#the lolita parallels.... his humbert humbertisms....

[kingsmoot]

being a sansa fan while also loving littlefinger is such a frustratingly funny predicament

on one hand yes, slay king lay down your evil plans while looking fancy the whole time but also get the fuck away from my precious bbygirl but also don't because you're teaching her the games and thats a fun dynamic but also WHY STOP TOUCHING HER GO GET THERAPY YOU CREEP-

the human heart truly conflicts with itself!!!

[horrorlesbion]

lolita, my love || interview with the vampire 02x07 "i could not prevent it"

bonus:

[nogoodsheepstealing-greatgrandma]

TG on Criston Cole: "He's not the step dad he's the Dad Who Stepped Up! 😍"

Criston Cole in F&B: Literally Humbert Humbert (or, at best, Woody Allen).

Afterward, he gave the seven-year-old Princess Rhaenyra the victor’s laurel and begged for her favor to wear in the joust.

“Ser Criston protects the princess from her enemies, but who protects the princess from Ser Criston?” *

*said at a point when Rhaenyra is the same age as Dolores Haze btw.

Among the changes to the character's ages in HOTD, it's ageing up Rhaenyra when she first meets Criston Cole that grosses me out the most. And to add insult to injury, they don't even get an older actor to play an older Criston Cole after the time jump - Emma D'arcy is actually older than Fabian Frankel.

And to those who say sympathetic jilted lover Criston Cole is more interesting... well we've heard that story before. With Jorah Mormont's depiction in GOT, for starters. And everywhere else in our culture, men like Criston Cole are afforded sympathy and fascination (it's honestly a relief that most audiences outside of tumblr thankfully hate Show Criston - pls leave the actor alone though), while their victims are depicted as seductive temptress 'nymphets'.

Look no further than JK Rowling's favourite 'tragic romance'.

(sure jk, trans women are the problem, but humbert humbert isn't?)

Book covers and film adaptations of Lolita love to age up and sexualise Dolores and completely miss the point, but Vladimir Nabokov named actress Catherine Demongeot as the most book-accurate casting. Who looks very disturbing up against the 1997 film's casting for Humbert Humbert:

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.

And wouldn't you know it, Daemon returns from the Stepstones when Rhaenyra (15) is around the same age that Dolores was, when Clare Quilty convinced her to run away with him.

And when Criston proposes to Rhaenyra ahead of her upcoming marriage to Laenor, she is again the same age as Dolores (17) when Humbert tries to get her to leave her husband for him.

Obviously Rhaenyra's story is by no means directly comparable to the horrific abuse suffered by Dolores Haze, and besides we don't know precisely what happened between Rhaenyra and Criston*. But Rhaenyra was also much much younger (7) when Criston came into a position to start grooming her, and at the end of the day she was still only a 12-year-old child when rumours of a sexual relationship began. The parallels are there, and CSA is a common issue throughout GRRM's work.

It certainly wouldn't be the first time GRRM has made a reference to Lolita in ASOIAF:

You see, she had absolutely nowhere else to go.

Littlefinger and Lord Petyr looked so very much alike. She would have fled them both, perhaps, but there was nowhere for her to go.

On Septon Eustace and Mushroom

*I do find it interesting to note that of the two accounts of Rhaenyra and Criston's 'split' (by two people who weren't in the room), it is Septon Eustace's account that puts Rhaenyra in a more favourable light. Mushroom tells the more pornographic account that casts Rhaenyra as the one trying to seduce Criston. Meanwhile Septon Eustace insists that Rhaenyra was the one to refuse Criston - including arguing that if his vows as a Kingsguard mean so little to him, then why should she trust he'd honour any marriage vows?

As I often argue, interpreting F&B is far more complicated than insisting one account always tells the truth, one account always tells propaganda etc. Neither account obviously views the relationship through the lens that Rhaenyra was only 7 when they met, neither of them care to raise concerns of grooming and CSA . This is still the same world after all that thought it was perfectly acceptable for a 12-year-old Laena to marry Viserys, or for a 12-year-old Sansa to marry Tyrion. This is the world that spread rumours of Rhaenyra's lost virginity when she had barely begun puberty.

Mushroom is clearly pro-Rhaenyra, and clearly fond of her (he wants us to know for instance how good it was to hear her laugh, his account expresses the most how broken she was after Luke's death) - but he's writing his account years after her death, and most likely after departing Aegon III's court for White Harbour. His priority, as a dwarf and entertainer, is to write was sells, and salacious tales sell. Just look at the pornographic tales the slavers spread of Daenerys, or how Shae depicts Sansa as a seducer withholding sex to convince her husband to commit regicide, or the play Arya performs in that bawdily depicts Tyrion raping Sansa for the masses. Mushroom at least wasn't the one to actually come up with the Brothel Queens story** - Archmaester Gyldayn credits Aegon II with making that story up - but any loyalty Mushroom had to a long-dead woman wasn't enough to stop him including a popular story. Mushroom's gotta eat.

**to those who still insist the story is true (despite Gyldayne attributing the rumour to Aegon II), do you honestly think if the Queen and Queen Mother had actually been gang-raped there wouldn't be multiple sources verifying it and expressing outrage?

Septon Eustace meanwhile is a misogynist who hated Rhaenyra and wished to justify his allegiance to the Greens. Which is why he'll make up ridiculous stories about Rhaenyra cutting herself on the throne while wearing armour, or Sunfyre eating her in 6 bites and leaving behind one leg for the Stranger, or how Rhaenyra got fat and ugly after giving birth to 5 children. Which is why he'll have Aegon II say "what sort of brother steals his sister's birthright?" - a statement that doesn't match with the rest of his documented words and actions:

Word of Rhaenyra’s coronation reached the Red Keep the next day, to the great displeasure of Aegon II. “My half-sister and my uncle are guilty of high treason,” the young king declared. “I want them attainted, I want them arrested, and I want them dead.”*** Cooler heads on the green council wished to parley. “The princess must be made to see that her cause is hopeless,” Grand Maester Orwyle said. “Brother should not war against sister. Send me to her, that we may talk and reach an amicable accord.” Aegon would not hear of it. Septon Eustace tells us that His Grace accused the Grand Maester of disloyalty and spoke of having him thrown into a black cell “with your black friends.”

***spoken in response to Rhaenyra publicly offering him a pardon

So Eustace has a tendency to demonise and whitewash - which is what makes it interesting when he passes on the opportunity. For example, why would he refute the rumours that Rhaenyra's children are bastards? Surely that claim would have supported his case against her? Why does he give quite a positive, even glowing, account of Jacaerys? Probably because he approved of and genuinely had no issue with Jacaerys, other than that he didn't believe the throne could pass through the female line anyway. True or not, he didn't need to claim Jace as a bastard, and Jace's actions didn't fit any cultural stereotypes. Because it seems there are certain lines Septon Eustace won't cross.

So Septon Eustace has some commitment to telling the truth (some truths anyway). Which is why his own account of Aegon II often contradicts itself, as shown above.

