0:00

Trigger warning. This podcast discusses

0:02

sexual assault and child abuse, as

0:04

well as strong language. Listener

0:07

discretion is advised. M I

0:28

first learned about Lolita when I was twelve,

0:31

and that's the same age as Dolores Hayes or

0:34

Lolita, whichever of them you're familiar with.

0:36

At the beginning of that book, it was

0:38

two thousand five. I was in the seventh grade

0:41

in Massachusetts. I wore a back brace

0:43

to school, which put off any hope of getting

0:45

my first kiss until two thousand and eight.

0:47

But in two thousand five, I had an obsession

0:49

with lemony snicke ats a series of unfortunate events,

0:52

I had a school picture wearing a T shirt

0:54

that said too young for Ashton, and

0:57

I read Vladimir in a Bulkos Lolita

0:59

for the first time. But it was not

1:01

a random selection off the shelf.

1:04

It had been recommended to me by children's

1:06

author Lomani Snaket. Yeah, let's take a quick

1:08

journey if you're not familiar. Lolita

1:11

is a ninety novel by

1:13

Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov.

1:16

That is Nabokov, But if

1:18

you correct anyone for saying it Nabakoff,

1:21

you're a jerk, But it's a book

1:23

about a middle aged European pedophile

1:25

named Humbert Humbert who falls in love

1:28

with heavy quotes there then abducts

1:31

and sexually and psychologically abuses

1:33

twelve year old American girl Dolores

1:36

Hayes or Lolita, then

1:38

abducts and rapes her across

1:40

the US in the late nineteen forties.

1:44

And there's no shying away from the reality

1:46

here, in spite of how it's been

1:48

romanticized over the years. Lolita

1:50

tells the story of a pedophile who

1:52

abuses a twelve year old that he's supposed

1:54

to be the caretaker of. It is

1:57

horrifying and one of the most controversial

2:00

text of the last century. And

2:02

it's what this podcast is about, sort

2:04

of. And if you are also not

2:06

familiar, Lemony Snicket, the pseudonym

2:08

for author Daniel Handler, wrote the series

2:11

of Unfortunate Events books in the early

2:13

two thousands. There is an adapted

2:15

movie starring Jim Carey from two thousand

2:17

four, and there's also a more recent Netflix

2:19

adaptation with Neil Patrick Harris.

2:22

To this day, these books are my favorites

2:24

in the world, not just because I love the stories,

2:26

but because Lemony Snicket references a

2:29

number of famous books and movies

2:31

and shows to his young readers that they probably

2:33

wouldn't know about, leaving twelve year old

2:36

with nothing but time and Google to dcode

2:38

his writing and find this whole new media

2:41

list spanning Moby Dick to Monty Python

2:43

just by reading the books. Handler has written

2:45

a number of books targeted at adults as

2:47

well, with pretty sexual plots,

2:50

but the majority of his audience, especially

2:52

in the mid two thousands, were from Lemony

2:55

Snicket and were children, And because

2:57

he was my favorite author, I would frequently

2:59

boot it up the family Gateway computer

3:02

to look up interviews with him. The interview

3:04

I remember reading very clearly

3:07

is no longer online, but I have something close.

3:09

This is from an interview he did with I g. N

3:12

in two thousand four, in which he recommends

3:14

the following to his fan base, The

3:16

wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki

3:18

Murakami, Mr Show, the

3:21

movie Saboteur, a song called Chlorine

3:23

Bacon Skin by Prince, and Lolita

3:26

by Vladimir and a book. Mr Handler

3:28

was not available to be interviewed for this podcast,

3:30

but he's been talking about Lolita

3:33

in interviews for nearly twenty years.

3:35

Now, and I want to be clear, I am not trying

3:37

to cancel Daniel Handler or a Lemony

3:39

Snicket over saying his favorite book is

3:41

Lolita to a majority young audience.

3:43

If you want to scrutinize his politics for different

3:46

reasons, feel free to google his name and then

3:48

the word controversy and arrive at

3:50

your own conclusion. There's valid discussions to be had,

3:52

but that's not what I'm here to discuss on this

3:54

podcast. The thing is that recommending

3:56

a book like Lolita was very in the

3:58

wheelhouse of Lemony Ticket at this

4:00

time, and the fact that he answered what his favorite

4:02

book was without a filter was a huge part

4:05

of what I really liked about his work As a kid, Unlike

4:08

a lot of y A authors of this era,

4:10

reading a Lemony snicketbook made me feel

4:12

like I was an adult, and that by

4:14

referencing all these fancy vocabulary

4:17

words and great works of literature, I

4:19

was given the tools to be seen as an equal

4:21

to him, be in on it. So

4:23

Lemony Snickett saying he liked Lolita

4:26

stuck out to my twelve year old brain for a lot of

4:28

reasons once I found out what it was about. Because

4:30

Handler slash Snickett had already made

4:33

a number of references to Lolita

4:35

in his own book series. One of the references

4:37

is a character in the series that is

4:40

a reference to Lolita's protagonist,

4:42

Humbert Humbert. Another references a plot

4:44

point from the first book where villain and acting

4:46

guardian Count Olof tries to steal a

4:49

fourteen year old orphan named Violet Boudelaire's

4:51

fortune by abusing his parental powers

4:53

to marry and abduct her. And in my opinion,

4:56

the biggest reference to Lolita

4:58

is in the framework and narration style

5:01

of A series of Unfortunate Events. Lemony

5:03

Snakett is Daniel Handler's pseudonym, and

5:05

Snakett, like Humbert, is a middle

5:08

aged man following and tracking down the history

5:10

of children who may or may not be alive anymore

5:12

without any of their input. The big important

5:14

difference here is that Snakett is not the villain

5:17

of the story. He is merely the documentarian,

5:19

and that was how I got to Lolita in

5:21

two thousand five, I should introduce

5:24

myself. My name is Jamie Loftus.

