Research

Vanessa Hernandez

26 November 2010

Intro to Writing/Lit

Eric Olson

I decided to use CCA’s online Literature Resource Center to begin my research on the topic of Nabokov’s Lolita. Initially, I had no direction in which I wanted to take my research asides from Nabokov’s use of meta fiction/mind games. Upon typing in the scrollbar, Lolita, pages upon pages of peer-reviewed essays popped up. I read through a large amount and found each to address a topic I had never even thought of when reading, such as how the novel could be entirely about butterflies, or the relationship between America and Europe (Humbert posing as old schooled Europe and Lolita as the pop-cultured America) etc.

It was hard for me to narrow my focus because in a way, everything posted can be true. I decided to filter down to the very first essay I came upon, Jennifer L. Jenkin’s “Searching high and Lo: unholy quest for Lolita”. Jenkin’s essay describes how she finds the work to be, like most American literature, a travel narrative and that Hubert’s object of desire (Lolita) is what drives the story forward. “Hubert’s unique obsessions transform his wanderlust into an unholy quest for his nymphet grail.” I hadn’t before thought of Humbert and Lolita’s journey across the U.S. as a “pilgrimage” but it was a topic worth investigating.

It took a while to read through Jenkin’s work, not only because she uses an abundance of large words, but because I couldn’t find myself agreeing with everything she stated. The main one being, “Given that this is a pilgrim's story, the central motif of Lolita can only be travel.” After reading such a straightforward affirmation, I couldn’t take the rest of the essay seriously because Nabokov hadn’t written Lolita to portray one concrete theme/moral/motif/whatever else it is that so many critics try and pull out of the text when reading.

This thought is what lit a spark as to what I would like to focus my paper on; how Nabokov leads readers on with alluring language in order to be tricked into “finding” the central theme/moral/motif/whatever else it is that so many critics try and pull out of the text when reading. I am not sure if this is too broad of a topic, but I feel that it is important to why there is a large amount of essays/books about Lolita because many people try to find a solid theme that doesn’t exist.

Though I hadn’t ended up agreeing with all of “Searching high and Lo: an unholy quest for Lolita”, I used Jenkin’s work as a propeller for ideas. Her writing helped to provide me with a greater understanding of how Nabokov plays with the conventional expectations of literature (the theme, morals, etc.) I plan on using Jenkin’s blunt thoughts as an example of how many readers try to pick apart Lolita and intend to use some other examples (Europe and America, butterflies) to show Nabokov’s trickery.

Source Evaluation

Originally, my intentions for this upcoming and long awaited essay was to write about Humbert Humbert's slash Vladimir Nabokov's perception about pedophilia, as it were displayed in this book. So, I typed in “pedophilia in Lolita” on Mr. Google Books. Various books quoted articles and essays that blame Lolita for seducing Vladimir. This confused me, because I had never trusted Humbert and, likeable as he may have been, I do not consider him forgivable for raping a young girl. The fact that Vladimir Nabokov had been able to create a pedophile who could manipulate the reader into liking him and hate the victim made me appreciate Vladimir Nabokov even more.
And now my intent is to analyze how Nabokov has managed to convince the public to side with a pedophile. I will explore Humbert's likeability as seen throughout the book as well as passages where it inaccurately appears as though Lolita is at fault. These include Humbert's description of Lolita's supposed first lover and the scene where she is increases her pay for Humbert's blow jobs. I think the final conclusion, with Lolita falling in love with a perverted man on a ranch, had been interpreted to mean that Lolita was a whore all along. In my opinion, however, Humbert completely ruined Lolita and her entire perception of sex and love. She would never have gotten pregnant for the second time at seventeen if it were not for him.
So far, I have found some pretty stellar sources with some pretty amazingly useful quotes that back up exactly what I mentioned. Want to see them? I bet you do. I ended up evaluated three sources, but you can stop reading after one if I went overboard with this assignment.

Source: Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita: A Casebook By Ellen Pifer

This source is useful because I need to prove that there are those who have sided with Humbert. Included on Humbert's side are the dictionary and Spy Magazine.

"Here is what the current Webster's tells us: 'Lolita. n. [from Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov] a precociously seductive girl." When Spy Magazine in 1999 sought to describe what some people wanted Chelsea Clinton to be, the phrase that presented itself was "a seductress, a Lolita." The context was a set of articles about "the new Lolitocracy," meaning the recent fame and open desirability of some very young girls, especially in spots and in the movies” (188).

This next quote interested me indefinitely because it describes how Lolita has appeared like an “unearthly creature” throughout the book. I agree with this assessment, but am not entirely sure how Nabokov pulls it off. I imagine it has something to do with Lolita's title as a “nymph.” This word makes her seem inhuman, and the more Humbert describes Lolita and the definition of nymphet, the more she seems like an untamed, wild creature who does not belong among humans. Notably, Humbert also calls Lolita demonic throughout the book.

"We imagine Lolita as special and demonic in our own terms, an unearthly creature masked by her American ordinariness, with an eerie identity far more fetching than mere beauty” (189).

The next quote also quotes 'Lolita' and does a lot of work for me in finding a passage to show how Humbert has made Lolita seem sex-hungry.

The text goes on to read, “You will remember that Humbert claims not to have seduced his stepdaughter (although he certainly planned to) but to have been seduced by her: 'Sensitive gentlewoman of the jury, I was not even her first lover.' 'I shall not,' Humbert says, 'bore my learned readers with a detailed account of Lolita's presumption. Not a trace of modesty did I perceive in this beautiful hardly formed young girl whom modern co-education, juvenile mores, the campfire racket and so forth had utterly and hopelessly depraved." (189)

Source 2: A companion to rhetoric and rhetorical criticism By Walter Jost, Wendy Olmsted

Nabokov's feelings towards Lolita might play a small role in my argument, but mainly I want the text to speak for itself instead of the author speaking for the text. In any event, Lolita's many escape attempts disprove the notion that Lolita wanted to have sex with the narrator. This quote mentions Nabokov's perception of Lolita.