So back to his account of Rhaenyra and Criston. Why not cast Rhaenyra a wanton seductress, trying to tempt Criston Cole away from his Kingsguard vows? Why depict Criston, a fellow Green, as an oathbreaker? Why tell us that Rhaenyra did the right thing, turning Criston down and even expressing disgust that he would abandon his vows? Because for all Septon Eustace dislikes Rhaenyra, casting her as a wanton seductress would be crossing a line. He doesn't need it to be against female succession - her great sin is being a woman who doesn't gracefully abdicate in favour of her brother, and that's enough.

And because his account is probably closer to what happened. While he wasn't in the room, no more than Mushroom was, he was in a position to hear about it from Criston. As a fellow Green, and above all as a Septon. Someone who Criston might confess to. And it is Septon Eustace's account that tells us Criston Cole was the one to slit Lord Beesbury's throat. While he may try (sometimes anyway) to sanitise Aegon II, he makes no such effort with Criston Cole. If you wanted to legitimise your support for the Greens but were unable deny their crimes, it makes sense to allow someone to be the villain.

And supposing Criston did confess, he probably would have displayed the same delusional self-pity and self-justification as Humbert Humbert. And Septon Eustace, just like everyone else in Westeros, certainly wouldn't have considered Rhaenyra a possible victim of grooming and CSA.

Just look at Catherine Howard as a historical example. When she was 13 she was molested by her music tutor, Henry Mannox:

“At the flattering and fair persuasions of Mannox, being but a young girl, I suffered him at sundry times to handle and touch the secret parts of my body, which neither became me with honesty to permit nor him to require.”

This 'affair' was used as evidence against her in her trial for adultery and subsequent execution.

The Princess and her White Knight

Again, we don't know what precisely happened between Rhaenyra and Criston. We don't know if their relationship is comparable to Catherine Howard and Henry Mannox, or if it escalated anywhere close to the horrors of Dolores Haze and Humbert Humbert. Or if anything actually happened at all, or maybe at least not till Rhaenyra was older. Maybe their relationship is more comparable to Soon-Yi Previn and Woody Allen, who had been her stepfather since she was 10.

We have snatches of the truth from Eustace and Mushroom, we have what we can determine of their access to the truth and their motives for telling their accounts the way they do. We have Rhaenyra's young age, Criston's constant access to her, the timing of the rumours, her later relationships with older men, the violent hatred Criston has towards her after she rejects him. We have the fact that CSA is a common reoccurrence in GRRM's work - Daenerys and Jorah, Sansa and Littlefinger, Jeyne and Ramsay, Tyrion and Tywin, Aeron and Euron. We have the salacious stories that are already spreading of victims like Daenerys and Sansa, and we can speculate how future maesters and septons and fools might write about them, the way they write about Rhaenyra.

Whatever happened, my understanding is that Rhaenyra was a child in a court that her stepmother was actively making a hostile environment for her. Who had to deal with the beginnings of puberty in this environment, where adults were already speculating on her sexuality, on top of all the other scrutiny she would face as heir. Yes she had a father who doted on her, but when it came to Alicent he always refused to take sides, he always tried to placate and please and keep the peace. Yes he was steadfast in his decision to keep Rhaenyra his heir, but he did nothing to reprimand Alicent, he allowed this hostile environment to flourish, leaving his barely pubescent daughter to deal with it on her own. Alicent even publicly quips about Rhaenyra's relationship with Criston Cole, and she gets away with it.

Daemon does not return from the Stepstones till after the 5th anniversary tournament Viserys throws for Alicent, when Rhaenyra is 14/15. Before then, Rhaenyra's main confidant, probably her only confident on the subject of Alicent, was her sworn shield and constant shadow Criston Cole. Whatever happened between them, she was young and emotionally vulnerable. And lonely. Yes she had a party of supporters at court - but what is that to a child? She needed a parent to confide in, and when it came to Alicent her own father could not be that parent.

We know Rhaenyra was a precocious child, 'bright and bold' and proud. But we also know that beneath that she was anxious - she was known to compulsively fidget with the rings on her fingers out of anxiety. What kid in her situation wouldn't be anxious? Just when did this compulsive habit begin? Rhaenyra may not have been in anywhere near as vulnerable a situation as Dany, but she was still a vulnerable kid. And so Criston would have been important to her.

He wants me, she realized. He loves me as he loved her, not as a knight loves his queen but as a man loves a woman. She tried to imagine herself in Ser Jorah’s arms, kissing him, pleasuring him, letting him enter her. It was no good. 

It was a long kiss, though how long Dany could not have said. When it ended, Ser Jorah let go of her, and she took a quick step backward. “You … you should not have …”

My great bear, Dany thought. I am his queen, but I will always be his cub as well, and he will always guard me. It made her feel safe, but sad as well. She wished she could love him better than she did.

My bear, my fierce strong bear, what will I do without him?

My bear, she thought, my old sweet bear, who loved me and betrayed me. She had missed him so. She wanted to see his ugly face, to wrap her arms around him and press herself against his chest.

We don't know how much or in what way Criston took advantage of Rhaenyra's dependence on him, or how 'receptive' Rhaenyra might have been (friendly reminder that no matter how 'receptive' she might have been, it's still CSA). Again, it may be that nothing physically happened at all until Rhaenyra was 17 (after 10 years of grooming of course). Whatever happened, we can certainly imagine that Rhaenyra was devastated to lose him, and to Alicent of all people. He had been her confidant and her champion, he had been at her side since she was 7 years old, not long before losing her mother (who was the same age as Criston btw).

My understanding of Criston meanwhile is that he genuinely adored her for those 10 years as her sworn shield. That he was passionately protective of her, fiercely devoted to her, and possessive. Much like Jorah with Dany. Maybe, like Jorah, he tried to kiss her. Maybe much worse happened, and he deluded himself as many abusers do that theirs was a misunderstood romance. Maybe he never touched her at all, but fantasised about it. Maybe he convinced himself that he was a man of honour, maybe he spent those years waiting till Rhaenyra was older, by her side the entire time (cough, grooming).

Whatever happened, he was enraged that 10 years of grooming were ultimately unrewarded. He probably, deludedly, cast her just as cruel and selfish and ungrateful as Humbert Humbert did Dolores Haze.

Despite our tiffs, despite her nastiness, despite all the fuss and faces she made, and the vulgarity, and the danger, and the horrible hopelessness of it all, I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise - a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames - but still a paradise.

There is nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.

But I was weak, I was not wise, my schoolgirl nymphet had me in thrall. With the human element dwindling, the passion, the tenderness, and the torture only increased; and of this she took advantage.

Don't you love living in a world where multiple think pieces debate whether or not Rhaenyra abused Criston Cole? (Also a world where a book like Lo's Diary gets published...)