5:26

I am a writer, comedian and podcaster.

5:29

Those jobs are not listed in order of how embarrassing

5:31

they are. And this is Lolita Podcast, a

5:33

series exploring the confused cultural legacy

5:36

of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. We're

5:38

gonna be talking about a thesis is worth of stuff

5:40

here. How did this story come to be in

5:42

the first place? How has it morphed

5:44

into the pentapod monster of a

5:47

cultural artifact it stands as today?

5:49

And when Lolita comes up in conversation

5:51

as a reference, how far exactly from the

5:53

source material is the reference? Because

5:56

the meaning of Lolita has evolved

5:58

over time, whether we're talking about the

6:00

movies from

6:03

Vladimir Nabakov's masterpieces

6:06

a story, or

6:11

the music, which ranges from

6:13

weird metal songs to the

6:15

police's teacher student relationship.

6:18

In Don't Stand so Close to Me. You

6:20

know the lines, It's no use he sees

6:22

her, he starts to shake and cough. Jed

6:25

Light the oh Man in that

6:27

book by a book off you can

6:29

tell. We can't we can't license to the song, so

6:31

I just have to sing it. There's a song by Australian

6:34

duo The Veronica's called Lolita

6:36

that features a love story between an older

6:38

man and an apparently consenting

6:41

teenager. There's Katie Perry singing

6:43

I studied Lolita religiously in

6:46

her single One of the Boys. And

6:48

then there's, of course, all of Lana

6:51

del Rey's early catalog. She's got

6:53

a song called Lolita, She's got another

6:55

called Off to the Races, whose

6:58

chorus calls light of my life, fire

7:00

of my Alloince, be a good baby, do

7:02

what I Want, and other songs

7:05

we don't have the licensing rights to. There

7:08

is hours of Lolita themed

7:10

music, or this line from a

7:12

failed nineteen seventies Broadway musical that

7:14

ruined my entire summer. Who is

7:16

that piper who likes them post Sniper?

7:20

I'm sorry, let's hear that again. Who

7:23

is that piper who likes them? Post?

7:26

Someone had to sing that? Let's and

7:28

and there's more,

7:29

And for

7:32

me, it's the third Pew Pessant

7:34

where I draw the line. Now, I have a lot of opinions

7:37

on the legacy of Lolita, but in listening

7:39

to the series, I want you to form your own. I'm

7:41

going to be speaking with fans, detractors,

7:44

literary scholars, experts on and

7:47

survivors of abuse, directors,

7:49

authors, and a lot of the women who have

7:51

played the titular character in these

7:53

adaptations, and I also recognize

7:56

that discussing this book at all is a

7:58

mine field. I'm going to be too

8:00

close minded for some, too permissive

8:02

for others. But I'm going to try

8:04

and show you every perspective on this

8:07

story that I can. But god damn, there

8:09

is really a lot, because

8:11

this is an inherently politicized

8:14

text, and I can't even guarantee that

8:16

how I feel about this book now is how

8:18

I will always feel about it. If

8:20

the many people I've spoken to for this show

8:22

or any indication, I probably

8:24

won't. Lolita is a terrible and complicated

8:27

story with a complicated legacy, but

8:29

I think it is one that's still worth examining

8:32

today. As a survivor of abuse myself

8:34

that has been haunted by this book since

8:36

it was recommended to me by my favorite children's

8:39

author, I want to understand that. And as

8:41

a feminist, I struggled to say that Lolita

8:43

is a feminist text, or even that Nabulkov

8:46

is a feminist writer. So why am

8:48

I so stuck on it? I've

8:51

been finding that there are two huge

8:53

conversations to be had when it comes to the

8:55

adaptations and the cultural influence

8:58

of Lolita. There's one conversation

9:00

that's more connected to the sexualization of

9:02

young girls in media, which is more connected

9:04

to the movies and the aesthetic, and then there's

9:06

a conversation more connected to the book,

9:08

which we're going to talk about today, and that conversation

9:11

is the ethics of pedophile

9:13

as protagonist and narrator.

9:15

So for me, there's really no gut reaction

9:17

to the cultural topic of

9:20

Lolita that you can discredit. It

9:22

makes sense that people have very strong reactions

9:25

to this text because the topic of pedophilia

9:27

and assault of miners is a hugely

9:30

upsetting, large issue that has

9:32

been with humanity for at least

9:35

all of recorded history, and it remains

9:37

a huge issue now. The year this podcast

9:39

is released, the Jeffrey Epstein story

9:41

is still being reported on detail

9:43

by excruciating detail. The

9:45

Q and on conspiracy Theory details

9:47

false allegations about current public

9:50

figures being pedophiles, specifically

9:52

targeting that same fear that many

9:54

people have of children being preyed upon.

9:56

Here's some recent statistics from rain

9:59

the Rape abew Sin Incest National Network

10:01

on this topic. One in nine girls

10:03

under eighteen experienced sexual abuse

10:05

at the hands of an adult, and of

10:08

these victims, two out of three are

10:10

between the ages of twelve and eighteen.

10:13

Percent of victims know their assaulter

10:15

at the time of their assault, and these

10:17

are just statistics for cases that are

10:20

reported. And on top of that, according to

10:22

the National Center on Violence against Women

10:24

in the Black Community, one in four Black

10:26

girls are sexually abused by age

10:29

eighteen. Sexual violence and abuse is

10:31

disproportionately high against Indigenous

10:33

women and girls, with one in two experiencing

10:36

sexual violence at some point in their

10:38

lives, according to a UN report from two

10:40

thousand fourteen. Another little

10:42

discussed issue is how pedophilia affects

10:44

young boys, something according to

10:46

Brian Boyd's biography of him, Nabokov

10:49

experienced as a child at the hands of an uncle

10:51

at a really young age. While still living in Russia.