"Lolita never expresses anything but repulsion for her victimizer. She spends years trying to figure out how to escape from him, and it is no doubt for her resourcefulness and bravery that Nabokov held her in such high regard....Nabokov once said, "of all the thousands of characters in my work...Lolita came in second in his list of those he admired most as people." When I think of her, I always hear her utterly archetypal cry, "Oh no, not again." (329)

In this next quote, I find more examples to prove that Lolita is widely regarded as a whore. My next step would be to disprove their interpretations of the texts. Mainly, I will focus on how Lolita's emotions were certainly violated. Humbert might try throughout to make Lolita seem like a whiny teenager, but her hatred of her father may be very real when not delivered from his perspective.

"Yet as Elizabeth Patnoe, among others, has patiently argued, Lolita is often figured in the popular imagination as a temptress. And even critics who have actually read the book and should therefore know better describe her in similarly distorted ways. John Hollander, in his famous early review of the novel, claims that 'On their first night together, Lolita turns out to be completely corrupt--and he goes on to refer to the pair as 'the lovers' and to the relationship that follows as 'their affair.' Lionel Trilling refers to "a Lolita who is not innocent, and who seems to have very few emotions to be violated." And Richard Schickel, who believes Lolita to be "the most repugnant of all females, a mid-twentieth century pubescent American girl-woman" describes Humbert as follows: "Humbert absurdly sensitive, catering ridiculously to the wins of a child, is a pathetic, almost tragic figure."


Special delivery: Epistolary Modes in Modern Fiction By Linda S. Kauffman

The following quote makes references to a scene that will be very important in my essay. In the end, it mentions that Lolita meant to use that money to runaway. While some have thought this made Lolita a whore, I think that Lolita's intentions truly mean she despised being used to meet Humbert's sexual cravings. It also offers an interesting argument about how readers can relate to Humbert's sexual cravings, which I did not consider before I read this quote.

"From the moment he first masturbates on the couch, Humbert proceeds to turn Lolita into a whore, euphemistically alluding to her vagina as a 'new white purse' and priding himself upon having left it "intact." By the time they reach the Enchanted Hunters Motel, he has begun paying her with pennies and dimes to perform sexually. Humbert defines his bribe as a "definite drop in Lolita's morals." The fact that she ups the ante from fifteen cents to four dollars has been seen by misogynist critics as a sign that she was a whore all along. Humbert says, 'O Reader...imagine me, on the very rack of joy noisily emitting dimes...and great big silver dollars like some sonorous, jingly and wholly demented machine vomiting riches; and in the margin of that leaping epilepsy she would firmly clutch a handful of coins in her little fist." Humbert implicitly assumes that his (male?) readers will identify solely with his sexuality and sensibility. The hilarity is undercut when we realize that Lolita is trying to accumulate enough money to run away." (69)

I might use this next quote to show how much Humbert had destroyed Lolita. Maybe Lolita felt comfortable being controlled by the media because at least that was normal. Being controlled by a sexual pervert is not necessarily the norm and caused her to crave normalcy. During her time at the school, her isolation was shown in her inability, due to Humbert in my opinion, to enjoy the opposite sex.

"Lolita is the ideal consumer: naive, spoiled, totally hocked on the gadgets of modern life, a true believer in the promises of Madison Avenue and Hollywood. Lolita is as much the object consumed by Humbert as she is the product of her culture. And if she is 'hooked', he is the one who turned her into a hooker. When Hubert sees a dismembered mannikin in a department store, Humbert comments vaguely that it is "a good symbol for something" and Dolly Haze comes to more and more resemble those mute, inanimate dolls on whose bodies consumer wares are hung. By the time of their final reunion n Gray Star, she has been so thoroughly prostituted that she assumes Humbert will only relinquish her rightful inheritance if she sexually serves him in a motel (69-70)".

Now that I have found all these sources, I am now an enlightened individual and future A plus essay writer. After looking at so many sources who quote people I disagree with, I feel like I am arguing against the dictionary. This is very excited in itself. I am eager to figure out just how this genius author made Lolita into an almost magical nonhuman demon, in particular through Humbert's often dream-quality language. I feel like I oftentimes argue for one side in my essays, and this will give me an opportunity to understand where the basis of the opposing argument lies and then to show why I disagree if a disagreement is in order.

Source Evaluation:

The Beats: A Graphic History by Harvey Pekar, Paul Buhle, and Ed Piskor.

I chose this source not only because it would explain what was going on during the Beat Generation, but it would also show me. The fact that is it is a “graphic history” made me have to buy it. Since recently I have had a weird obsession with graphic novels. I’ve read about 8 since the beginning of the semester. So because of the knowledge of my recent infatuation I knew I would enjoy reading this book. And I really did, because it led me into the lives of the writers in a way most books would not be able to. It explained and showed to me all the troubles and phases these Beat writers went through. It also showed me why they loved San Francisco so much. It taught me that poetry was in a high in SF before the Beat Generation. And what people call ‘The San Francisco Renaissance” had to with a lot more than just the Beat Poets. This book illuminates all of this and even more about San Francisco’s life around the Beat Poets. It has multiple different parts called “Perspectives” that help give multiple pictures into what was going on during the Beat Generation. The book proved my superstition that a few of the Beat Poets would enjoy the hippies. Well it seems (from what I’ve read) that Ginsberg enjoyed them the most. And I do believe that it is a great secondary source, because it has many perspectives and does not stick to one point of view. It also filled of many quotes I am sure to pull out and use in my paper. Like this one that proves my point about Ginsberg and the hippies: “The Hippie Revolution was just then beginning. In 1967 Allen went to a roundtable discussion in San Francisco with Leary, Gary Snyder, and Alan Watts. The Hippies were into free drugs and sex with a passion, and Allen had a great deal in common with them and the Hippies community growing from the Beat Generation” (67). That one piece can be ripped apart into many other quotes, and it’s the same for a lot of the wonderful passages in this book. It also shows how the Beat Generation affected other bohemian generations. So it could lead into how the Beats affected the literary world even after their generation had grown old.

Research Assignment

Jenna Wilhelmi

Research Assignment

Book Choice: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Source: From Literature Resource Center

*Interview with Junot Diaz and Juleyka Lantigua

I decided to change my research topic. After much searching I decided to change my paper topic from the superstitions used in Oscar Wao (which no one seems to even mention anywhere…) to focus on gender roles. Gender roles as in: how men and women are portrayed in the book – the hyper masculine image of the Dominican man and the saint versus slut image of the women. I would also like to talk about how strong Diaz’s female characters are.

1. Why did I choose this source? What drew my attention to it?

I choose this source from the Literature Resource Center because: it was labeled as a critical essay, it is an interview with the author himself about the book, and it talks about what the men and women in Diaz’s life were like.

2. Why/how was it useful to my research topic?

It talks about how Junot Diaz was influenced by the men and women in his life and he also talks about feminism in the Dominican Republic.

3. How did it provide me with a greater understanding of my topic?

It showed me what Diaz grew up with when it came to gender roles and shed some light on why he portrayed his characters the way he did. It talked about the strong women he had in his life as well as the pressure he faced to be a ‘macho Dominican man.’

4. How did it give me ideas about how to plan to incorporate it in my paper?

I thought about putting it in a section about how the author views gender roles and how that influenced his work. And maybe connect it to gender standards in America.

5. How did it bring new light to my paper topic while also backing up what I already thought to be true about my topic?

Well, this interview is the reason I decided to change my topic. I think no one talks about the use of the supernatural in the book because Diaz himself has stated in interviews that he is not really a believer… About this topic – it showed me that Diaz thinks that men must be macho (or at least that that was beaten into him) and that women can be strong but that that strength is often perceived the wrong why - like when their neighbors called Beli a slut.

6. Why is it an appropriate source? How do I know?

Because I got it through the Literature Resource Center and that it is an interview done by a literary review group that is well respected.

7. Did it provide me with specific quotes?

Yes, I believe it did – from the author himself no less. J

8. Pick a quote – say why it is useful – how did it help illuminate the text for me – how could I integrate this quote into my paper?

“And the concept of Oscar, the concept of this poor nerd, the concept of the real version of everything that we're performing against--at least as a Dominican man of color--suddenly came into my mind. This was the pariguayo (loser); this was the figure who shadows all of us in our attempts to live out this excessive masculinity.”

This useful because it tells me where the idea for Oscar came from – in this case, Diaz seems to think there is a silent Oscar or at least someone like him in all Dominican men. It showed me how Oscar came to be and his role in Dominican Male Sexuality – It helped me see Diaz’s point that all men of color are just playing their hyper masculine selves and may actually be a total nerd inside (everyone has a closet nerd.) I could use this quote to talk about how male gender roles are perceived in the book as well as in the real world. Maybe use it to compare Diaz’s Dominican man to the American man.

Source Evaluation

Chelsa Lauderdale
Intro to Writing and Literature
11/24/10
Source Evaluation - “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg
The source that I chose to evaluate was a radio broadcast about called “Revisiting Allen Ginsberg ‘Howl’ at 50” by Tom Vitale. I chose this source because I thought it could help me write my paper in seeing how the poem affected the culture of its time. It drew my attention because it seemed like an interesting and useful source and it also had quotes from Ginsberg. It’s useful to my research paper because it will helped me narrow my focus from just talking about the poem “Howl” to the effect that “Howl” had on the general public. It provided me with a greater understanding of my topic because it introduced me to things and ideas that I had not known before, like the fact that “Howl” was actually started out as a different poem. It gave me ideas about how to incorporate the material into my paper because it changed my topic idea altogether. It’s an appropriate source because it contains an actual interview with Ginsberg himself which help me understand the kind of person he was and how and why he wrote Howl. The quote, “The poem gave voice to an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and alienation in Eisenhower's America. "Howl" became an anthem for the nascent counterculture” seems like a very useful quote to my topic because it sets a basis for the things I want to talk about in my paper. I can integrate this quote in the introduction of my research paper to highlight exactly what the poem “Howl” did to people when it was first released.

Source URL: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5419033

Russell Edson by Nathan Gale

http://0-www.jstor.org.library.cca.edu/stable/3201009?seq=4&Search=yes&term=edson&term=russell&list=hide&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Drussell%2Bedson%26gw%3Djtx%26acc%3Don%26prq%3Drusell%2Bedson%26hp%3D25%26wc%3Don&item=1&ttl=385&returnArticleService=showFullText&resultsServiceName=null

I used “Structural Politics: The Prose Poetry of Russell Edson” by Lee Upton because after reading the article I realized that it not only discussed my topic but went further into other aspects closely related to the phycology and social aspects found in Edson's poetry. As well as giving a broader account on, aesthetics, politics, structure and form of Russell Edson's poetry. This helped fill in details, such as why he uses the structure of prose poetry to enhance the symbols and motifs. For example in his poem “The House of Sara Loo” Lee Upton states Edson uses a woman with the body of a house to depict the a woman's womb as a sort of “home” to which man springs from and returns.

