Midterm Paper... (I say pornography a lot!)

Lolita was published in American in the year 1958 and was almost immediately called pornography. The mainstream American public learned of its subject matter, a middle aged man falling in love and seducing a twelve year old girl, and jumped immediately to a disgusting conclusion without considering the artistic merit of Nabokov’s work. The man in charge of this class even regaled us with a tale of a dirty old man recommending him the dirty novel, Lolita.
After reading this book and studying it a bit I would be lying if I were to call this book in anyway pornographic. Nabokov said it best himself when he stated in “On a Book Entitled Lolita” “It is also true that in modern times the term ‘pornography’ connotes mediocrity… Obscenity must be mated with banality because every kind of aesthetic enjoyment has to be entirely replaced by simple sexual stimulation.” (Nabokov, p.313) This is not in any way a description of Lolita. Even the parts pinpointed by the media as pornographic upon close inspection are far from it. On page 57 of the novel begins infamous event on the davenport. Some who have only just glanced over this exchange between Lo and Humbert would say it is extremely disturbing and of an exceedingly pornographic nature. However, there is nothing pornographic about it, everything is implied in this scene, nothing is stated outright. With pornography everything must be perfectly understood, there is no room for subtlety in the world of sexual entertainment.
Even the moment at the end of part 1 of the novel when Humbert finally gets what he wanted from his Lolita is not at all pornographic in the assumed sense Humbert says “My life was handled by little Lo in an energetic, matter-of-fact manner as if it were an insensate gadget unconnected with me” BE STILL MY BEATING HEART, oh wait a moment, there is nothing at all erotic about that statement. It is not, as Nobokov said of pornography, mediocre or banal. The descriptions of implied sexual acts are not lewd; they are artistic and very, very much exclusively implied.
As this is meant to be a focused essay I cannot go into the specifics of what is erotic but the topic of intentions and purpose of pornography compared with intentions and purpose of Lolita. Pornography is meant for immediate physical satisfaction, simple as that. It would seem that Vladimir Nabokov’s purpose with Lolita the novel is for prolonged, intellectual satisfaction, the thrill up the spine that has been discussed in class. There is a place in this world for pornographic material, a very useful and specific place, which is possibly the most egregious affront brought about by referring to Lolita as pornography
Merriam-Webster dictionary defines sensual as “devoted to or preoccupied with the senses”, however, in contrast Merriam-Webster defines pornographic as “material (as books or a photograph) that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement”. The former is an excellent and succinct way of describing the novel Lolita, the latter is not. Pornography is void almost entirely of intellectual and artistic merit; Lolita is full to bursting with both of those things. I do have a final remark, if you found this book to be pornographic or smutty, you are more than probably a depraved, disgusting person who should, of course, write in a fancy prose style.

This isn't a big thing for most but...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Xavier

It appears that Professor X of the Xmen may have been inspired by the character of the same name in Pale Fire... kind of cool

The Foreword of Pale Fire: Initial Musings, Notes, and a brief Profile of the Narrator

I started Pale Fire about a week and a half ago and am now almost finished. Since I have been given the task of talking about the Foreword on tuesday i thought i might get some thoughts straight in my blog.

Here are some initial notes i have written in the margins of my copy of Pale Fire.

- First thing i thought was important enough to underline on page 13 "There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings" in the margins i wrote (Come back to this)

- I underlined July 11th only because that is my birthday.

- Page 26 Kinbote is discussing a photograph "My left hand is half raised - not to pat Shade on the shoulder as seems to be the intention, but to remove my sunglasses which, however, it never reached in that life, the life of the picture;" in the margin i wrote Photography death/life encapsulated RIGHT THERE!!!