10:54

One in five boys are sexually abused

10:56

by the age of eighteen, according to the Advocacy

10:58

Center. So Lolita

11:00

the book has always warranted a huge

11:03

response because it's one of the few major

11:05

literary works, especially up until

11:07

it was published in nineteen fifty five, that attempts

11:10

to grapple with this theme and reality

11:12

exclusively at all, and

11:15

like literature, students don't come for me.

11:17

I know it was not the first book to deal with this. All

11:19

this to say that the sexual assault

11:21

of girls is a gigantic issue

11:23

and an issue that sexualization of girls

11:26

and media is in direct conversation with,

11:28

and the difference between how publicly

11:30

these issues are discussed between nineteen

11:33

fifty five and now is gigantic.

11:36

So yeah, reactions to Lolita

11:38

are big, and it makes total sense

11:40

that they are. But if you're not familiar with the

11:42

book itself and are mostly acquainted

11:45

with the sexualized cultural figure that

11:47

is Lolita, you may be surprised

11:49

to hear that Nabokov's book is, at

11:51

least, for my money, as anti pedophile

11:53

as a book can possibly be while still

11:55

being narrated by Humbert Humberts.

12:00

So I want this dialect to not just be with people

12:02

who are experts on the topic. I wanted to be

12:04

with you two, because I feel that

12:06

so much of how this book affects

12:09

you has to do with what your

12:11

experience with the story is coming in and

12:13

at what point in your life you first encountered

12:15

it. With that in mind, I bravely

12:17

set up a phone line. It's six

12:20

to six eight, seven, two, four, four

12:22

or five eight, if you want to weigh in, And I

12:24

asked people what their experience

12:26

with Lolita was. Had they read

12:29

the book, had they seen movies, had they just

12:31

heard Here's what some of you said. And these

12:33

voicemails have been edited for clarity. My

12:36

history with Lolita You're fraud is

12:38

complicated and also the

12:40

best. UM. I first

12:43

encountered down the Cobs writing, UM,

12:45

we read an Estate is in my ap lit

12:47

class in junior year of high school. UM.

12:50

And then I read Lolita, and I think it's probably

12:52

the most beautifully written book I've ever read.

12:55

UM, setting aside the you

12:57

know, molestation of it all. Somebody

13:00

picked Lolita for our book club book.

13:02

I've never seen the movie, never read the book, had

13:05

a vague idea of what it was about. I

13:07

tried to read that damn book and I read

13:09

five pages of it and I gave up.

13:11

I I think I threw

13:14

the book away. I didn't want anything to do with it.

13:16

It was the nastiest growthest thing I've ever

13:18

even tried to read

13:21

is way better. I

13:24

have always found the book Lolita

13:27

incredibly offensive. I

13:29

was raped as a child, and

13:32

it's pretty hard for someone, especially

13:34

an English professor, to look at you

13:37

and tell you that it's any about anything

13:39

other than the kidnapped and right but

13:41

a child. Um, I'm

13:44

pretty closed up to anybody else's

13:46

opinions. Um,

13:48

it's I think it's pretty funked up.

13:50

It's a really important book because

13:53

it's rare. I feel like you only see

13:56

kind of leering man at girls and it's

13:58

either just like their monsters

14:01

and they're not realized people, or

14:03

it's like okay, and they're good guys. And the

14:06

reason why this book is important is because you see

14:08

this man completely misunderstand like

14:10

a girl navigating her like burgeoning

14:13

sexuality, and he

14:16

prays on like I don't know, we've all

14:18

been there when PRET young. When

14:20

I was the teens fourteen,

14:22

I was extremely

14:25

on Tumbler, and although

14:27

I had never and I still have never

14:30

read Lowly, though I

14:32

knew that it was sort of glorified

14:36

in this way that I

14:39

really lusted. Still,

14:42

my first experience, uh

14:44

with it actually was hearing

14:47

about it in nerdy like

14:50

anime forums. Thank you

14:52

so much to everyone who called in. I

14:54

really really appreciate it. There were many more

14:56

voice mails, but I tried to pick ones that represented

14:58

a few perspectives that I saw cropping

15:01

up again and again. There's the I

15:03

love the book, but I think it's very misunderstood

15:05

in culture. There's the book being framed

15:08

to its reader in an extremely bad

15:10

feet way. There's I read

15:12

the book, but I was too young to understand what it was

15:14

really about at the time. There's readers

15:16

whose personal trauma is an understandably

15:19

large factor. There's I

15:21

haven't read the book, but I was very influenced

15:23

by the stories cultural aesthetics. There's

15:26

I haven't read the book and have no desire to based

15:28

on the themes. There's anime guy

15:31

and my favorite I am a member of the

15:33

Lolita fashion community, and we would like

15:35

to be excluded from this narrative. Thank

15:37

you so much. I have been involved

15:40

with Japanese Lolita fashion

15:42

for about ten years. I have read

15:44

the book and watched the film, and I

15:46

just really really want to reiterate that

15:49

Lolita fashion has nothing to do with

15:52

either the book or the film,

15:54

and these are all completely valid ways to approach

15:57

both the text and the cultural Lolita.

16:00

Personally. I definitely read Lolita

16:02

before I understood what the

16:05

book was really about. At twelve years

16:07

old, I thought that being desired by older

16:09

men was really cool, and a lot of that

16:11

had to do with the kind of cultural messaging that

16:13

existed at this time. We were all there.

