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.