If there is any truth to Septon Eustace's account that Criston wanted to elope with her to Essos, then I can imagine that he wanted to possess Rhaenyra entirely for himself (however romantic he may have believed his motives). The 'black fury' that descends on him during the wedding tourney certainly tells us he is violently jealous to see Rhaenyra begin a relationship with Harwin. He probably stewed in fury while Rhaenyra's attention was on Daemon (maybe hypocritically casting him as the villain the way Humbert Humbert does Clare Quilty), celebrated when Daemon was banished, and grew desperately possessive at the thought of losing his exclusive access to her again. Much like Jorah:

“You have been a better friend to me than any I have known, a better brother than Viserys ever was. You are the first of my Queensguard, the commander of my army, my most valued counselor, my good right hand. I honor and respect and cherish you—but I do not desire you, Jorah Mormont, and I am weary of your trying to push every other man in the world away from me, so I must needs rely on you and you alone. It will not serve, and it will not make me love you any better.”

I can't believe I'm giving Jorah Mormont credit here, but at least he doesn't respond to rejection with violent hatred of Dany. Or at least, he hasn't yet.

Now Rhaenyra's relationship with Daemon is another matter, and will require another essay. In sum, there is a broad spectrum between 'pedophile' and 'healthy relationship', and when I say Daemon's relationship with Rhaenyra is healthier than her relationship with Criston I have to admit the bar is very low indeed. Though I do take into consideration GRRM's description of Daemon as a grey character, 'equal parts light and dark'. Anyone is at liberty to declare death of the author and interpret Daemon as they see fit, but authorial intent (however fallible you may consider it) is not irrelevant. That authorial intent is the foundation upon which the characters, relationships, events, themes etc is built.

Ultimately, Daemon was not in Rhaenyra's life between the ages of 8 and 15 - he was in a relationship with an adult Mysaria, and then he was off to the Stepstones until Viserys and Alicent's 5th anniversary tourney. This isn't to endorse whatever may have happened in the 6 months Daemon was in King's Landing before his banishment - however you interpret his actions and motives. But simply to say that when it comes to grooming and abusing pre-pubescent to early-pubescent girls (oh this has been a disturbing essay to write) - Criston wins the "Creepy Even By Child Brideros Standards" Award.

So... is Criston the Step-Dad Who Stepped Up? Sure, if your Step-Dad is Humbert Humbert or Woody Allen.

[fatecolossal]

Note the cat statuette in: TWIN PEAKS, S2E7 (1990, dir. Lynch, wr. Frost) x LOLITA (1962, dir. Kubrick, wr./adapting Nabokov) x THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1945, dir./wr. Lewin, adapting Wilde) A short post on this point of influence, which I haven't seen discussed before...

These scenarios are roughly parallel: in each case, the pictured character (villain) is contemplating a monstrous course of action: Leland, killing Maddy; Humbert, killing Charlotte; Dorian, giving up his soul in exchange for a conscience-avoidant "foul dream[] of sensual life."

While the cat statuette has no role in Wilde's novel, the film quotes a Wilde poem to explain its use of the statuette as a kind of mystical totem gifting Gray eternal youth in exchange for his soul, awakening a "bestial sense" that leads him to discard any moral scruples...

As a result, all of Gray's increasing moral degradation is made visible in his portrait, while he himself remains spotless, eternally young & beautiful. The portrait thus arguably acts somewhat as BOB does for Leland in TP: as a kind of moral alibi, a displacement of conscience.

Meanwhile, in LOLITA, a similarly conscience-avoidant role is arguably played, in part, by the character of Quilty. As in GRAY, LOLITA's story ends with the destruction of this figure—and fittingly, Quilty is killed behind a portrait, making the analogy to GRAY even stronger...

And, of course, much can been said about the links b/w TWIN PEAKS & Kubrick's LOLITA, a film Lynch has often cited as a favorite. Leland & Humbert: apparently "normal" patriarchs abusing their (step)daughter, guilty of murder, & subjectively displacing their culpability. But that's a subject for another time...

[familyabolisher]

can you explain the tlt/sexual violence connection at like, a 7th grade reading level? (or - you’re British right? idk what year that would be but it’s the grade where you’re 12-13) i struggle with reading comprehension and im trying to get better at reading long/intricate text but a lot of your posts just end up confusing me when I try to read them 😅 thank you

sure, i'll do my best. i’ve bolded the ‘key’ parts and i’ve tried to keep this to just a few paragraphs, so hopefully that makes it a little clearer?

At the heart of how Tamsyn Muir writes about interpersonal relationships is the suggestion that the necromancer-cavalier relation emerges from the discourse of Nabokov's Lolita. I wrote in-depth about this reading here, but the gloss of it is: John uses Annabel Lee to explicate and rhetorically bolster the relationship between himself and Alecto, which is similarly used by Humbert Humbert in Lolita explaining his relationship to Dolores Haze (and the 'nymphet' in general). Muir has written in the past about Lolita, such that I find it impossible to believe that she would reference Annabel Lee without intending to usher in Nabokov's novel as a possible interpretation. From the John-Alecto blueprint emerges every other necromancer-cavalier relationship we see; though each is of course individuated, the current of power and subjectivity running through each retains the same base shape, and that power/subjectivity current emerges from Humbert and Dolores in Lolita. This sets the stage for relationships that are pretty explicitly abusive and predatory (Cytherea and Gideon; Harrow and Gideon; Ianthe and Coronabeth) to be understood not as aleatory happenstances, but as epiphenomena relative to, and consistent within, a social order that sanctions and facilitates and even demands such a practice.

What this does is suggest that a relationship can be drawn between the conditions of sexual abuse and the conditions of (imperialist) hegemony; if what Humbert did to Dolores Haze (pedophilic rape, in short, on particular aesthetic terms) can be expanded upon, systematised, and used as the base for a society-wide set of relations that ultimately exist with intent to sustain an imperial order, what questions can we start asking about those relations? What lies at the heart of this is the idea that sexual violence, sexual abuse, is a currency of the hegemonic order, and that this abuse is made possible not only through particular normative social relations but through the backing of the dominant culture affirming and normalising (and thus invisibilising) the process by which this abuse takes place. This is an idea that also occurs in Nabokov, who crafts Humbert's abuse of Dolores around a fictive, composite "Lolita" emerging from the legacy of a number of women from the literary canon: Annabel Lee, Lenore, Beatrice, Botticelli's Venus, Virginia Clemm Poe, Petrach's Laura, to name a few. In short: what is the relationship between the aesthetics of imperialism, the enactment of imperialist conquest, and the social facilitation of sexual abuse?

The key development Muir makes in relating the subjectivity of Alecto (as Dolores Haze) back to the other subjectivities in which she deals comes from the parallels she draws between Alecto and other characters. A strong example of this is Kiriona, paralleled with Alecto at a number of points that I list off in the linked essay. In rendering John's 'creation' of Alecto as functionally equivalent to Humbert's 'creation' of Lolita, which we understand to be a process of rape, and then making the 'creation' of Alecto equivalent to the 'creation' of Kiriona, Muir suggests at a number of things. Firstly, that rape and the deliberate destruction of the Earth are the same, which I've always read as a play on the double meaning of 'rape' as 'sexual assault' and 'pillage'; secondly, that this twinned process 'creates' the valorised subject position that we see Alecto occupy, one similar to 'Lolita''s and one denoting (in short) normative white femininity and its currency under capitalism; thirdly, that to this enactment of rape-plunder-killing-creation of the subject can be added the creation of the imperial weapon, which is the position that Kiriona takes up, and arguably the crux of cavalierhood as a state of subjectivity as a whole. 

Other examples of this parallel process include John's relationship to Harrow, which in my opinion threads in the relationship between Catholic imperialism via proselytisation and the language of 'fatherhood'/paternity being used to describe the language between the Christian God and his subjects. A crucial throughline here is the question of if we are to understand the position of 'father'/'fatherhood' not as one of safety but as one of violence, how does that change our relationship to the language of fatherhood as used to describe God? God as 'the father' when the father carries out an imperialist crusade of sorts hearkens back to Humbert Humbert as the incestuous pedophilic rapist able to enact his violence via the social relation of fatherhood.

(I focused on Lolita here because I find it the easiest framework to explain my thoughts, but I think you can make sense of this reading even without using Nabokov as a guide? I think it's very textually substantiated that John's relationship to various others – Alecto, Harrow, Kiriona – is one of abuse, so it's about using that as a starting-point to unpick the rest of the discourse.) There are some other key questions going into this – I think, for example, John himself being indigenous has some v crucial significance and I wouldn't claim a 1:1 analogy to Nabokov's Humbert, rather a development with significant caveats – but hopefully this is a clearer summary?

[henrysglock]

all of your talk of the like... uncomfortable touching in tfs and brenner and Henry arguing like "a husband and his battered wife" just makes me wish id been able to see it sooo bad and continue looking for lolita parallels 😭 brenner is literally humbert humbert

"murder me like you murdered my mother!" was very much the vibe tbh...the hollering and sniping and manipulation/trauma bonding shit...rhghrhghrhghrhg

[dennisboobs]

[cw discussion of csa] i saw ur post about lolita being dennis' favorite movie so i ran to watch the 1997 version and holy shit. uhhh just a couple parallels i noticed were dolores being 14 in the movie + dolores "seducing" humbert for money and dennis using sex as a tool to get what he wants in his adult life? idk do you have more thoughts about this because i'm going crazy a bit over here

[referencing this post, i assume]

ALL I CAN SAY IS. YEAH.

[wheelercore]

re: lolita inspo in st: ive been compiling parallels for like? three months now? and it just proves how much of a intrinsic text lolita is to any abused child narrative.

Yes!!

Even when its not about sexual abuse, you can definitely see it. The dynamic of the neglectful blonde mother (charlotte- at least in the 1962 film I'm still in the very beginning of the book) and the "predator" (which imo synonymous with any abusive figure/organization in st, not just sexual predators) who takes advantage of her young child for his own purposes.

Hell, even the way Brenner is killed both times in ST is similar to the way Quilty is killed my Humbert Humbert in theme. A predator killed by another predator (first the demogorgan as its sillhouette encompasses brenner and then the US military). And the whole point of Humbert Humbert killing Quilty was he looked into the mirror and couldnt stand what he saw- him and Quilty are one and the same.

Im sure you probably have thought about this in more detail but you're so right tbh

[millermenapologist]

https://www.tumblr.com/millermenapologist/753199926568206336/wait-english-isnt-your-first-language-girl?source=share

My reaction after reading the grandfather fantasy paragraph: https://images.app.goo.gl/wcjvkMn1AbRHZ8Bi6

Seriously, how can I unread that? I wanna shoot my fricking eyes.

I... Lmao forgive me but I don't even know what to say anymore wtf. I really wanna know where the hell nabokov took as inspiration to write this character, I mean, this creepy ass psychedelic thoughts has to come from somewhere bc I've read other characters like him in fanfiction/books but their line of thought wasn't this level of gore. Did nabokov took a trip to hell before writing that or what.

The slibling story has some abuse aspect or the only taboo thing in there is the bloodline? Sounds intriguing (and honestly sounds the least problematic of all 3 lol)

Not Kermit, omg.

But... here's the thing about Nabokov: despite many, many, many people ignoring this, he had been, in fact, a victim of CSA at the hands of a family member too.

The true extent of the abuse he went through is very much unclear, and the topic is still debated amongst academics who study his works and life, but we are absolutely sure that something did, indeed, happen. In his memoir, Speak, Memory, Nabokov brings up Uncle Ruka, his mother's brother, and says that the man used to lift him in his lap to "fondle" him, and that he (Nabokov) used to be terribly embarrassed when this would happen in front of his uncle's servants.

Overall, there are many, many similarities between what he writes about his childhood and what he included in Lolita.

Furthermore, he didn't exactly have an easy life, when he was younger: his family lost everything when the February Revolution came*, and they were forced into exile by the Bolsheviks only a year later. They settled into Berlin, and two years later Nabokov's father was murdered during a conference. Then Hitler was elected, and although his family wasn't Jewish, his beloved wife Véra was, which forced him to flee the country with her and their child. And as if this weren't enough, one of Nabokov's brothers, Sergey, was gay, and because he stayed in Berlin, he was eventually arrested and sent to Neuengamme, where he died.

If you live a life like this, I think it's fair to say that you have more than earned the right to write fucked up things lol.

*This is another similarity he shares with Dolores: Nabokov was Uncle Ruka's only heir, and when the man died, he inherited a mansion in the countryside. However, he was never able to enjoy it because, only a year after inheriting it, the October Revolution swept Russia, and the house was no longer his property. This is almost a direct parallel to what happened to Dolores: Humbert handed her 4000 dollars, but she was never able to do anything with it, because she died in childbirth little after.

Honestly, I read Ada or Ardor a while ago, and found it to be fairly boring and confusing, overly-complicated. The writing was brilliant, because of course it was, but couldn't really get into the story, and the few literature professors I've discussed this book with also mentioned that it was difficult to enjoy and definitely not their favorite Nabokov work.

[scleroticstatue]

Every story has a moral outlook, either developed consciously or unconsciously. It doesn't mean you're supporting the things you depict, but it does have a moral. In Lolita, Humbert is a bad guy and even with himself as the author, you understand that Nabokov isn't supporting pedophilic rape. However, because of the resolution, the moral of the story basically becomes "victims will unconsciously seek out abusers and the only freedom for them is death." That's... Not fantastic, honestly. That's a really grim portrait of humanity.

Likewise, when Charlotte Brontë wrote Jane Eyre, she finished with Jane marrying Edward Rochester because everyone knew heroines got married and wicked women became spinsters. Even though it doesn't match her character development, Charlotte Brontë needed you to know that Jane was the good guy and you should strive to be like her.

Les Mis, for all its ridiculous side tangents, would lack the moral underpinnings without Monseigneur Bienvenu paralleling Jean Valjean's decision to give freely to those who needed it without keeping anything for himself. Had we not had the early character to compare, Jean Valjean's story would be a grim tragedy about a man whose moral compass destroyed him and rippled out to the community around him. Instead, it's about a man's journey to become a Saint and how those around him suffer in not taking the same path.

Nabokov has been described charitably as full of disdain and unhuman, befitting his outlook of sullied girls. Charlotte Brontë, who didn't marry until her late 30s and was very similar to Jane probably wanted everyone to think that an independent, intelligent woman who fell in love with a married man was actually a good person. Victor Hugo, when Les Mis was written, was on good terms with Catholicism and it's evidenced by his work.

