They have about them a queer surcharge of meaning, as if they were enormous similes for the insoluble predicaments of life. Nabokov has created belong to mythology or poetry, not to naturalism. But it must also be understood that the monsters Mr. Such a lust, it must be admitted, is monstrous. Nabokov’s restrained and witty chronicle of the lust of a man for a child. Accustomed as the modern reader may be to scanning, with perfect composure, those clumps of naughty monosyllables that make up the ordinary “powerful” novel of sexual deviation, he is apt to find himself wholly disconcerted by Mr. Nabokov has coolly prodded one of the few remaining raw nerves of the twentieth century. It is the horrific rather than the comic aspect of the novel that has captured critical attention. Literature is not rich in examples of such work, but certain of Mark Twain’s writings come to mind, as does Nikolai Gogol’s “Dead Souls.” And to this abbreviated list we may now add Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” (Putnam). The result of this union is satire of a very special kind, in which vice or folly is regarded not so much with scorn as with profound dismay and a measure of tragic sympathy. But of all such pairings the oddest by far is the conjunction of a sense of humor with a sense of horror. Sometimes, as in satire, it is joined to a spirit of ferocious indignation. Sometimes, as in parody, it is coupled with the flinty disposition of the critic. Usually it attaches to some less endearing quality, such as a tendency to preach and moralize. A gift for comedy seldom comes to a writer unaccompanied.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |