week 13

November 21

Alice Liddell

LOLITA CONTINUED:

• 2 abductions:

1. Humbert: took her from her childhood
2. Dick Schiller: took her from Humbert

• Claire Quilty (this is hilarious! a band named after Cue! here's the band's official site)
• HH's doppelganger, Lolita's 'true love', and the abductor of the child
• a reader who is 'supernaturally receptive' is the opportune reader of this novel. Someone who sees all the coincidences and patterns
• John Ray Jr. (JR JR) was invented by the 'puppeteer' Nabokov
• he uses alliteration in all of his novels, and brilliant technique of 'repeating'
• summary of Shakespeare's Rape of Lucrece
• 'fate'= something planned out for you in advance -> novel feels like it has been planned out by 'McFate'
• Aubrey Beardsley
• "I have fallen in love with Lolita forever, but she is not forever Lolita" because she is a child, and will grow up and not be a nymphet forever
• nacreous: resembling nacre; lustrous; pearly
• A 'scholarly fantasy' is that the footnotes and bibliography will become part of the text itself
• Robertson Davies: believes that Lolita is actually about the abduction and rape of an old English man, instead of a child. He thinks that HH is the innocent victim of Lolita
• pg 210: "you see I loved her, it was love at first site, at last sight, at ever sight"
• at the end HH discovers something about healthy love, he realizes that he loves Lolita even when she's 16 (an old woman) and pregnant with someone else's baby
• Although Nabokov thinks that he is evil he thinks that because he is so sorry at the end, he should be able to walk through a green valley one day a year