Every story tells a moral and that tells about you.

depicting dark or morally reprehensible themes doesn't make you a bad person... but i'm not gonna pretend that the WAY you depict them doesn't reflect on who you are as a person

[azdoine]

now that Nona is finally out and we've gotten our backstory from the man himself, I've seen a post going around and revisiting the Jod question in terms of - how charitably are we supposed to take him? IMHO this is something the story already examines in the back half of Harrow when Jod self-deprecatingly suggests that there's no difference between the concepts of "the truth" and "the truth he tells himself". in the absence of an equal peer to contest his vision of the world, his subjectivity is inevitably elevated to the ontological status of objective fact; he may be misleading us, but there's no longer a self-aware manipulator hiding underneath the mask, because the mask goes all of the way through, he's empty inside.

in that respect his literary parallels with Humbert Humbert - which Muir painstakingly constructs as his author, and which he constructs on an in-universe level, as the self-aware historian of a dead culture - are of course very appropriate. but while his tongue-in-cheek preoccupation with an "Annabel Lee" can obviously be read as part of a through line with the self-absorption and dishonesty he displays later, I haven't seen much of any analysis going in the opposite direction: what are we supposed to make of the Lolita-knockoff persona John briefly entertains now that we know the woman he's pining for isn't just a woman?

like of course there's a truly fucked in-story dynamic in that John's sexually charged attitude and crimes against Alecto are obviously horrific, and yet they're almost secondary to the violation of forcing Alecto into a position where the idea of assaulting her is legible to begin with. the offense of transforming the world-soul into a princess is greater to her than the offense of locking the princess in a tower. but then you have to drill down on all the other implications of Alecto's identity. it's not just John who depersonalizes Alecto or treats her as an object for his own convenience - it's all of the Lyctors who disregard her and disclose in retrospect that they wanted God to dispose of the Devil essentially because she was too traumatized and alien to put up with.

Alecto's inhumanity is the mark of her disposability here, the Earth rendered disposable in the accounting of humanity just like a woman - or, in the new empire, a cavalier - can be rendered disposable. and I think that dovetails with the other half of the equation, what she means in the symbolism of the story. by making the Earth itself into a personified object at John's disposal, both Muir and John can use the language of human possession and obsession to contextualize the relationship between heartland and empire and the relationship between environment and ecofascism. it's a deliberate sleight of hand that drives me berserk! all these different axes of horror collapsed into a single cult of personality!

[thoughtsofahouseplant]

Your tags have me thinking about how Spike seeks out opponents whereas Angelus seeks out victims….. Spike wants the fight and Angelus wants the kill….. Wow.

I'm answering this one second bc BESTIE O MY GOD you put this so elegantly. Opponents to fight vs victims to kill . . . that really is it right there. Like, Spike wants a challenge - he's v open about this, and when he was a human he still really wanted someone who saw the world the way he did and who he could connect w over that. He's always been looking for people 'on his level,' it's just in a violent way now bc vampire.

Meanwhile, based on Angelus' actions alone, it seems like what Angelus really wants is just to feel powerful. That's not what he SAYS, though - Angelus is all "a rael Kiel requiers artiestree" (you know, in the irish accent DB does). I always come back to Lolita when talking about Angel (bc I can't help it!! There are faaar too many parallels!!!), and this is v Humbert Humbert Talking About Nymphets to me. Like, he's justifying his depravity and violence to himself as being part of this higher thing that he's in service of when, really, it's just violence. It's just torturing and tormenting people and then killing them, being as terrible as possible isn't an 'art,' not even, really, to other demons we see in the Buffyverse (like, Glory was fabulous but I can't picture her earnestly saying that a good kill requires artistry). Angelus wants the kill.

The really interesting thing to me, that I just realized, is that Angel totally does that same kind of justification in soul-mode too. He has this image of himself as a tortured hero seeking redemption (whether or not that's what he actually is is up for debate), and uses that to justify all sorts of questionable choices, including stalking and dating a teenage girl when he's permanently in his 20s at best and super-duper old at worst. Like, you can take nearly everything Humbert says about nymphets in Lolita, replace "nymphet" w "slayer," and it would read like Angel talking about high school Buffy . . . which is mega-icky, but I just thought of it so now Everyone Must Know. Anyway, this line of thinking kinda begs the question: if Angelus is masking his desire to exert power over victims through killing them under this idea of "artistry," what is Angel masking under his idea of heroism?

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading update

what's up, tumblypoos? it's going to be a pretty short one this month, because I have NOT finished a lot of books since last time. the semester has started and made work hectic and exhausting, so much so that when I took a week off and hoped to spend most of it devouring books I ended up spending more time just vegetating to repair my brain.

also, unfortunately, I ran into my first DNF (that's Did Not Finish, for people who don't keep up with profoundly annoying book blogger terminology) in a LONG time, which I will absolutely be detailing below.

what have I been reading?

Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) - I've always been vaguely curious, but then I listened to Jamie Loftus' brilliant Lolita Podcast and curiosity became somewhat urgent. (I'm relistening to it now, for the record, and I'm looking forward to being able to appreciate Loftus' empathetic analysis in a brand new way now that I've actually read the book she devotes ten episodes to talking about.) you all know I love a sharp, well-written profile of a monster; I had a great fondness for Alissa Nutting's Tampa, a book that follows a 21st century female pedophile that, in hindsight, takes place in vigorous conversation and has many clear parallels with Lolita. I'm also a huge sucker for a book about a truly miserable son of a gun pontificating on their own wretched time, and my god does Humbert Humbert pontificate. he's an excellently unreliable narrator, a heinous monster on trial doing his damndest to downplay his own violence. he wanders back and forth between talking himself up as improbably handsome and charismatic and insisting that he's quite harmless, basically innocent, totally a guy that we should just let go. and did he mention that he definitely didn't kill Dolores' mom? he definitely didn't, he just happened to think about killing her pretty often and in extreme detail and then coincidentally she died at a time that was terribly convenient for him. who hasn't been there? it's a funny story, not in a comedic way but in a painfully dry and brittle way, a deluded man viewing life through a nauseating lens that the reader can see through in an instant, all the way to the melancholy end. I absolutely understand anyone who says it isn't their cup of tea, but I'd highly recommend at least giving Loftus' podcast a listen if you're interested and able.

Women, Race, and Class (Angela Y. Davis) - this one also comes with a recommendation, and it's much shorter than the Lolita Podcast. I'd been meaning to get around to reading this for something like a year, ever since reading Davis' autobiography, but of all things it was a brief reference to Women, Race, and Class in Lily Alexandre's video "Do "Binary Trans Women" Even Exist? The Politics of Gender Conformity" that finally prompted me to nab it at the library. sometimes the universe just sends a sign, you know? it's a concise but thorough history, a tour through American slavery, suffragettes, social stratification, and socialism, presented in the no-nonsense style of Davis' that I appreciate so much. (seriously, if you want to start doing more antiracist and/or abolitionist reading but are intimidate by terminology - Davis. read Davis.) I particularly appreciated the dissection of certain white suffragette leaders turning their backs on antislavery and suffrage for Black Americans, fueled not only by racism but also by the perpetual pressure upon activists to turn upon each other and squeeze out causes that are seen as too radical to be convenient. it's illustrative, and unfortunately still supremely relevant. I wish this was the kind of thing I was reading when I was learning baby's first feminism.

what did I give up on?

