Definitely NOT A Beach Read

I am not in the habit of making unsubstantiated assumptions, but indulge me for a moment and see if this makes sense.  It does seem that many a middle-aged man catches a glimpse of a younger woman and part of his brain sighs and thinks, If only I were 25 again; see: Affair, Profumo; or LA Story.  I imagine it possible that some segment of those men may also catch a glimpse of some coeds, and think, If only I were 18 again; see: Buttafuoco, Joey.  And yes, some segment of those middle-aged men may well be fathers themselves.  But it takes a large leap into the queasy depths to imagine living the story in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, which I finally read this summer.

I have been working my way through pieces of literature that, by neglecting English Lit courses in college since freshman year, I had not actually read.  Much of what I've read of Plato is in that category of self-paced learning.  This year, Nabokov's most famous work finally became "next up" in my list.

In case it's not made your reading list either, the book traces the history of the narrator's paedophilia, focusing mainly on his pursuit of his landlady's 12-year-old daughter.  What a completely creepy book to read at this stage in my life, simply because the eponymous girl in the novel is the same age as my own daughter (I did not know this fact when I picked it up): I had always imagined the two characters were closer in age, such as 25 and 16, vice mid-40s and 12.

As a study of manipulative evil, as a study of how predators work on their prey, and as a study of how selfishness blinds one to the effect it has on others, the book is remarkable.  I imagine it would be required reading for anyone about to work in our Innocent Images program, for instance, or to work with the various Behavioral Analysis Units at Quantico.  It's simply impossible to overlook the "Eww!" factor, though.  While Nabokov is hardly graphic in his descriptions, the mere pursuit he chronicles induces skin-crawl.  There are novels and examples of literature whose purpose is to shock, to provoke, to test boundaries, and this is certainly one prime example of it.  And in the reactions themselves, we often learn a lot.

In the midst of reading it, Mary asked if I liked the book.  "No," I truthfully answered, for reasons of the above.  I can cross it off my list and move on.  It will take, however, copious amounts of brain bleach to scrub off the sticky "Eww!"-ness of it, though.