16:15

The mid two thousand's was a nightmare, but it also

16:17

had to do with what I saw going on around

16:20

me. And two thousand five, my older

16:22

cousin was about to marry a teacher she started

16:24

dating. In high school, my female gym

16:27

teacher would confiscate my book of Lolita

16:29

from me and then be forced to give it back

16:31

later the next year, my junior high

16:33

track coach would be fired for

16:36

not what he did to the girls on my track team, but

16:38

what he did to the high school swim team that he coached

16:40

as well. A few years after that, when I was in

16:42

high school, a teacher in his late twenties

16:44

sent my best friend a picture of his penis on the

16:46

day she graduated when we were both seventeen,

16:49

and we didn't say anything, and he kept inviting

16:51

high school girls to his house to get drunk, and

16:53

then he I think he got promoted based

16:55

on the messages all of you left. This is not

16:57

an unusual list of things to be happening

17:00

around a girl growing up, and

17:03

in retrospect, I feel weirdly,

17:05

depressingly lucky to have spent most of this time

17:08

in a full body cast. My

17:10

reading of Lolita has changed

17:12

a lot over time, and

17:14

it's kind of been a fixation of mine over

17:17

the years, and to getting to the core of what

17:19

I found so appealing about it in the

17:21

first place. I'm going to use the rest of this

17:23

first episode to talk about exactly

17:25

what happens in Vladimir nabokov

17:29

novel Lolita. We are going to spend

17:31

the rest of this series tracing and speaking

17:33

to its history and its influence. But I have

17:35

been consistently surprised in conversations

17:38

at how much of the general opinion

17:40

on this book has very little to do with

17:42

the book itself. So this explainer is

17:44

going to be a bit long, but I can assure you that

17:47

the details really matter here.

17:49

Something that's really helped me and getting to the

17:52

heart of the events in this book and to see

17:54

around all the flowery, beautiful language,

17:56

is to think of it as a true crime book and

17:59

view Lolita as what it's presented

18:01

to us, as a document of a criminal. And

18:03

so that's the tack I'm going to take here, And

18:05

you know, I would also recommend reading the book,

18:07

but books are famously very long.

18:10

I'm also going to be differentiating between

18:12

Dolores, the girl who is abducted

18:14

and raped by Humbert Humbert in the novel,

18:17

and Lolita, the sexualized

18:19

construct Humbert has created to justify

18:22

these crimes. I don't really think that these are the

18:24

same person, because Dolores is

18:26

a kid. So listen carefully

18:29

because a lot of what you're about to hear in this summary

18:31

you will never hear about in subsequent

18:33

adaptations. Again, the

18:36

first ten or so of

18:39

Lolita isn't remembered at all

18:41

by anyone who hasn't read the book, and

18:43

to me, it is a big reason why

18:46

Humbert Humbert comes off as a misunderstood

18:49

romantic hero instead of a clear

18:51

cut predatory liar in most of the

18:53

adaptations. So before that iconic

18:55

opening paragraph Lolita, Light

18:58

of my Life, fire of my loins, my

19:00

sin, No

19:03

I know, I get it. But before that,

19:05

there is a fictional forward from the fictional

19:08

John Ray Junior, PhD, an editor

19:10

of psychology books, who is writing an introduction

19:12

to Humbert Humbert's manuscript. He

19:15

tells you that what you're about to read is the memoir of

19:17

Humbert Humbert name changed, who

19:19

died in legal captivity and nine two

19:21

of heart disease. We also learned that

19:23

someone named Mrs Richard F. Schiller

19:25

has died in childbirth with a stillborn

19:28

girl on Christmas Day, several weeks

19:30

after that, John Ray Jr. Says this

19:32

about Humbert, no doubt

19:34

he is horrible. He is abject. He is

19:36

a shiny example of moral leprosy, a

19:39

mixture of ferocity and jocularity that

19:41

betrays supreme misery. Many

19:43

of his casual opinions on the people in scenery

19:45

of this country are ludicrous. He is abnormal.

19:48

He is not a gentleman. But how magically

19:51

he's singing violin can conjure up a tenderus

19:54

compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced

19:56

with the book while a pouring its author. I

19:59

mean, if you're looking for a framing of an

20:01

unreliable narrator before you even meet him,

20:03

there you go. We are told explicitly

20:06

that this was written half in a sanatorium,

20:08

half in a jail cell under observation,

20:10

and the text is basically unedited.

20:13

John Ray continues in this poignant

20:15

personal study their larks, a general lesson

20:18

the way we'd child, the egotistic

20:20

mother, the panting maniac. These

20:23

are not only vivid characters and a unique

20:25

story. They warn us of dangerous trends.

20:27

They point out potent evils. Lolita

20:30

should make all of us parents, social

20:32

workers, educators, apply ourselves

20:34

with still greater vigilance and vision to the task

20:37

of bringing up a better generation in a safer

20:39

world. And after that fictional

20:41

forward Humbert. Humbert's text of Lolita

20:44

begins, Lolita,

20:46

light of my life, fire of my

20:49

loins, my sin, my soul,

20:52

Lowlyta the

20:55

tip of the tongue, taking a trip of three steps

20:58

down the palette to tap at three on

21:00

the teeth, law Lee.

21:06

She was low, plain, low in the morning, standing

21:08

four ft ten in one sock, she

21:11

was Lola in slacks.

21:13

She was Dolly at school, she

21:16

was Dolores on the dotted line. But

21:19

in my arms she was always Lolita.

21:22

His audience for this work is his jurors,

21:25

and he asks leading questions while taking

21:27

us through a sweeping look at his early life.

