Random Hodge-Podge: Lolita, Adventure, Circulation

Lolita:

When I read it, I first was disturbed as to why Nabokov was writing a sympathetic portrayal of a pedophile; then I wondered why I myself was feeling sympathetic, and what that said about me.

Perhaps "Lolita" is just regular old shock value, just like Swift saying we should all eat Irish children. So, like Swift calling attention to the plight of the starving Irish, what is Nabokov shocking us into seeing? Perhaps the sexualization of pre-adolescence in America (a phenomenon apparent even in 1955, when it was published); that even as we've increased the age of consent far beyond ancient (and many contemporary) cultures, we've paradoxically, perhaps even hypocritically, lowered the age of accepted sexualization of young girls. Hypocrisy does indeed run rampant throughout "Lolita"; everyone's deceiving someone else, everyone disguises what an awful person they are, only one of them happens to be a pedophile.

Or maybe the shock value lies in the fact that all other forms of Romantic deviancy simply aren't that shocking any more; infidelity, for example, simply isn't as scandalous a plot device as it used to be, sadly. But a pedophile relationship, well, that's still guaranteed to push buttons. Want to show the self-destruction inherent in passionate love? This may be the last way to show it.

Maybe it's just to remind us that pedophiles didn't choose to be so, anymore than homosexuals; they perhaps merit our pity, for it destroys them as much as they destroy innocence.

Or perhaps it's not about romance or sex at all, but about time; the protagonist still pines for his lost love from when he himself was 12. He is continually trying to recover the un-recoverable. Perhaps the commentary is that a constant living in the past is itself a perversion.

Then of course there is the relationship between beauty and morality, for "Lolita" is an incredibly beautifully written novel, but it's still about a pedophile. Do beauty and morality have no inherent relationship? There are also zero descriptions of sex in this text; the language, much like make-up on a woman, conceals as much as it reveals. The protagonist constantly disguises his perversion behind a mask of suave sophistication and intelligence. The treachery of beauty, or at least the need to appreciate beauty for its own sake, and not rely on it to communicate truth, may be the final lesson of "Lolita."

In any case, the function of literature is to hold a mirror up to one's self; how you react to a text reveals more about one's self than about the author or text itself.

Adventure:

In class today, we discussed a theorist who argued that adventure, whether in medieval feudalism or late-modern capitalism, functions to fulfill the ideals of the dominant ideology. But I argue instead that adventure does fulfill the function of ideology, but rather ideology attempts to assimilate and subsume adventure which, by its nature, is outside the ordinary/conventional/dominant power structure. It is by definition extraordinary.

That being said, why not have a corpus of criticism about "The Princess Bride"?

Circulation:

In another class, we've been reading experimental prose works that have a micro-circulation--normally less than 100 copies ever printed, if that. But then I considered, given the general size of the human race, and how few people have ever actually read the complete works of Shakespeare, or John Milton, or Chaucer, relatively speaking, all literature has a micro-circulation. Most people are about as likely to read Paradise Lost as they are to read Tender Buttons.

Which raises the perfectly valid question: why study literature at all?

Why, precisely because it affects us; literature affects us, and the conversation affects us, how we think, who we are, and what we think we are, and there needs to be people willing to let it affect them, as well as show other people how to let it affect them.