Not only does it go into great detail on the history of prose poetry, the article quotes from other poets and academics such as Donald Hall, Denise Levertov and Robert Bly. That guided me to find more essays and articles written on Russell Edson

Until then I though Russell Edsons poems primarily were Freudian routines, and after reading the article realized they run much deeper depicting modern politics and social enigmas in American culture. Such as women's rights, gender roles and racism in society.

The essay helped me formulate a research thesis or question: How does Russell Edson uses the prose poetry to describe various conditions and affects of phycology, politics, and sociology? From this question I was able to gleam and pick out certain parts of the text to follow through on, such as Edsons use of absurd, satire and fabulists acts to intensify and magnify reality to create meaning.

After searching for essays on Russell Edson on Google and other common search engines I found only vague discussions of his work, that were quite often amateur. So I used Jstor from the CCA library website in order to find genuine academic articles such as this one that were much more concise and to the point and answered my question.

Quotes I found in the article to back up my question were as follows: “Beyond his concern with genre, Edson’s discomfort with traditional form is demonstrated by his preoccupation with social structure.” “Edson suggests that the “spell” of violent power must be broken through our self-conscious awareness of the constructed form of the page itself, a knowledge of artifice that may interrupt the ceaseless narratives of conventional power.”

“Beyond his concern with genre, Edson’s discomfort with traditional form is demonstrated by his preoccupation with social structure.” This quote was useful as it explained to me that Edsons poems are not based in “traditional forms” of poetry but by a awareness of social oder and how it can effect the way poetry is written. Using topics such as physiology and social aspects as a formula frees him from having to condense and fit these issues into standard poetic forms. This quote helped me elaborate on how the phycology and sociology plays an integral role in the process of Russell Edsons poetry, there by answering in part my question.

Lolita

by Nathan Gale

In Lolita we have described to us a man, Humbert, well rounded and educated as he may be, that is constantly beset with alienation from the world around him. This alienation blossoms from his eerie desires towards nubile girls, and sets him apart from both men of his age and women of his age. Beginning with his first love Annabel who remains a figurehead or model of sorts in which he placates and reshapes across different experience with women until final he finds that perfect replacement in twelve year old Lolita. This fascination could be interpreted as pedophile, yet pedophile seems a label to easily given. His desire stems from perhaps a younger identity that existed purely in innocence without adult anxiety, trying to recreate that feeling upon other young girls may be his only way of connecting with a loss of innocence.

Humbert's Character is similar to Camus character Meursault in The Stranger, in the way he is both at once intelligent but sarcastic and spiteful towards the world at large. Like Humbert drifts through the younger years of his life without true passion, aimlessly floating between marriage and prostitutes who never truly harness the type of passion he seeks. it seems here Humbert is avert towards anything, almost nihilistic and cold towards the world. The only time he becomes animated is when is fantasying about young girls, who often induce him to nerves breakdowns and stays in mental institutions.

He describes Lolita initial as: “....the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark innerside of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors ( and this is how I see Lolita).”

Here she becomes ethereal equal to a moment of bliss where nothing matters, like that he felt by the shore with Annabel .

Through Lolita he is perversely seeking a part of himself where he once felt free and alive, as he did with . Just as an artist seeks his subject, Humbert's has become youth and innocence. His way of reproducing that feeling although is purely carnal and voyeuristic, as he can find no other way to express his feeling of past experiences. he must physically supplicate Lolita's body in order to fulfill something at once innocence and vulgar inside his own mind.

"the greatest love story between an Vladimir Nabokov and his readers..."

One of the best things about literature is its life shelf longevity. While reading Lolita, many people have encountered me wanting to discuss a certain aspect or theme. I can talk to my grandmother about Vladimir Nabokov, a stranger about the differences between love and sex, teachers about the Edgar Allan Poe, Shakespeare and other poetical references, and even those who have not read it and are curious about the most obvious aspect- pedophilia. This book is a masterpiece, a 4-d puzzle, and a meta meta meta-fiction. I am grateful for those who decided annotations were needed and dedicated such time to deconstructing Nabokov.

I read on my friend’s version of Lolita that was probably “the greatest American love story.” I think this is true but not in the most obvious sense. I feel Nabokov has an intimate relationship with his readers and this is the great love story. The feeling of being inside Nabokov’s brain can be addictive and obsessive like the love in his book. I know I am fascinated with his accomplishments in and out side the book: learned English in his thirties, speaks about four other languages, figured out the crossword puzzle in German, named most of the butterflies, literate in many authors, poets and literature, and despises Freud- just to name a few. And I love that he makes us his own words. I’ve always wanted to do that because if it makes sense- then it just does.

The whole controversy about him not being American doesn’t bother me because he captures the lifestyles and values of Americans so well. For example, Catherine Haze’s need for a husband, jealous behavior (which can also be connected to her harsh treatment to her daughter), interest in material objects, and her annoying failure to speak French.

As for Humbert, let’s ask the gentlemen of the jury… and I will let you know my decision at the end of the trial, I mean, book. His language is too beautiful not to connect with him. His acknowledgement of how wrong his feelings for girl-childs (or as he likes to justify as nymphlets) gives the reader some emotional insight to the universal ups and downs of falling in love, being infatuated with some one. I watched an interview with Nabokov and like a great fiction writer; he does not give away too much inside information because he leaves it to the reader to interpret. This book is incredibly postmodern. I can not wait to re-read it in the future wheni have enough time to deconstruct and analyze with closer attention to detail. I often hear from previous readers that every time its read, Lolita evokes a different emotion- sad or loving, inspirational to writers and with endless themes. This is a writing and literature major’s handbook to meta-fiction, inspiration created by an author’s life and contributions, and also just a great read.

