A Lolita Scavenger Hunt

Now that I've finished applying to colleges, I'm back to blogging! Sorry for the hiatus.

I read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, the tragic story of a pedophile's obsession with a little girl, this fall and it blew my mind. I read it twice before purchasing an annotated version, which revealed to me how intricate the book really is. I picked up on the protagonist's manipulation of language in order to warp the truth on my own, but not until I read the annotations did I notice Nabokov's use of involution or literary allusions. This may sound a bit pretentious, but it was so satisfying to understand all the tricks at work in the writing. So I've compiled a cheat sheet/list of some motifs, devices, and patterns to look for when reading Lolita.

1. Colors: Especially patterns of colors surrounding certain characters or emotions.
2. Quilty: It's an important name and it appears in different forms throughout the book, even before the character to which it belongs is introduced.
3. "Annabel Lee": The speaker alludes to this poem and its author, Edgar Allen Poe, in order to draw a favorable comparison to his own depraved "romance."
4. Freud-Bashing: Nabokov thought Freud's theories were garbage. It's fun to watch him trash the Oedipal complex and Freudian educators through Lolita :)
5. Coincidences: Numbers repeat in different situations. Anagrams reveal startling identities. Nabokov liked to play with the details of his plots for the sole purpose of showing that he was in control. He had quite an ego :P

- Carly

Comments

Junkie Metaphors and Books About Our Inner Crazy

So, recently I was doing a spot of (mandatory) community service for my gym teacher when I experienced a rare instance of karmic payoff. Me and a bunch of other temporary bond-slaves were unloading this huge file cabinet onto the gym floor, sorting everything from Dance Revolution DVDs to pamphlets on Your First Visit to the Ob-Gyn! into neat piles, when I uncovered quite by chance a crumbling copy of Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. Elated, I carried it around for the remainder of the period until my teacher took pity on me and offered to let me borrow it. It's falling apart before my very eyes I swear... I fell in love with this book the moment I heard its title quite a while ago - Naked Lunch ? What the hell kind of weird awesome twisted name is that? I am only now realizing how twisted it really is. The book is a compilation of notes that Burroughs took while under the sick influence of heroin. ...

Lessons to be Learned From the Princess Sara Crewe

Have any of you read A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett? It was the book that made me love books. (Does every book-lover have one of those? Do you?) I first read it when I was very little and have spent the last two days rereading it, as I tend to do every few years. But the thing that struck me about the story this time around is that the story's preteen heroine, Sara Crewe, seems to have life completely figured out. Even when she loses both her father and her fortune and is working as a hated scullery maid at her London boarding school to pay off her debts, she never sacrifices her virtues of benevolence, hope, and grace. Her secret is that she considers herself a princess in spirit, even when she is no longer as wealthy and privileged as one. Sadly, I have not yet gotten my life philosophies together and lack Sara's ability to gracefull...

My Irrelevant Opinion on Teen Dystopias

I read books indiscriminately. I am just as happy reading Beowulf, a crusty old Scandinavian epic poem, as I am reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. So I'm not a snob who only reads first-edition classics bound in leather or anything like that. But I do have one requirement when it comes to the books I read and recommend, and that is that they be good . And I do see a problem emerging in one of YA's most popular new genres, the teen dystopian novel, and that is that many of these books are not good. The dystopia craze started, I believe, with the success of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (a book that I very much adore) . It's hard to make it as a writer, so when people saw how well her parable of futuristic teen angst and bloodshed did, they understandably thought Aha! Here is the formula for success!! And ten seconds later, the front display tables of every Barnes a...

the book bum

Search This Blog