21:29

He was born in nineteen to a well

21:31

off European family, and his mother

21:34

died in a freak accident when he

21:36

was three years old. I love the

21:38

description a book of gifts for what happens,

21:41

it's just in parentheses picnic

21:43

Comma Lightning. When he's twelve

21:45

years old, he spends the summer on the French Riviera

21:48

and meets a girl named Annabelle Lee

21:50

who's the same age, and they fall madly

21:52

in love. This summer he has a number of formative

21:55

sexual experiences with Annabelle, but they

21:57

are too heavily supervised to ever consummate

21:59

the relation and ship, and she dies of typhus

22:01

four months later before they can ever see each other

22:03

again. According to Humbert, the quote

22:06

certain magic unquote of Lolita

22:08

began with this tragedy with Annabelle.

22:11

And if your brain like mind has been absolutely

22:13

torpedoed by the Internet, and you're thinking annabel

22:15

Lee, that sounds familiar, but you can't quite place it.

22:17

You are vaguely remembering and Edgar Allan

22:20

Poe poem by that same name, maybe

22:22

I'll recognize it. I was a child and she was

22:24

a child in this kingdom by the sea. But

22:26

we loved with a love that was more than love. I

22:28

and my Annabelle Lee. I don't think I ever even

22:30

studied it in school. It was just like hot

22:32

topic canon. And this reference to Annabelle

22:35

Lee is a deliberate choice on the part of the

22:37

author whether the author we were talking about

22:39

is Humbert or in a bulk off himself. Because

22:41

Edgar Allan Poe married his cousin when

22:44

she was thirteen years old and he was twenty

22:46

six years old, there are a total of twenty

22:48

references to Poe by Humbert in the

22:50

book. There's also a few references to Lewis

22:53

Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, made intentionally

22:55

for a very similar reason. Carol real

22:57

name Charles Dodgson, was a child pornographer

23:00

who took a number of erotic photos of a

23:02

ten year old named Alice Liddell. Now

23:04

this is not very often discussed, as his

23:06

story is still a billion dollar Disney

23:08

property, but Dodgson had hundreds

23:11

of nude and semi nude photos like this

23:13

of children, and while sensibilities were

23:15

different in the eighteen fifties, Ladell's parents

23:17

had cut off Dodgson from seeing Alice

23:20

before the book named after her was ever

23:22

published, and

23:36

it said that Carol, well into his thirties,

23:39

had asked her parents to marry her,

23:41

and a book off was well aware of Carol

23:43

slash Dodgson's history, incidentally

23:45

having translated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

23:48

into Russian in his mid twenties to pay the bills.

23:50

And here is what he had to say of this behavior.

23:53

He has a pathetic affinity with ageh

23:56

But some odd scruple prevented me

23:58

from alluding and Lolita to his wretched

24:00

perversion into those ambiguous

24:02

photographs he took in dim rooms. He

24:04

got away with it, as so many other Victorians

24:07

got away with pederasty and numphilepsy.

24:09

His were sad, scrawny little nymphets,

24:12

bedraggled and half undressed, or rather

24:14

semi undraped, as if participating

24:16

in some dusty and dreadful charade.

24:19

But sure Tim Burton movies.

24:22

Back to the summary, Humbred explains

24:24

that losing Annabelle so young triggers

24:26

a lifelong obsession with nymphets

24:29

a term of his own creation, I'll

24:31

let him describe it. Between the age limits

24:33

of nine and fourteen, there occur maidens

24:35

who, to certain be which travelers

24:38

twice or many times older than they

24:40

reveal their true nature, which is not human

24:43

but nymphic, that is demonic.

24:46

And why haven't we heard of these nymphets before?

24:49

Humberd You have to be an artist

24:51

and a madman, a creature of infinite

24:54

melancholy, with a bubble of hot

24:56

poison in your loins and a super voluptuous

24:58

flame permanently glow in your subtle

25:01

spine. Oh, how you have

25:03

to cringe and hide in order

25:05

to discern at once the deadly little

25:07

demon among the wholesome children.

25:10

She stands unrecognized by them,

25:12

an unconscious herself of her

25:14

fantastic power. You

25:16

know a lot of words, and none

25:18

of them are pedophile. But that's

25:21

Humbert's intentional approach here. He's

25:23

taking the artist angle to objectifying

25:25

children that we don't see infrequently

25:28

in American culture before Lolita's

25:30

publication, and a lot since here's

25:32

a clip from Woody Allen's Manhattan What

25:34

do you Do? Tracy? I got a

25:37

really really to somewhere

25:39

to back on this slow from

25:42

Whatdy Allen to Roman Polanski to

25:45

Rudy Giuliani and Borat too

25:47

amazing. Yes, we got a Bora to

25:49

reference into episode one of Lolita

25:52

podcasts. Thank you so much, I'll be

25:54

accepting my peabody now. But in

25:56

framing his life, Humbert even

25:58

manages to distance him self from

26:00

his future crimes in his origin

26:03

story by suggesting that pedophilia

26:05

might be genetic and his family

26:08

explaining that his father was once off quote

26:10

touring Italy with Madame and her

26:13

daughter unquote. So to justify

26:15

this attitude, Humbert invokes the name of

26:17

other perceived to be great man, James,

26:19

the first Dante Petrarch, and he's

26:21

already referenced Poe. Can't you see

26:24

he's a very handsome artist, not a pedophile.