Response 9

by Alora Young

Lolita

This book is creepy. It was one of the first conclusions I came to, and it just got more and more dominant the further I read. It’s creepy for obvious reasons – the theme of pedophilia and the fact that Lolita seemingly reciprocates Humbert’s feelings, for example. But the scariest thing is the fact that I like Humbert, as a character, but especially as a narrator. It’s easy to forget that the fact that he’s only sexually attracted to girls between the ages of 9 and 14 is so, so wrong. I forget because he’s funny. He’s very clever. And he presents us on multiple occasions with logical, credible sounding information on why his sexual preferences are actually quite… normal.

He says, “I found myself maturing amid a civilisation which allows a man of twenty-five to court a girl of sixteen but not a girl of twelve.” “Hugh Broughton, a writer of controversy in the reign of James the First has proved that Rahab was a harlot at ten years of age.” “Marriage and cohabitation before the age of puberty are still not uncommon in certain East Indian providences. Lepcha old men of eighty copulate with girls of eight, and nobody minds.” And the worst part is we know it’s true. We know that in the past, a middle-aged man marrying a ten year old girl was acceptable, and more than that, it was common. While part of our minds flinch, and tell us these relationships are disgusting, the other part is stumbling over itself with a, “But, uhm, he’s right though…”

Without wanting to, we accept his “malheurs” (French; misfortunes) of being helplessly attracted to young girls, and we focus on how amusing and intelligent he is. We forget that his story should make us feel ill, and we even find ourselves hoping for his happiness – wanting Lolita to love him back. Then, inevitably, we realise where this character’s charm has lead us and we find ourselves disgusted again, more at ourselves than at poor Humbert Humbert, who we still feel eerily sympathetic for. After our short in-class discussion, I’m even more aware of how naive Humbert’s skill as an unreliable, manipulative narrator has made me, for I failed to recognize how much of Humbert’s story may in fact, be as fictionalised as the very world Nabokov has created for him.

I already thought Nabokov had to be a genius for leading me, and I’m sure every other reader of Lolita, to almost condone Humbert’s behaviour. Then, of course, I realised (thanks to Apple’s in-depth annotations) how every word in this novel truly does mean something. People say that about most of the important literary works in history, but sometimes you’re not sure how true it is. Lolita not only written beautifully, it’s written carefully. I now have the utmost respect for Nabokov, and will forever be fascinated by this novel and its genius.

What a Cool Pedophile JK

Before I read ‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov, I read an article in a communist Spartacist League newsletter written in defense of Roman Polanski, who had been charged with raping a minor. The Spartacist League defended Polanski by declaring that this girl was already sexually experienced and willing. I remembered this as I read ‘Lolita’, whose pedophiliac narrator also defends his actions by citing other culture’s sexual openness and Lolita’s sexual desires. This does not mean the author is defending pedophiles. Unlike the Spartacist League, which wants to represent itself as the trustworthy voice of the working clas, Humbert is portrayed as openly manipulative in instances such as when he tells the reader he has tricked his therapist into thinking he is a homosexual. Nabokov wants to test if we can resist manipulation by this knowledgeable, humorous, and well-spoken European we would usually trust.

As early as page 18, Humbert writes, “I found myself maturing amid a civilization that allows a man of twenty-five to court a girl of sixteen but not a girl of twelve." On page 19, he goes on to say, “Marriage and cohabitation before the age of puberty are still not uncommon in certain East Indian provinces. Lepcha old men of eighty copulate with girls of eight, and nobody minds.” It is true that some cultures promote what others condemn, but it is not necessarily true that many girls of eight do not "mind” the forced sex. Nonetheless, Humbert continues to say on page 135, “ “The stipulation of the Roman law, according to which a girl may marry at twelve, was adopted by the Church, and is still preserved, rather tacitly, in some of the United States.” Nabokov is fully aware that certain laws, such as the modern day illegalization of marijuana, have the ability to make actions like smoking marijuana seem either moral or immoral. He also knows that churches have the same ability to make acts, such as sex before marriage, virtuous or sinful. He therefore wants the reader to either fall for Humbert’s trap and decide he was not so wrong in having sex with Lolita, or to reject our ways of interpreting what is right and wrong.

In Greek mythology, nymphs are considered wild and sexually active. In labeling Lolita a nymphet, Humbert puts some blame on Lolita’s sexual nature, as if to say she wanted the sex. On page thirteen, the narrator says, “I touched her hot, opening lips with an utmost piety, tiny sips, nothing salacious; but she, with an impatient wriggle, pressed her mouth so hard to mine that I felt her big front teeth and shared a taste of her saliva.” Here it is Lolita who begins this sexual act. Later on, Lolita asks, “But we are lovers, aren’t we?” By the end of Part 1, Lolita leaves the separate room she is in, and goes to sleep with Humbert in the middle of the night. Humbert oftentimes calls Lolita an evil fiend, as though she is in control, but it is after all Humbert who is in control as to how the world is portrayed. If Lolita really did initiate the sex, I believe she is to blame, even if Humbert is somewhat at fault for going along with it. At one point, Humbert says, "[Lolita's mother] was more afraid of Lo's deriving pleasure from me than of me deriving pleasure with Lo" (56). Frequently in our society, the sexual act is consentual, and it is minor's parents who press charges, unwilling to admit to themselves that their sons or daughters went along with sexual intercourse with older men and women. In this text, it is up to the reader to decide whether or not our notions with pedophilia, in part delivered to us by equally manipulative cultures, governments, and religions, are worth trusting more than the narrator's plea for sympathy.

