Comments
Neville
Nabokov: "...A very good film, but it's not what I wrote."
If you'd like to find out what Nabokov did write, and why the last laugh is on us, read:
Appel, Alfred, Jr. (1991). The Annotated Lolita (revised ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-72729-9.
One of the best guides to the complexities of Lolita, especially Appel's Introduction and Nabokov's Afterword "On a Book Entitled Lolita".
Some choice Nabokov quotes:
"Lolita is a special favorite of mine. It was my most difficult book—the book that treated of a theme which was so distant, so remote, from my own emotional life that it gave me a special pleasure to use my combinational talent to make it real."
"I shall never regret Lolita. She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle—its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look. Of course she completely eclipsed my other works—at least those I wrote in English: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Bend Sinister, my short stories, my book of recollections; but I cannot grudge her this. There is a queer, tender charm about that mythical nymphet."
"I would say that of all my books Lolita has left me with the most pleasurable afterglow—perhaps because it is the purest of all, the most abstract and carefully contrived. I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings."
If you'd like to find out what Nabokov did write, and why the last laugh is on us, read:
Appel, Alfred, Jr. (1991). The Annotated Lolita (revised ed.). New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-72729-9.
One of the best guides to the complexities of Lolita, especially Appel's Introduction and Nabokov's Afterword "On a Book Entitled Lolita".
Some choice Nabokov quotes:
"Lolita is a special favorite of mine. It was my most difficult book—the book that treated of a theme which was so distant, so remote, from my own emotional life that it gave me a special pleasure to use my combinational talent to make it real."
"I shall never regret Lolita. She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle—its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look. Of course she completely eclipsed my other works—at least those I wrote in English: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Bend Sinister, my short stories, my book of recollections; but I cannot grudge her this. There is a queer, tender charm about that mythical nymphet."
"I would say that of all my books Lolita has left me with the most pleasurable afterglow—perhaps because it is the purest of all, the most abstract and carefully contrived. I am probably responsible for the odd fact that people don't seem to name their daughters Lolita any more. I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings."
LMTR14
only Kubrick film I don´t get anything whatsoever out of
Litso
Pff, so annoying. First it's Shelly Winters running around screaming like Kyle's mom, then it's Sellers rambling on in his annoying little way. None of the characters was een remotely believable, it didn't even bore me but just plain annoy me.
In 11 official lists
AT #765