26:26

And if you're me at twelve, with the general opinion

26:28

that adults have no reason to lie to me,

26:31

and in a world where Vickie Christina Barcelona

26:33

hasn't even been released, you might

26:36

take these words at face value. After

26:38

he goes to university and becomes an academic

26:40

himself, Humbert occupies his obsession by

26:42

meeting with sex workers that look young, and

26:44

eventually marries a woman named Valeria

26:47

to keep up appearances. Humbert

26:49

hates Valeria. He admires

26:51

her ability to imitate young girls when

26:53

they first start dating, but he describes her

26:56

as grotesque. He calls her an

26:58

animated mercin, a large,

27:00

puffy, short legged, big breasted, and practically

27:03

brainless baba, and he's still angry

27:05

when she leaves him for another man four

27:07

years into their marriage in nine,

27:10

he considers killing her and her lover, but

27:12

says that they leave before he can fight them.

27:15

According to him, Valeria dies in childbirth

27:17

in America in after

27:19

being subjected to eugenic Nazi

27:21

adjacent medical experiments, and seems

27:24

to find the idea of this pretty funny. So

27:26

after his divorce with Valeria, Humbert moves

27:28

to New York right before World War Two, starts

27:30

starts working on a textbook, and is sent

27:32

to a sanatorium for over a year

27:35

after what he describes as a dreadful

27:37

breakdown. He does not get specific

27:39

about what this breakdown was related to or

27:42

what his time they're entailed. He then joins

27:44

a scientific mission in the Arctic as a

27:46

recorder of psychic relations, and after

27:48

twenty months there and what sounds like a completely

27:51

bullshit report on his part, he returns

27:53

to America, only to be hospitalized in the

27:55

sanitarium again, and even with the second

27:57

visit, we can only sort of guess at the details

27:59

here He describes it as another bout

28:02

with insanity and marks the psychiatrist

28:05

that he works with, and once he's at the second time,

28:07

he decides to work on his textbook again and

28:09

heads for small town, New England, where he will

28:11

meet a girl named Dolores. So

28:14

that's a lot of very relevant information. And

28:17

this portion of Humbert's life is not especially

28:19

cinematic, and on the surface might seem

28:21

to have little to do with the subject of the story,

28:23

but there's a lot of very relevant stuff here.

28:26

We learn how Humbert views women, both

28:28

as children and as adults. We

28:30

learn about a very glossed over repeated

28:32

struggle with mental health that he deliberately

28:35

never brings up again, and in fact, he

28:37

has a completely dismissive view of his sanatorium

28:39

stays, describing the following, I

28:42

discovered there was an endless source of robust

28:44

enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists,

28:48

cunningly leading them on, never letting

28:50

them see that you know all the tricks of the trade,

28:53

inventing for them elaborate dreams,

28:56

and never allowing them the slightest glimpse

28:58

of one's real sexual comment. Now,

29:01

I am a huge fan and very

29:03

reliant on mental health support, but

29:05

Humbert does not seem interested in working on

29:07

himself, as he tells it. To say the least.

29:10

He presents as massively confident from

29:12

his first words, claiming that he's seen his

29:14

own psychiatric records and has everyone

29:16

fooled, and the reason his stays at sanatoriums

29:19

get extended are just for fun, and we don't

29:21

have access to any other information here,

29:23

and he has the upper hand all the while because we

29:25

have no way of cross checking this. One of my

29:27

favorite broad claims he makes is when he calls

29:29

himself an exceptionally handsome

29:31

male, slow moving, tall,

29:34

with soft dark hair and a gloomy

29:36

but all the more seductive cost of demeva.

29:39

Now, as a reader, you can take his word

29:41

for this or not, although if you have

29:43

seen the movies, they seem to take

29:45

your word for it. And it's here that the story you

29:47

might remember begins. It's after

29:50

the house he plans to move into burns down

29:53

in the town of Ramsdale and the state of somewhere

29:55

in New England. Humbert ends up boarding with Charlotte

29:57

Hayes, a thirtiesomething year old widow seeking

30:00

a tenant and keeping with his opinions of

30:02

adult women. He calls her a quote simple

30:04

but not unattractive and quote a

30:07

weak solution of Marlena Dietrich unquote.

30:09

He's ready to turn down the small lodging situation

30:12

when he notices her daughter in the garden.

