How to start: Jump in!
[Sept 2023 edit] Woah, woah, woah… I actually recommend the opposite of jumping in. I approach most literature this way, a kind of “read and figure it out later” attitude that in this case would be a disservice to the gravity of the subject matter of this book. Since reading, I’ve learned about a podcast series called “The Lolita Podcast” by Jamie Loftus and it is well worth listening to.
Fravourite quote: “I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader's mind. No matter how many times we reopen "King Lear," never shall we find the good king banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten, at a jolly reunion with all three daughters and their lapdogs. Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in Flaubert's father's timely tear. Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen.
I am saying all this in order to explain how bewildered I was by Farlow's hysterical letter. I knew his wife had died but I certainly expected him to remain, throughout a devout widowhood, the dull, sedate and reliable person he had always been.” (p 265)
(This quote reminds me a Philip Roth quote I like and re-reading it, I appreciate the contrasting voices!)
Tangential: I didn’t know what to think of Lolita, even as I was reading it. These Yale Courses lectures (parts one, two and three) were very helpful! [Sept 2023 edit] Yeah… I didn’t know what to think and most readers, reading this for the first time, don’t know either. But listening to Jamie Loftus’s research into the book and society’s response, was eye-opening. I particularly appreciated episodes 1 and 2 and episode 10.