"Some say the Great American Novel is Huckleberry Finn, some say it's The Jungle, some say it's The Great Gatsby. But my vote goes to the tale with the maximum lust, hypocrisy and obsession — the view of America that could only have come from an outsider — Nabokov's Lolita. ... Those who bought "Lolita" looking for mere prurient kicks must surely have been disappointed. Lolita is dark and twisted all right, but it's also a corruptly beautiful love story of two tragically alike, id-driven souls... What makes Lolita a work of greatness isn't that its title has become ingrained in the vernacular, isn't that it was a generation ahead of America in fetishizing young girls. No, it is the writing, the way Nabokov bounces around in words like the English language is a toy trunk, the sly wit, the way it's devastating and cynical and heartbreaking all at once. Poor old Dolly Haze might not have grown up very well, but Lolita forever remains a thing of timeless beauty."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Mary Elizabeth Williams in her "Personal Best" review at Salon.com
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lolita
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Lolita
40 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Lolita →
Related Quotes
"All of Nabokov's books are about tyranny, even Lolita. Perhaps Lolita most of all."
"Lolita is pornography, and we do not plan to review it."
"Although everybody should know that I detest symbols and allegories (which is due partly to my old feud with Freudian…"
""Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male", such were the two titles under which the writer of the present n…"
"Its author's bizarre cognomen is his own invention; and, of course, this mask — through which two hypnotic eyes seem …"
"This commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that "offens…"
"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 …"
"You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins a…"
"My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of wa…"
"For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss."