Lolita
By Thanh Christopher Nguyen 14 Jun 2004
I’m done with Thompson’s GENERATION OF SWINE. It was good, but has thus left me with the itch, once again, for fiction at its finest. In lou of last weeks comment about crack smokers being better than others, I have picked up Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov. This book was given to me years ago, by a fellow admirer of the printed word, but I never read it because I had my head too far up the cracks of VOnnegut’s many works. I think I’m going to like this book, and can definately see why. In case any of you would like something interesting to read, and rich of language, I think this could be a good one. You can wait a couple of days to a week and ask me about the whole, or you can race me to finish it. Here’s something to entice you…
(The first page)
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. SHe was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always LOlita.
DId she have a precursor? SHe did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no LOlita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? ABout as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fance prose style.
LAdies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.
V. NAbokov, LOLITA (Pg. 1)
THere’s just too much richness to consider this anything but a misfortune that I have not read it sooner. (Forgive the double capitals, this keyboard at work is not very nice.)