- at the top of page 27 i scrawled the words "This guy is a pompous dick" then further down the page i underlined "other people, inferior people"

- I also underlined on page 28 where Kinbote refers to Shade as a conjurer, which is pretty close to an enchanter, and we all know what Nabokov believed about enchanters

- I have also underlined the last line of the Foreword which seems to be important " To this statement my dear poet would probably not have subscribed, but, for better or worse it is the commentator who has the last word"

Nabokov is playing games with us yet again. Pale Fire the poem is written by a man named Shade, while the foreword and comments are written by another man, Kinbote. Now as if that weren't convoluted enough the novel Pale Fire was of course written by Vladimir Nabokov. So we are working with a fiction written by one man, about two men who each write part of the novel. 3 writers are involved is what i'm getting at.

Charles Kinbote is the man behind the foreword. He is a strange fellow, he is rude, he is inconsiderate of most people, and yes he is justifiably intelligent, and worst of all he is obsessed with Shade. He reminds me of another literary character Ignatious J Reilly from the novel A Confederacy of Dunces, in that both Kinbote and Reilly look down on anyone they see as less intelligent, which in the eyes of both characters is pretty much everyone. Kinbote, however, has found someone he sees as more intellectually perfect than he himself is, John Shade.

These are my initial thoughts on Kinbote based solely on the foreword, I think i will come back to Kinbote and discuss him more here in a bit once i have digested the entirety of this entertaining and interesting novel.

In response to The Rat and his Funny Games

James posted an interesting blog about Lolita and the film Funny Games. It got me thinking about pieces of fiction (be they novels or film or comics) that make you feel uncomfortable and sometimes outraged but are none the less intriguing and enjoyable.

What makes art really worth sitting through? Lolita is the perfect novel for this sort of question but there are others that are quite disturbing, Naked Lunch for instance, although i have never finished that book so I shall not discuss it further. However there is a disgusting, foul, vulgar book I have finished and thoroughly enjoyed. Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis is, like Lolita, a detective novel, about the search for the real constitution of the united states, a piece of writing so influential that simply hearing it read aloud will compel you to do whatever it tells you to do. Throughout the book the hero faces bestiality, public masturbation, sadistic ritualistic murder, and sexual threats from elderly senators (and thats just the first 50 pages). Now your average citizen reading this would throw it down at the first mention of people who have sexual fantasies about Godzilla, however I kept reading.

Why do people continue on adventures like these? Very few people are comfortable with pedophilia or pretty much anything in Crooked Little Vein, or Funny Games, yet people continue reading them, and in the case of Lolita and Funny Games proclaim them masterworks of there respective forms.

My belief is that intelligent people enjoy these works because they can see that the creators use the uncomfortableness to prove the point. The point of Lolita is not the pedophelia, thats just the Mcguffin.

P.S. For those of you who have read both books I am in no way putting Crooked Little Vein on the same intellectual level as Lolita

A Letter To Amanda on Literary Pedophilia

It seems to me that Nabokov simply wanted a literary challenge. To take a despicable child abusing murderer (well for most of the book simply self-proclaimed murderer) and make him likable and almost (ALMOST) forgivable. I think Nabokov, if this was his intention, succeeded quite well.

The problem of the 1st memory

This is my first blog entry, a little later than most but as I'm sure someone important has said in the past "Better late than never"!

I have been tasked with recalling a first memory, and I have dug and dredged through my mind for an earliest memory that I formed on my own. This has proven difficult to the point of impossibility. Luckily, the impossibility stems from something our mutual friend Nabokov was fascinated with PHOTOGRAPHY!! My parents, being card carrying members of the slowly aging Gen X, have been wielding video cameras since before I was born. The problem this causes in regards to my early childhood memories is one of "delayed memory formation" which is of course a term i have just made up.

I have been watching home movies of myself since I was old enough to speak which means i cannot vouch for any of my memories being actual memories or remembrances of a time that i watched a video of myself doing something. It's extremely complicated and more than a little bit ridiculous.

For instance, I have a memory of being 7 and watching a video of 2 year old Parker Connell playing with a set of plastic golf clubs. I remember these golfclubs very vividly not because I had fun with them, but because I had fun watching myself have fun with them. How messed up is that?

Thus concludes my first blog entry of the year.