30:14

Twelve year old Dolores Hayes is sunbathing

30:16

outside, and then his obsession with nymphets

30:19

is stirred up all over again, and for

30:21

the first time in twenty five years, he claims

30:23

he feels the same things he felt for Annabelle

30:26

Lee. He describes it like this. A

30:28

little later. Of course, she this

30:30

nouvelle, this Lolita, My

30:33

Lolita was to eclipse completely

30:35

high prototype. All

30:38

I want to stress is that my discovery

30:40

of her was a fatal consequence of that princeton

30:43

by the sea in my tortured

30:45

past. So yeah, he stays

30:47

at the house. Howard begins keeping a journal

30:49

that he claims this manuscript of photographic

30:52

recollection of Again, we really only have his

30:54

word to go on here, but he spends days

30:56

writing down every small interaction

30:58

he has with Dolores, documenting everything,

31:01

speculating whether she has her period or not,

31:03

keeping track of her measurements, her coloring

31:05

everything, and he finds any opportunity

31:08

to make physical contact with her. It is seen,

31:10

I will never forget reading. For

31:12

the first time, Dolores gets something caught

31:14

in her eye and he licks

31:16

it off her eyeball, and once it's

31:19

out of her eye, he tells her he's just going

31:21

to lick the other eyeball anyways, he describes

31:23

her again, what drives

31:25

me insane is the twofold nature

31:28

of this nymphete, of every nymphete,

31:30

perhaps this mixture in

31:32

my Lolita of tender, dreamy

31:34

childishness and a kind of eerie

31:37

vulgarity stemming from the

31:39

snubnosed cuteness of ads and magazine

31:41

pictures. Charlotte Hayes,

31:43

as Humbert tells it, struggles to connect

31:45

with her daughter and doesn't really seem to like

31:47

her, calling her rude and defiant,

31:50

sullen and evasive. Then out of nowhere,

31:52

Humbert mentions that if he ever seriously

31:55

considers committing a murder, it would only be

31:57

during a quote spell of insanta

32:00

unquote, and then he just returns to the diary

32:03

more close calls, he almost kisses

32:05

Dolores. He fantasizes about

32:07

a natural disaster, killing Charlotte

32:09

and leaving him and Dolores alone. He worries

32:11

that he'll be sent back to a sanatorium. He rubs

32:14

Dolores's legs so hard at one point

32:16

that she has a bruise on her thigh the next

32:18

day, and then I will place an

32:20

extra trigger warning here. In one of

32:22

the most excruciating scenes

32:25

in the book, Humbert pleasures himself

32:27

while bouncing Dolores on his lap,

32:30

convinced that she's none the wiser, but

32:32

there are some narrative indications,

32:34

her legs twitching, the hairs on her legs,

32:36

bristling comments she makes later

32:38

in the book that indicate that this may

32:41

not be true. She's singing her favorite

32:43

song as this happens, but Humbert can't

32:45

really remember what it is, only how he felt

32:48

blessed be the Lord. She had noticed nothing,

32:50

he says at the end of this passage, noting

32:53

to the reader how kind and smart

32:55

he was about it, how careful, how chaste.

32:58

The whole wine sweet event is if viewed

33:00

with what my lawyer has called in a private talk,

33:02

we have had impartial sympathy.

33:05

He says this to us before the anecdote

33:07

and afterward. Quote the child

33:09

knew nothing. I had done nothing

33:12

to her unquote. What is

33:14

certain is that Charlotte is none the wiser

33:16

to this. Dolores goes to summer camp,

33:18

and before she leaves, she runs

33:20

up the stairs to Humbert's room and kisses

33:22

him for the first time. She then leaves for

33:25

Charlotte to drive her upstate, and Charlotte

33:27

has left behind a letter for Humbert. It says

33:29

that Charlotte is deeply in love with Humbert,

33:31

and if he doesn't want to marry her, he should leave

33:34

the house immediately. This letter

33:36

is so over the top and

33:39

again pulled only from humbert memory,

33:41

but some parts of it still make me laugh. Quote

33:44

I am a passionate and lonely woman, and

33:46

you are the love of my life. Unquote. It's

33:48

all very you know, one life to live. Back

33:50

to the horrifying part, Humbert realizes

33:52

that his only way to stay near Dolores

33:54

permanently without giving away his plan

33:57

to continue to assault her is

33:59

to agree to mary Charlotte. And then

34:01

he says again apropos of nothing.

34:03

He's definitely not thinking about murdering

34:06

Charlotte, You guys, He's not I

34:08

did not plan to marry poor Charlotte in order

34:10

to eliminate her in some vulga

34:12

gruesome and dangerous manner, such as

34:14

killing her by placing five by chloride of

34:16

mercury tablets and upper prandial sherry, or

34:18

anything like that. But he does admit to

34:21

planning to experiment on slipping her

34:23

and Dolores sleeping pills so that he

34:25

can rape Dolores without

34:27

her or her mother knowing. He fantasizes

34:30

about black marylyn Charlotte into accepting

34:32

it if she ever finds out. But of course Charlotte

34:34

doesn't know any of this, and so when she

34:37

gets home and he accepts her proposal, she

34:39

is thrilled and they're married very soon after.

34:42

So again Humbert. Humbert is married

34:44

to a woman he hates, and he spends

34:46

the summer experimenting with sleeping pills

34:48

and imagining her daughter during sex

34:50

with her. Charlotte continues to speak ill of Dolores,

34:53

calling her everything from distrustful, too

34:55

aggressive to negativistic. On a

34:57

worksheet about her daughter's personality, says

35:00

that she plans to send her to boarding school after

35:02

camp to free up the home for her and Humbert.

35:05

This, of course, is the opposite of what Humbert

35:07

wants, and he's furious, but he doesn't

35:09

show it because he's afraid that arguing with

35:11

Charlotte will hurt his position and access

35:13

to Dolores. And again he

35:15

discusses considering killing Charlotte

35:18

at length, this time calculating whether he

35:20

could drown her in the local lake without anyone

35:22

witnessing it. He ultimately decided against

35:24

doing it and convinces her to let Dolores

35:26

come home. So he's definitely not going to

35:29

kill our guys. But shortly after that, Charlotte

35:31

figures out Humbert's game while snooping around

35:34

his space and reading one of his journals,

35:36

journals that describe his fantasies about

35:38

Dolores and calling her things like quote

35:40

the big bitch, the obnoxious mama

35:43

unquote, and his intention to prey on

35:45

Dolores indefinitely. And I think

35:47

that Melanie Griffith, playing Charlotte Hayes

35:49

plays this really well in the movie

35:52

You're a monster. You're

35:56

a despicable criminal monster.

35:59

If you near me, I'll scream out the window.

36:02

Get away from me. Humbert

36:04

goes into full gaslight mode. She's hallucinating.

36:07

Let's have a drink, and he leaves the room to

36:09

go prepare some drinks. But a few minutes later,

36:11

once the drinks are prepared, he gets a phone call.

36:14

Charlotte has been hit by a car trying to get to

36:16

a mailbox to mail someone a letter

36:18

revealing Humbert's treachery. And that's

36:20

it. She's dead. As Humbert

36:23

tells it in the story, he got lucky,

36:25

he definitely didn't kill her, you guys.

36:28

After a swift funeral and convincing

36:30

the neighbors that he had secretly been Dolores's

36:33

biological father all along and was

36:35

reuniting with Charlotte as opposed to meeting

36:38

her less than ten weeks ago, Humbert leaves

36:40

Ramsdale to pick up Dolores from camp.

