Excerpts: "All of the descriptions of
Humbert Humbert from Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita paint a creepily human picture of
a pedophile. Especially when you plug those descriptions into the composite
sketch software that cops use to nab perps. How does this computer-generated
portrait compare with what you thought Humbert Humbert looked like? Artist Brian
Joseph Davis started a new Tumblr called The Composites in which he pulls the
descriptions of famous (or infamous) characters from famous works of literature
and dumps them into police composite sketch software to see what pops out. Davis
used the following descriptions to produce a sketch of Humbert Humbert from
Lolita:"Gloomy good looks… Clean-cut jaw, muscular hand, deep sonorous voice…
broad shoulde … I was, and still am, despite mes malheurs, an exceptionally
handsome male; slow-moving, tall, with soft dark hair and a gloomy but all the
more seductive cast of demeanor. Exceptional virility often reflects in the
subject's displayable features a sullen and congested something that pertains to
what he has to conceal. And this was my case… But instead I am lanky, big-boned,
wooly-chested Humbert Humbert, with thick black eyebrows… A cesspoolful of
rotting monsters behind his slow boyish smile… aging ape eyes… Humbert's face
might twitch with neuralgia." To my eyes, the composite portrait looks a lot
more like James Mason from Stanley Kubrick's 1962 adaptation of Lolita than
Jeremy Irons from Adrian Lyne's 1997 version. Not sure I see the rotting
monsters, but maybe those will come with the next
upgrade."