Star Eater (Kerstin Hall) - beloved readers, I was excited for this one; you may recall that it was the last of the books on my Hot Book Summer list. it sounded like an incredibly promising dark fantasy about corrupt power structures and cannibalism. in short: the story takes place in a city floating above a world filled with undying monsters called Haunts, ruled over by the Sisters - an order of all-women magic-users whose powers are passed hereditarily from mother to daughter. but there are a few catches: the Sisters have a limited supply of magic, which is best replenished by eating the flesh of other Sisters. further, they must create more Sisters to maintain their power, but any man who has sex with a Sister is doomed to become Haunts who hunger for Sisters' flesh. so how do they solve these problems? easy: the Sisters reproduce through the ritualistic sexual assault of men who have received the death sentence, and maintain their magic by "martyring" their own mothers, essentially placing them in a coma to be consumed slowly. readers, none of this is what turned me off of this book. if anything, it all made me very excited. how absolutely despicably bleak! what an awful world! what a clever depiction of power, and the way it turns bodies into commodities to be devoured and thrown away! I was so excited to see how our hero, Elfreda Raugh, would take it down. and then... oof. and then, dear reader, Star Eater ended up feeling like a book that was written by going down a checklist of fantasy/dystopia YA tropes with a little rape and cannibalism thrown in for flavor. no spoilers (okay, maybe minor spoilers) but the most egregious points for me were the boring boy who was a childhood friend turned love interest, and Our Hero turning out to have extra special BONUS superpowers that made her, essentially, a living MacGuffin. I hope this book is someone's cup of tea, readers, but I cannot say it was mine.

what I'm reading now?

Midnight Sun (Stephenie Meyer) - you all knew this was coming. it's SO FUN and absolutely unhinged, and exactly what I needed to get out of my Star Eater-induced slump.

Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal (Heather Widdows) - this one is a bit of a tough read, because it's heavily rooted in philosophy and that's not the kind of reading I'm accustomed to, but it's eye-opening nonetheless. incidentally, also the result of a YouTube videos; link will be included in my next reading update.

what do I have on hold at the library?

The Other Black Girl (Zakiya Delila Harris)

Rewriting the Rules: An Anti Self-Help Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships (Meg-John Barker)

Iron Widow (Xiran Jay Zhao)

[silverbastardgoldenfool]

I never thought I would find myself comparing Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders to Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita but seriously on a reread when you know what you're reading, that is the level of discomfort I'm experiencing every time I read a Kennit section. I wanna make it clear quickly that Lolita is one of my favourite novels so I'm not saying this is a bad thing, just unexpected and challenging to read. Both stories are just like, here's a predatory narcissist waxing poetic about the pre-or-barely-pubescent object of his desire; a desire which he frames as pure love and paternal protection but which must ultimately lead to irrevocable harm. Obviously Humbert and Kennit are far from a 1:1 parallel but as I've been reading I've been really struck by how similar the *feeling* of these works are. Both use unreliable narration (Humbert bc this is his 'confession' and Kennit bc he is literally missing parts of himself) to manipulate the reader and essentially make you complicit as they invite you into their warped worldview. The way I'm feeling already is very reminiscent of how it made me feel to read Althea's rape scene; the inherent complicity of being made to read it from the rapist's point of view (another feature of Lolita; less explicit there but subject to the same use of obfuscation and justification) but not just any rapist; a rapist who we've spent three books getting to know, and for some of us even growing to like. That scene, on the first read, was genuinely traumatic to read and has stuck with me to this day, but the actual feeling it left me with didn't really come back until Kennit and Wintrow came together, at which point things rapidly deteriorated into the deeply disturbing.

This is far from the in-depth analysis this topic deserves but I once again could not finish a Kennit section without getting some of these thoughts down.

[james-joyces-right-eyeball]

Absolute Favorite Books I’d Recommend to Anyone

This is a list of my top-tier favorite books that I would recommend/talk about endlessly to pretty much anyone (in no particular order). I know people probably don’t care but I just like talking about books I love so here we are.

Beloved - Toni Morrison

~ Based off the real story of Margaret Garner, a slave woman who escaped slavery and when captured killed her child in order to prevent them from ever being enslaved again, Beloved tells the story of a mother named Sethe, born in slavery who eventually escaped and is haunted by the figurative demons of her trauma and the literal (arguably) ghost of her dead daughter, who she herself killed. It is an excellent exploration of the horrors of slavery and of the haunting legacy of the institution for those who were subjected to it.

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

~ If you’ve been on Tumblr for a while, you probably know what Lolita is. The story of the predatory Humbert Humbert who lusts after, rapes, and kidnaps the “nymphet” Dolores Haze. An excellent construction of how predators, unreliable narrators in their own right, hide behind fabrications, almost-believable excuses, and pretty words to make their actions seem maybe not so bad. In the words of the book itself, “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”

Ulysses - James Joyce

~ Notoriously one of the most difficult books in the English language, Ulysses lifts its structure from Homer’s Odyssey to tell the story of a common man, Leopold Bloom, as he goes about his day. Yes, this book takes place over the course of only one day. We follow Bloom as well as Joyce’s literary counterpart Stephen Daedalus through their thoughts and actions, gathering details of their lives previous throughout. It’s a book that, in my own words, “is life”. It is sad, funny, strange, vulgar, disgusting, beautiful, revelatory, sensual, and nonsensical all at once. Joyce aimed to create a reflection of life through his stream-of-consciousness style which some people might find confusing, but I personally find absolutely beautiful and honest and realistic. The prose is also gorgeous, but that could be applied to everything Joyce wrote. 

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

~ The classic gothic book that tells the tale of Heathcliff and his ultimately destructive love of Catherine Earnshaw, whose eventual marriage to someone else and the general mistreatment of him by her family drives Heathcliff insane and he spends the rest of his life trying to take revenge by abusing and torturing the next Earnshaw and Linton (the family into which Catherine marries) generations. If I’m being honest, I like this book mostly because of how wild and dark it is, but the writing is also genius and beautiful. I think the book also carries an interesting view of the destructive nature of revenge, overzealous love, and othering.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith

~ A coming-of-age story at the turn of the century that tells the story of Francie Nolan, a young bookish girl growing up in a lower class family in New York City. It tells about her father’s struggles with alcoholism as well as her mother’s struggles to deal with that and at the same time raise Francie and her brother. Francie is confronted with a strange, uncertain world as a young girl, but tries to face it with bravery throughout childhood

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

~ Another coming-of-age story, this time about four young sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March. You are probably familiar with this book already; it’s had more movie adaptations then I can possibly remember off the top of my head. It’s the story of four sisters as they try to navigate growing up, love, and loss during the mid to late 1800s.