Lolita

Chelsa Lauderdale
Intro to Writing and Literature
11/18/10

Foreign Language Use in Lolita

The Annotated Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is in English but is constantly sprinkled with words and phrases in many different languages, mostly French. In class we determined that Nabokov’s use of languages gets confused and complicated in passages where he is filled with extreme emotion. However these aren’t the only places where the different languages are used. They are used all throughout the book. Through my readings I’ve concluded that he uses foreign languages in some sections way more heavily than in other sections and sometimes not at all and I’ve been trying to deduce the reasoning behind it.
My conclusion is that the passages where he uses other languages, especially French, are the passages in which females are more heavily involved. In Chapter six for example, the chapter where the narrator meets the young prostitute girl Monique there a lot of French words and phrases. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with the girl speaking French because Nobokov could have just as easily translated that into English in context instead of just including the English translation in the back of the book. This connection between the girls in his life and the use of French could have something to do with the beauty of the French language and the way that the narrator describes the girls. French is known to be one of the most beautiful or romantic languages in the world and so he could be using this to intensify or perhaps just increase the description of the girls that are speaking or of whom he is speaking about. Towards the end of that same chapter when the narrator is faced with a situation where the girl that the Madame was trying to set him up with him turned out to be an ordinary girl and not a “nymphet” there is a decrease in French used from one French word or phrase a sentence to just one or two in those last couple of paragraphs. In the next chapter when he decides that he should marry someone and choses the Polish doctor’s daughter, there is some French words and phrases, as, according to my theory, there is a woman involved in the passages but not as many as when he was talking about Monique the childish prostitute.
In chapter nine however, when the narrator travels to arctic Canada with the research team there is no French or any other language. In that section of the text though, there is no females, he hardly even mentions them and thus there is no foreign languages.
There could be a number of other reasons though for this change in languages. For instance, perhaps the usage of French lessens later on because in chapter nine the narrator moves to America and perhaps due to that he loses some of his need to speak French. I personally think my theory is much more interesting than that though.

Lo. Lee. Ta.

Lolita. Lolita. “Lo. Lee. Ta” (9). I really don’t know what to talk about when it comes to Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. I could tell you how much I have wanted to read this book, because I had heard that it was such a spectacular book. I can now understand why people were calling spectacular and other things, because it is. It’s witty, smart, and perverted, all at one. And if I was not this messed up on cold medicine I could tell you more, and make sense. So excuse me if I don’t make sense or ramble a bit. But the point is because it is those three things it is memorable and oddly likable. Since it’s weird to like a character who wants to touch little girls, but I somehow love Humbert Humbert (and his name). This is probably one of main things about Lolita, you somehow love it.

Then again the novel is not about pedophilia, but people seem to forget that. This story is more about innocence and trying to withhold something you once had. Humberts obsession with nymphets began because of his first love Annabel. Her memory haunted him “until at last, twenty years later, [He] broke her spell by incarnating her in another” (15). That other being Lolita, and he wanted her so badly that he ended up marrying her mother. The thing is, Humbert did not want to taint her innocence. Her innocence was one of the things he loved so much about her, and it what he was sure to keep with him forever. “Pathetic--- because despite the insatiable fire of my venereal appetite, I intended, with the most fervent force and foresight, to protect the purity of that twelve-year-old child” (63)

On the other hand, should we even trust Humbert at all? He is an incredibly smart, educated, and witty man who is jail for murder. We are reminded this time and time again when he keeps talking to the reader as though we are the “[g]entlemen of the jury” (69). So Humbert is not a very reliable narrator at all. Through out the first half of the story he is just trying to prove that he did not mean harm out of any of this, and if he did, he is no longer the same man. He is just “a very conscientious recorder” (72). This is probably one the spectacular things about this book: it is incredibly well rounded and smart. If it were not for the little things I would believe Humbert, and think that perfect man he described himself as.

Response 9

Vanessa Hernandez

17 November 2010

Intro Writing/Lit

Like many first readers of Lolita, I thought the text solely told the tale of a pedophile’s adventure. Little did I know that beneath its mask, the story has scarcely anything to do with Humbert’s perversions. It instead, plays mind-games with the readers by having a crazed killer narrate an obvious plot in order to mask a deeper (still undiscovered) hidden plot.

I must admit, that I was at first played by Humbert’s coy distractions, before our class discussion. I found myself buying his cheesy sincerity and lustful comments without ever thinking that whom I was listening to is a manipulative fictional character. After realizing that Humbert isn’t to be trusted, “ I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with physiatrists; cunningly leading them on; never letting you see that you know all tricks of the trade; inventing for them elaborate dreams…” (34) I read Lolita with a different attitude. I was determined to not be played again.

Sadly though, I had been played through the first half of the story, not by Humbert by Nabokov who’s intentions I find unclear. I feel like I have been given a game with only the first sentence of the directions to work with; sure I have learned to not trust Humbert, and look for the “’real plot” which is visible in the “gaps” and “holes” in the narrative” (26 Intro) but I don’t know where to look for “gaps” and “holes” since the story appears consistent throughout. How can one play a game when they don’t know where to even start?

Minus the headache of trying to be smart and play along with Nabokov’s games, I found the first half of Lolita to be an interesting read. Its continuous switching between third and first person helped to remind me that Humbert, despite his thoughts, is not in control of his actions but a higher deity (Nabokov). The meta-fiction genre is an interesting one that I hadn’t known prior to taking this class, but one I intend on continuing in reading.

Luisa's Reading at Pegasus Books Tomorrow Night! Come if you can!

