islanded in a stream of stars

A beautiful quotation on film music which I discovered in an interview with Adrian Lyne's Lolita screenwriter, Stephen Schiff:

"A movie's score is its emotional touchstone; it has to be very immediate, and it has to speak to an audience in a language that requires no transposition."

I've found that the following soundtracks are absolutely magical when reading Lolita: Phillip Glass's the Hours, Yann Tiersen's Goodbye, Lenin! and Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo.

Now back to my original topic, assuming that I had one to begin with.

I was quite pleased to have a chance to discuss Lolita during CrWr as I was assigned to a small group tasked with the question (paraphrased), "Which novel could best replace Anna Karenina as the lector's reading choice in Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics, keeping in mind the work's social and political agenda?"

Coincidentally I had been rereading Lolita over the weekend while frantically editing a piece for Moch which roughly touched upon a few of the same subjects-loss, innocence, youth, beauty of language. Luckily I had Lolita in my backpack, so I had a merry little discussion with zedhaus and others about why Lolita would work. Yes, you're replacing a Russian classic with another Russian classic, but even that's a bit of a stretch considering that Lolita was Nabokov's second work written originally in English. Lolita has the image of doomed lovers, the exploration of the many different kinds of love relationships, and, to quote from the summary printed on the back (lazy of me, I know!), "the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America," an assertion with which I disagree, by the way; I don't think that Nabokov had a strong political message in mind.

Unfortunately I think I lost most people there because nobody ever really reads Lolita for fun, or if they do they're looking for the raunchy bits. Well, such a reader will be disappointed, as one of my intrepid classmates remarked after flipping through my copy, "There isn't anything graphic about the sex; it's encapsulated in his language, and you've got to read through the lines." Nabokov is wonderfully frustrating with his wordplay and flowing passages about minutae; the meaning is veiled in the aesthetics of his images.

The thing that bothers me the most about the perceptions of Lolita is that most people assume that it's all about a perverted old man's domineering, abnormal relationship with a young girl. I'm not absolving Humbert-Humbert of his crimes by any means, but I will openly confess that I can't hate him. He is quite conscious of the fact that his sexual fascination with nymphets is grotesque. Some may blame Lolita as encouraging H-H, another folly. Lolita was fully aware of her power over H-H and willingly manipulated him to get what she wanted on occasion (the most notable example being her convincing H-H to go on a second cross-country road trip), but H-H took away any chances of having a happy childhood and home life. A true nymphet is unaware of her sexual appeal; she is aware that she has the power to attract, but doesn't necessarily consciously use these powers when she's interested in men. I don't think that either party is completely free of blame or the consequences for that matter, so it bothers me when people say that it's all H-H's or Dolores's fault. Nabokov once said that "The moral of Lolita is that there is no moral," and despite the murkiness of moral ambiguity I believe that it is folly to view the book as being totally fixated with the vulgarity of sexual perversion. The main attraction for me is Nabokov's writing style, a feature that tends to be overlooked with the public's preconception of Lolita as any crude sexually precocious young girl and her predatory older lover.

I must admit that part of my response stems from being sick of fending myself of accusations of being a pervert because Lolita is easily one of my favorite books in existence. I do understand that a lot of people dislike this book not because of the morals (or lack thereof?) but because they don't really understand what goes on. Lolita is something of a puzzle, and you really do have to reread it for it to make more sense. And I know that I will probably never understand every single reference, image, nuane of meaning, but it still enchants. I've forgotten how many times I've reread certain sections (in whole, I've reread the book thrice) but I've only grown to better appreciate the wit and the beauty of the words unfurling on the page.

I've read too much Lolita criticism within the past few hours instead of studying for French. Not that I need to study for French, anyway.

Edit: I just found out that my uncle Doug (the one who nearly became the first Chinese-American American naval admiral, and who has kindly let me joined his cell phone family plan) had a heart attack yesterday, but luckily it was a mild one, and he's recuperating fairly well in the hospital. I wish him well and hope that his upcoming bypass surgery is speedy and safe.