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

~ A novel that tells the story of Celie, a young black woman who is raped and then married young to a man who will go on to use and abuse her, through her letters to God. Throughout the novel she meets Shug Avery, a woman with whom she eventually falls in love and begins a relationship with. Through this and her eventual freedom from her abusive husband, she is able to gain at last her own sense of self and take back control over her life, a life no longer ruled by the abusive men around her.

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

~ The tragic story of young black girl Pecola Breedlove, who wants nothing more than to have blonde hair and blue eyes just like the women she sees in the movies. Both a deconstruction of the whiteness of beauty standards as well as how these standards can utterly destroy vulnerable young girls, it is also an exploration of the people who allow these sorts of things to happen, including Pecola’s mother and father. The Bluest Eye, I think, showcases one of the aspects of Toni Morrison that I like the most, that I aspire to the most: her ability to enter the minds of all people, even people who you might despise at first. Her characters, especially Cholly in The Bluest Eye, are ones you might not entirely sympathize with, but they will always be ones you understand.

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

~ Based off of the author’s own experiences as a young college student, The Bell Jar tells the story of Esther Greenwood, whose depression over her place as a woman in a patriarchal society as well as her inability to choose a life path for herself leads to a suicide attempt and a subsequent stay in a mental hospital. A very nuanced portrayal of mental illness, especially anxiety and depression, The Bell Jar is an extremely moving and relatable story for me and clearly is as well for others. It is a classic for a reason.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

~ A memoir of Angelou’s childhood, this book tells the story of her experiences living as a black girl in the south with her grandmother and brother as well as her later years living with her mother. It also tells of how she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend when she was around eight or nine, and how she struggled to live with that and find her voice, both literally and figuratively. A wonderful book about overcoming struggles and the power of words and literature in such times.

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

~ Ellison’s novel tells the story of a young black man, never getting a name in the text, and his feelings of invisibility and his struggles to find a place in society to belong. His struggles only lead him further into despair, until he decides to “become invisible” as people seem not to see him as a person anyway. Invisible Man is an exploration of American mid-century racism and the isolation it causes to those subjected to it. Not only that, but it is surprisingly relevant to our times now, especially on the subject of police violence. (Personal anecdote: When I first read this book, when I got to the aforementioned police violence part it was right in the middle of the BLM resurgence last summer and I cried for a good twenty minutes while reading that chapter over how nothing had changed and it still hurts me to think about it. Embarrassingly, my dad walked in on me while I was crying, and I had to quickly explain it away.)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

~ The title basically says it all lol. This book tells of the coming-of-age of Stephen Daedalus (the same one from the later-written Ulysses). His sensitive childhood, his awkward and lustful adolescence, his feelings of Irish nationality and Catholic guilt, and his struggles to fully realize himself, both as an artist and a human being. It is a very hopeful story, and one that I love mostly because I relate so much to Stephen Daedalus as an artist and as a person.

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

~ A magical-realist intergenerational family drama, Marquez’s book traces the various lives and loves of the Buendia family over the course of (you guessed it!) one hundred years. A beautifully written, at times extremely emotionally moving and chilling masterpiece, Marquez in a way retells the history of Colombia, of its colonization and exploitation.  

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

~ A classic Russian novel of society and love, Tolstoy tells the story of Anna Karenina, married, wealthy woman with a child she adores. However, she falls in love with another man, Count Vronsky, and comes to a tragic end for her love. The parallel story of the novel is that of Konstantin Levin, a wealthy landowner who also struggles to find fulfillment in his life and understand his place in society.

The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

~ A novel that features an entire family of unreliable narrators, The Sound and the Fury details the fall of a once-prominent southern Compson family and always-present place of the past. There are four different narratives: Benjy Compson, a mentally disabled man who is unsure of his surroundings and of time and only knows that he misses his older sister Caddy; Quintin Compson, the eldest son and a Harvard man both obsessed with his sister retaining her “purity” and the fact that she failed to do so and had a baby out of wedlock, going as far to claim it is his baby in an attempt to preserve something of the family reputation; Jason Compson, who is the caretaker of Caddy’s daughter and believes her to be going down her mother’s “sinful” path; and Dilsey, the black maid of the Compson’s who unlike the people she cares for is not weighed down by their history. The narratives take place in different time periods and is in a stream-of-consciousness style. It’s a deeply dark and disturbing novel about the haunting nature of the past, a common theme in Faulkner’s work (see Absalom, Absalom! for more of this).

Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison

~ It is the story of Milkman Dead, a young black man growing up in the south and his relationship with his very complicated family. To say anymore would be to spoil the novel, but I will say that it is an excellent book about family, self-fulfillment in a world that tries to deny you that, and, like The Bluest Eye, exhibits Morrison’s excellent character work.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams

~ A play which takes place on the patriarch of a family’s birthday in the oppressive heat of the midsummer south, Williams’ play explores lies, secrets, and how repression only results in anger, frustration, and sadness. It’s a tragic but brilliant play that I think was very ahead of its time. If you’ve read it (or do read it) then you know what I mean.

Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin

~ This book tells the story of a young man and his love of another man named Giovanni while he is in Paris. It is a book about love, queer guilt, and has what I would call an ambiguous ending. There is uncertainty at the end, but there does seem to be some kind of acceptance. It is a bit of a coming-out story, but more than that it is a story of personal acceptance and at the same time a sad, tragic love story.

HERmione - H.D.

~ An underrated modernist masterpiece, HERmione is a somewhat fictionalized account of the author, Hilda Doolittle’s, experience as a young aspiring poet dating another poet (in real life Ezra Pound in this book named George Lowndes) who is a threat to her both physically and emotionally. It explores her own mental state, as she considers herself a failure and falls in love with a woman for the first time (Fayne Rabb in the book, Frances Gregg in real life). 

To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

~ People think about going to a lighthouse. They do not. A couple years and a war passes then they do. That may seem like a boring plot, and you may be right. However, To the Lighthouse is not much about plot. It is more about the inner lives of its characters, a family and their friends, on two different occasions of their lives: one before WWI and one after WWI. Woolf explores in this novel the trauma that results from such a massive loss of life and security. Not only that, she also explores the nature of art (especially in female artists) in the character of Lily Briscoe and her struggles to complete a painting. It’s a short novel, but it contains so much about life, love, and loss within these few pages.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers

~ A southern gothic novel about isolation and loneliness in a small town. Every character has something to separate them from wider society, and often find solace and companionship in a deaf man, John Singer, who himself experiences a loneliness that they cannot understand. There are various forms of social isolation explored in this novel: by race, disability, age, gender, etc. A wonderful, heart-wrenching book about loneliness and the depths it can potentially drag people to.

The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot

~ A modernist masterpiece of a poem, Eliot describes feeling emptiness and isolation. The brilliance of it can only be shown by an excerpt:

“Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence.”