Conjugal by Russell Edson

As you begin to read Conjugal, sexual images flash inside your head. "He is bending her around the bedpost. No, he is bending her around the tripod of his camera...he is finding her nipples there...and his buttocks move in and out of the wall." It all sounds so sexual and explicit. Some of it is direct, while some of it is indirect. At first, I took the meaning of "bending" the wrong way. I thought, "Okay, this obviously stands for having sex..." But the indirect references threw me off. "It is as if he is teaching her to swim. As if he teaches acrobatics." Those lines gave me a push in a different direction.
When another one of Edson's poems, "The Yellow Wallpaper" was suggested to have meaning inside this poem, everything changed. The line, "He is bending her around something that she has bent herself around," made more sense to me. The bending isn't sexual intercourse, it's the husband driving his wife more "insane" over something already in her mind. He isn't literally teaching her how to swim, or acrobats, or actually using a camera. He is trying to mold her into what he thinks she should be, almost as if he was a teacher, teaching her to be someone else. "And it is such a private thing they do." The husband fitting his wife into a mold of the perfect woman is kept secret between the two spouses. Outsiders wouldn't see the corruption, only the couple. "He is convincing her," she's not being forced, just slowly persuaded.
"He is forming her into the wallpaper. He is smoothing her down into the flowers there. He is finding her nipples there. And he is kissing her pubis there." Forming her into the wallpaper seems to be a way of showing her uselessness, showing that she is purely for look, only a "trophy wife." She has lost her power of being her own person and is now useless as someone she is not. The flowers in the wallpaper represent her fragile femininity. The wife may have formed into her husband's ideals, but she lost herself along the way.

-Ariana Allison

The Ape

by Nathan Gale

Russell Edson (1935 -) has and still confounds his poetic audience with both the content and form of his prose poems. His language combines a whimsical fabulist prose with often Freudian content, that lends to the subconscious dream-like scheme the poems seem to follow. The background of each poem is based in a parallel reality to our own where fantasy and imagination seem to be the base for reality. Like in a dream state nothing is for sure or seems to be solid, yet everything in your dream is perceived as being real; the same occurs in Edsons poems. In which nothing is real yet everything is recognizable, making them quiet surrealistic in quality and theme. Indeed, like a dream each poem begins from some sort of middle ground, never truly from any solid beginning or introduction.

In the poem “Ape” we are immediately shoved into the story with the intro line: “You haven’t finished your ape, said mother to father....” We are given no narrative background or backstory of the characters in question, we are just dropped or parachuted into the story where we must gather from what Edson shows us rather then tells us. In the “Ape” most context is perceived in a series of images that are arranged like events, the dialog follows this rhythm as well, yet again like in a dream we are never really sure where the story’s point of view is originated from. In the poem we are seeing it from the child it seems as the characters are described as “mother” and “father”, the experience of the narrator itself seems not to be the focus but rather what the viewer is narrating.

“Ape” is a detail of a Freudian slip, where the dialog of the father never prompts any response from the mother about her relationship outside of eating and cooking the ape, but rather she lets slip the true nature of her relationship with the Ape. As she sates:” How dare you insinuate that I see the ape as anything more the simple meat, screamed mother....Are you saying that I am in love with this vicious creature? That I would submit my female opening to this brute?” Edson is relating to us how a commonplace act “simple meat” becomes something the mother has grown fond of in a way that is both carnal in the way that she has perverse desires towards it and relishes in its taste. The ape has become more then meat, yet still remains meat in her sexual delinquency. A Freudian take on how simple objects, like the poker in Robert Coover’s story The Magic Poker, it becomes a symbol of our own subconscious lust. How everything becomes a facade simply for carnal identity that is masked by its common appearance in our civilized lives.

Again the poem acts like a dream where the subconscious overtakes out ability to control ourselves in our dream-state. The ape symbolizes two things in the poem, the wives civilized monogamy of serving the husband the same meal each night, as well as the strange choice of meat, could symbolize the instinctual primitive side of human evolution, the Id. In which the wife reduces herself to a sexual encounter with the animal itself, as it resembles a part of her self that is instinctual and primitive in nature. This nature seems to be her Id surfacing amongst her civilized distinctly “human” aspects of her Ego, and is symbolized by the ape and the pleasure she receives from it.

Response 8

by Alora Young

'The Toy-Maker'

Poetry has always been really hard for me to get into. Generally speaking, I don’t read it, because my inability to understand a single line just makes me feel like an idiot. And no one wants to feel like an idiot. Since I don’t read poetry, I rarely write it either – because, of course, you’ve got to know how to read something before you can write it, and I still don’t have a great idea of how to read poetry. After this week’s class, however, I do have a better idea.

I liked Russell Edson’s work from the first because it was prose poetry, and even if I didn’t understand the meaning behind it, I understood the structural aspects of grammar and paragraphing, which made me feel a little better about myself. It’s also pretty obvious reading his poems that he works in metaphors and surrealism, and the lesson on connotative vs. denotative in this week’s class helped me to realise that his metaphors could have a million different meanings depending not only on the reader’s associations, but on Edson’s own associations as well. In class, we looked at ‘Conjugal’, but my favourite poem of his was ‘The Toy-Maker’.

It seems to me that the “toy-maker” is a metaphor for mankind and societal expectations: “A toy-maker made a toy wife and a toy child. He made a toy house and some toy years.” To me, this says, society expects us to get married, have children, buy a house, and live in this nuclear family for the rest of our lives. Society makes media that shows us this, and in the seventies, and even today, it was still hard to break free from these expectations. He develops this further with: “He made a getting-old toy, and he made a dying toy” – illustrating the inevitable end that every member of the human race will meet. This, however, he follows with, “The toy-maker made a toy heaven and a toy god”, which brings into sight the ideas that society has developed to create an afterlife, and to explain the meaning of life, as in, we live to serve our chosen god and abstain from sin in order to live an eternal afterlife in heaven. “But, best of all,” Edson closes this poem, “he liked making toy shit.”

