the identity of Humbert’s nemesis right from the start it took away all the entertaining aspect of finding the clues and solving the mystery myself.

And it’s precisely with these annotations that I find a link with digital narratives, most specifically with video games and all the additional information available on the web for people having trouble solving the puzzles presented by their game of choice, or looking for a greater knowledge of the tools with which to achieve a more successful record, or perhaps to delight in the intricacies and effort that went into creating the world they are enjoying.

This is particularly the case in the section in which Humbert Humbert details he and Lolita’s travels that first year after Charlotte’s death. (page 158) Rather than feel constrained by the limited amount of space a book allows, he rambles on and on about every single place the pair visited. Had this been an online narrative, I could have easily seen a myriad of hyperlinks to other pages where readers could discover more about the places they visited that fateful year. Given the various layers of story within Lolita, I actually think it might be best told online as readers/viewers could pick and choose which storyline they found interesting.

That said, the idea that Lolita would make a spectacular online narrative leaves me with the following questions: What about Lolita would make is such a successful online narrative? What does it have that other, similarly acclaimed books don’t? Could any book be reformatted into an online narrative and be successful? Would Faulkner’s The Sound & the Fury or any of James Joyce’s works invoke the same passion if they had been written as online narratives rather than traditional books?

If it is possible to compare the story to the types of interactivity, or if Lolita was a hypertext of sorts, it would most resemble Ryan’s “internal-exploratory.” The player/reader cannot influence the outcome; only discover the whole story one clue at a time in a game that might be analogous to “Where in the world is Carmen San Diego meets Bad Day on the Midway.” Humbert is the avatar in a fall-myth that deteriorates from bad to worse, which seems like a Russian story, doesn’t it?

Lolita could not be transmogrified in good taste to one of Ryan’s other interactive styles. What a horror Lolita the first person shooter would be. The other choices seem even more ghastly. What techniques in this narrative might be useful in a digital narrative? A fascinating element was the story as told from inside the narrators struggling and failing intellect. Perhaps another bar graph for the first person shooter is the sanity meter.

By the way, I found a FREE copy of Lolita online:
http://www.arlindo-correia.com/lolita_1.html