“The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; Departed, have left no addresses. By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . . Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. “

(My personal favorite line from this poem is, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”)

The Trial - Franz Kafka

~ The protagonist of the novel, Josef K., wakes up one morning to find that he has been placed under arrest for reasons that are kept from him. Kafka creates throughout the novel a scathing satire of bureaucracy, as K. tries to find out more about his case, more about his trial, but only becomes more confused as he digs deeper. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the world he lives in, and the more tries to explain it the further the more that proves to be the case. An excellently constructed novel and a great one to read if you would like to be depressed about the state of the world because, though Kafka’s work is a satire, like a lot of his other work, it manages to strike a strangely real note.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard

~ An absurdist play that is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet from the perspective of minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who in the broad overview of the original play, do not matter. Throughout the play, they question their existence and the purpose of it and through that Stoppard dissects not only the absurdity of life, but how fiction and theater reflect that absurdity inadvertently.

As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

~ The novel details the journey the Bundren family makes after the death of the family matriarch, Addie, to bury her. Each chapter offers a different narrative from the family members and those who surround them, revealing some ulterior motives to them “going to town” to bury Addie. The patriarch Anse desires a pair of false teeth, and the daughter Dewey Dell is pregnant and needs an abortion, as there is no way for her or her family to support it. It’s about the powerlessness of people in the impoverished south. The Bundrens are constantly subject to forces beyond their control, struggles which would be easily solved if they had the money to spare for it. There is more to the book, but that is my favorite reading of it, that of class. Faulkner’s ability to create distinct voices for every one of his characters shines through here.

And, last but not least:

The Collected Poems - Sylvia Plath

~ All the poems Plath wrote during her tragically short lifetime. The best way to demonstrate or summarize the book’s brilliance is just to show you. This is her poem “Edge”, which appears in the book:

“The woman is perfected.   Her dead Body wears the smile of accomplishment,   The illusion of a Greek necessity Flows in the scrolls of her toga,   Her bare Feet seem to be saying: We have come so far, it is over. Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,   One at each little Pitcher of milk, now empty.   She has folded Them back into her body as petals   Of a rose close when the garden Stiffens and odors bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower. The moon has nothing to be sad about,   Staring from her hood of bone. She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.”

HOPE YOU ENJOYED! HAPPY READING TO ALL!

[flyforever]

NOTE:     Sorry for the long introduction, in some ways in contains an addendum which explains the gaps and breakdowns in my undergraduate performance. Also I’m sorry that notes are not a traditional way to begin a critical essay

  There are many reasons why Nabokov is not a household name in the same way that classical lyricists such as Shakespeare, Robert Frost, and T.S. Eliot might be to your average college graduate. For, Vladimir Nabokov once wrote the most morally questionable book of the 20th century. Plastered around Spain you might notice the sardonic ire that taints storefronts labeled Lola, Lolita, and worst of all Sweet Lolita. For a second I imagined myself capable of writing a thesis on the history of the book, but as I dove deeper into the subject my frustrations boiled until I quite literally lost my mind.

    Between my own delicate mental state with the diagnosis of bipolar disorder on my mind, the memory of a stranger asking my half sister if she was Hispanic as my mom, grandma, and I left Universal Studios (she is part Italian and quite tan) as though we had kidnapped her, and worst of all the fact that publishers said the book could be made if Nabokov changed one thing: if he made the main character, the main predator, (a malicious pedophile) gay. This was the last straw as they say, that straw that broke the camel’s back. I misplaced a single lampshade thinking of Nabokov’s character John Shade from Pale Fire. I thought to myself, “this is it, this is the performance art like that lady we learned about in my summer class at Brown University. The lady who faked an eating disorder”.

     As it turns out, I’m bad at performance art. As I once had a quite real, not performed eating disorder which caused me to lose my hair, I was on my way towards a quite real breakdown. Shortly after I misplaced one lampshade, I replaced a lot more lampshades. Bipolar disorder, like publishing companies, is a tricky thing. As many have cried over books and thrown them at walls, I lost my mind over the live action remakes of a book that stunned the world. How could anyone watch that? How horrible would it be for a young, Hispanic girl already named Lolita to see what her name had become (the subject of a pedophile's interest in a fictional world). I imagined myself conducting interviews with Spanish speakers with the name Lolita so I could write a thesis on the significance of the book. Instead I lost my mind. However, above all else, as a young “queer” woman, I lost my mind over the publisher’s responses to Nabokov as he pushed his book from one appalled publisher to the next. They repeated that he should make the story a bit more gay, like a more graphic Death in Venice. In a world where politicians quite recently said “what’s next, child marriage, bestiality” before gay marriage was legalized, I was reminded of a very real and cruel mentality that still exists in this world.

     I wrote the words Kaitlyn Marie Lamb and Mary Ellen Anderson (my sister’s name) on a notecard. At the time I was not aware that I would snap. At the time I had been having nightmares about sexual assault that made it difficult to sleep. At that time I had missed another rugby game. And then I lost my entire mind in a way quite opposite to Nabokov’s character, Humbert Humbert. I was appalled for young girl’s that only had to “play” a part across from someone who only pretended to be a pedophile. There were many missing “John Shades” as I tried to imagine nothing was real. Somewhere between panic over that book I remembered a 9/11 memorial in the shape of a fountain and I wondered “does one movie or play or book even matter”. Years later I remember the book A House on Mango Street, the importance of the name Esperanza, and the fact that my name apparently means pure according to etymologists . Of course it mattered. Why should one name be tainted as opposed to another by mere symbolic parallels? I had a friend whose mom was from Malaga, Spain and I later found out my friend shared a name with a Spanish queen, Isabel. Why should one name be a blessing and another its own sort of curse?

     But I’m not here to discuss Lolita. I don’t think I have the emotional capacity to ever finish that book that I once tried to write a report on. I found myself looking excessively at clothes on Amazon during class as I postponed reading a book that I would never finish. I truly felt I had to use SparkNotes to finish a book report for the first time in my life. As a girl who once trudged her way through Sinclaire’s The Jungle while she took a long “break” from college, between visits with a friend who once left her own college suicidal (a friend who still mentioned these suicidal thoughts were in the back of her mind). The fact that I couldn’t finish the book Lolita remained significant. It was similar to the way my friend and I could hardly discuss our own negative experiences with physical relationships (hesitating to label experiences as sexual assault though neither of us were left in the clearest mental mindset to worry much about semantics).

    I am sorry for the lampshades and the memories that rested in the back of my mind between nightmares about sexual assault and coming out, between coming of age and between recovering from an eating disorder. It was like every hurtful thing I heard combusted until I broke down and cried for home. However, once again, I am not here to discuss Lolita or the way in which my research report quite literally broke my heart as people criticized the movie Call Me By Your Name and I remembered the publisher suggestions that were much more horrid than a romance between a gay student and professor which had already been depicted in modern media through heterosexual romances on Friends and How I Met Your Mother. Once again, I don’t think I have the capacity to write another research paper on a book I cannot force myself to finish. Instead, I hope to illuminate the poetry of Nabokov’s work both before and after Lolita. I will not deny that there is a beauty unlike most others to his writing that rests between metaphors and pauses, self-reference and the illumination of historical truth.

To Be Continued