This final line is, if the slightly condescending tone of the rest of the poem didn’t make it seem that way enough already, what convinces me that this is a criticism on society and how meaningless and uniform human life has become, or perhaps has always been. We have, I guess, always married, had children, lived in some form of shelter, worshiped a god, grown old, died, and left those still alive to believe we’ve gone to heaven. Most societies throughout history, it seems, have shared these generalised beliefs of ‘normality’, and so humans, “the toy-maker”s, continue to “mak[e] toy shit”.

The straightforward prose style of ‘The Toy-Maker’ and Edson’s other poetry made it really easily accessible for me. Even if I couldn’t quite decipher the meaning (like with ‘Ape’), I still got to really enjoy the surface humor. Understanding what the poem was about came to mean less than simply reading it for the sake of enjoyment, which I feel was Edson’s true intention – he wrote, it seems, for his own enjoyment, and managed to spread that enjoyment to us through his words.

"Conjugal" by Russel Edson

Chelsa Lauderdale
11/10/10
Intro to Writing and Literature
“Conjugal”
The poem “Conjugal” by Russel Edson intrigues the reader with both its content as well as the way its written. The poem is written in a sort of narrative form that reads more as a very short story than a poem. For this reason, this sort of writing could appeal to lovers of poetry or narrative or especially the people who don’t particularly like poetry. It is written in a combination of short paragraphs and one-liners, making the one liners stand out that much more. Lines like “he is convincing her. It is all so private” and “and it is such a private thing they do” are connected even though they are separated in the poem, they have ties to each other and the separation of these lines from the other paragraphs make this connectivity stand out. The shortness of the poem also leaves the poem in a mysterious tone that leaves the reader questioning.
However, the content of the poem itself also leaves us questioning. The poem seems comparative to the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman a story about a near insane woman losing her mind due to the wallpaper of the room that she is confined to. I feel as though “Conjugal” could be a poem written about the woman who is trapped inside the wallpaper and about how she got there. The lines “he is forming her into the wallpaper. He is smoothing her down into the flowers there” (323) give the reader that feeling. If that is the case, the sexual nature of this piece and the seemingly demanding nature of the husband in the poem could be the reason why in “The Yellow Wallpaper” the woman behind the wallpaper wants to be released from behind it.
There is something alternatively loving and perverted in the poem “Conjugal”. When Edson writes “he is bending her around the bedpost. No, he is bending her around the tripod of his camera” the relationship between this man and his wife seems almost pornographic. While in lines such as “he is smoothing her down into the flowers there. He is finding her nipples there. And he is kissing her pubis there” their relationship seems loving and caring, even if the woman’s husband is locking her up in the wallpaper.
If one was to combine the two pieces “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Conjugal” (or at least in the form that I’ve interpreted it as) it would make for quite the interesting tale.

response 8

Jenna Wilhelmi

Postmodern Poetry

Lyn Hejinian

Train of Thought, Car Crash, Wild Ride

Lyn Hejinian is a firm believer in playing with language and how it is used. The title of her essay in the Poetics, The Rejection of Closure, shows that playfulness. She takes Charles Olson’s concept of open verse and applies it to her own work. Her poetry is a long stream of seemingly unrelated sentences and she invites you as the reader to find a way to connect them. In a way, she talks about how poetry is a form we as humans use to describe the world around us. We try to connect with the things around us by using the words we have labeled them with. But that this interaction is never truly complete. Hejinian brings up what happens when children learn language and when they realize words aren’t always enough to adequately express the world. “They discover that words are not equal to the world, that a shift, analogous to parallax in photography, occurs between things (events, ideas, objects) and the words for them – a displacement that leaves a gap.”

However, Hejinian doesn’t suggest that we fill this gap, but utilize it to garner something new. Instead of following a set poem structure, or even a narrative line, she uses a string of seemingly disjointed sentences. It reads almost as though she has found some way to pour her train of thought onto the page. Trains of thought rarely make sense to an outside party or the person the train belongs to for that matter. This ‘train’ is simply how your brain connects, categorizes, and files all the information you have come in contact with. Each of these words flying around in our brains, eventually ending up in the air or on the page, “has spatial properties as well as temporal properties.”

A word takes up ‘space’ and ‘time’ according to Hejinian. A words ‘space’ is where it sits on a page in relation to the words around it. It takes up ‘time’ because of when it was born, altered, and when it pops up – either as a contemporary use or a historical reference. Then the ‘time’ ties back to the ‘space’ the word takes up when Hejinian explains, “ the idea of reference is spatial: over here is the word, over there is the thing at which word is shooting amiable love-arrows.”

Words unquestionable hold some power. The postmodern poets like Hejinian and Olson knew this and wanted to play with that power, turn it on its head, and see what happened. They focused more on the experience of actually writing poetry instead of just how it sounded. They broke language down, studied its structure, and then tossed it aside and tried to build a new structure from scratch. Postmodern poets let the words tell them how they wished to be organized and ignored the traditional fathers of syntax, form, and line. Focusing instead on the syllable (Olson) and the word itself (Hejinian). Open verse effectively opened all new doors for poetry the same way sign language opens the door of language to a deaf person. There is an underlying structure, but what you notice more is the image or symbol the words invoke. It’s not about telling a story and at the same time it is – its just not telling a narrative. It is highlighting sounds, moments, movement, time, and the flow of life. In a way it tells a story much the same way as a musical number. The line of music invokes an emotion without saying anything in particular; just like a line in a postmodern poem.