AMERICAN DREAMS

American Dreams: Charming Pedophile Cruises Crass U.S.

In Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov wrote a love letter to the English language, skewered ’50s America, and created a pedophile protagonist who was both loathsome and likeable.

“It is childish,” protests Vladimir Nabokov, “to study a work of fiction in order to gain information about a country.” Perhaps so, but the fact persists that there is no better portrait of our childish country during its most childish decade than Lolita. Nabokov cannot be taken entirely at his word anyway. He was an exuberant prevaricator, especially when forced to explain his own work. Lolita, a novel that no American publisher would take on until three years after its original publication in Paris, was the subject of most of these explanations. InLolita’s first American edition Nabokov appended a seven-page afterword defending himself against charges of pornography and anti-Americanism. The second charge, he writes, “pains me considerably more than the idiotic accusation of immorality.” But his defense is winking, halfhearted: “I needed a certain exhilarating milieu,” he writes, describing the tawdry motels, diners, and suburban living rooms that make up the novel’s scenery. “Nothing is more exhilarating than philistine vulgarity.” [...]

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