36:42

He manages to get her from the camp without

36:44

Dolores learning that her mother has been killed,

36:47

and immediately brings her to a lodge that

36:49

he and Charlotte had discussed going to for their

36:51

honeymoon, the Enchanted Hunter's Hotel.

36:53

Dolores teases Humbert once she's in his car,

36:56

saying that she's been quote revoltingly

36:58

unfaithful to him on quote and mentioning

37:01

that he hasn't kissed her yet, and they kiss again,

37:03

him noting her lack of experience.

37:05

She asks him if they're lovers, because

37:08

her mother, she says with a sense of satisfaction,

37:10

would be so angry if they were. He says

37:13

no, and when they get to the hotel where they're

37:15

sharing a room, the following exchange takes

37:17

place. You're crazy, why

37:20

my darn because

37:23

my darling and my darling

37:25

mother finds out to divorce you and destroying

37:28

me. Now we're not rich,

37:31

and so when we travel, we're we're

37:33

we're we're we're sure to be. I mean, we'll

37:35

be thrown together. Sometimes

37:40

two people sharing the same hotel room abound

37:43

to enter into all

37:46

How can I put it into it? Into a kind of incest.

37:50

Unbeknownst to Dolorus, Humbert drugs

37:52

her that night, assuring the reader that he only

37:54

ever intended to rape Dolores while

37:56

she was drugged. While he's waiting for the drugs

37:59

to take he goes of the lobby and runs into

38:01

a very drunk man who seems to be onto

38:03

his scheme, and this reads as

38:05

innocuous, but this guy is important

38:08

later Humbert returns upstairs, but Dolores

38:11

isn't sleeping that heavily, so instead he

38:13

decides to just sleep beside her, and

38:15

again pretty heavy trigger

38:17

warning here. The next morning, Humbert

38:19

tells us they have sex with Dolores

38:22

fully conscious, and to be clear,

38:25

this is absolutely rape, but

38:27

Humbert of course begins deflecting

38:29

to his jury immediately. He

38:32

says, quote, I'm going to tell you something

38:34

very strange. It was she who seduced

38:37

me, he says. He describes the crime

38:39

in typical flowery Humbert detail

38:41

and calls Dolores quote the wincing

38:44

child unquote. Before moving

38:46

on, he assures us again that he loves

38:48

her and reminds us that marrying

38:51

twelve year olds was still legal in some states

38:54

and sensitive gentlewomen

38:56

of the jury, I was not even her

38:59

first lover. Afterward, Dolorus

39:01

tells Humbert that she had had sex with a

39:03

boy at camp over the summer, and for Humbert

39:06

not taking her virginity when raping

39:08

her makes the crime easier to cope

39:10

with. After they leave the hotel, Dolores

39:13

is in physical pain all day, and

39:15

Humbert tells the reader that in the space of

39:17

just a morning, he had had strenuous

39:20

sex with her three times. Later

39:22

in the day, Dolores says, you chump,

39:25

you revolting creature. I was a daisy

39:27

fresh girl, and look what you've done to me. I ought

39:29

to call the police and tell them you raped me. Oh,

39:32

you dirty, dirty old man unquote.

39:35

Her pain continues as they continue

39:37

to drive, and it is only then that

39:39

Humbert tells Dolores that her mother

39:41

is dead. The first section of the

39:43

book ends with just a devastating

39:46

passage. At the hotel, we had separate

39:48

rooms, but in the middle of the night she

39:50

came sobbing into mine and we made

39:52

it up very gently. You see. She

39:55

had absolutely nowhere else to go. And

39:58

this ends the first section

40:00

of the book. Dolores,

40:16

for the little dialogue we get

40:18

from, calls Humbert a rapist

40:21

twice in this book, and there

40:23

are many moments where, in a larger

40:25

context it's basically impossible

40:28

to say that she does not have a semblance

40:30

of what's going on. She's telling us

40:32

that she does, even through all these walls

40:35

of prose that Humberts putting up in front

40:37

of her. In part two of the novel,

40:39

Humbert takes to Lauris around the United

40:42

States and continues to rape her on a nightly

40:44

basis and motels. Floras finds

40:46

a semblance of routine and things she likes,

40:48

jazz square dancing Sundays, going

40:51

to movies, and reading magazines. When she

40:53

got restless or misbehaved on the road, Humbert

40:55

with threaten to prolong her quote exile

40:58

for months and years unquote, employing

41:00

every tactic he has at his disposal, from

41:02

the ancient precedent of adults marrying children

41:05

to long winded speeches like this, I

41:07

would not advise you to consider yourself my

41:10

cross country slave, and

41:12

I deplore the Man Act as lending

41:14

itself to a dreadful pun. What humbreds

41:17

referring to here is the Man Act which

41:19

made transporting girls and women across state

41:21

lines for the purpose of debauchery

41:24

against the law, which is good. It

41:26

was also webinized against black men in interracial

41:28

relationships and against Jewish people, which

41:31

we will talk about in later episodes. Later

41:33

on, he plays Devil's advocates, saying, let

41:36

us see what happens if you, a minor,

41:39

are accused of having impaired the morals

41:41

of an adult as a respectable in what

41:43

happens if you complain to the police of my having kidnapped

41:45

and raped you. Let us suppose they

41:47

believe you, you become a ward of the Department

41:50

of Public Welfare. This is

41:52

the situation, This is

41:54

the choice. Don't you think under the circumstance,

41:57

Dolores Hayes had better stick to year

42:00

old man. She is trapped for a

42:02

full year August ninety

42:04

seven to August. At

42:07

one point, she asks him how long they'll

42:09

be traveling like this quote, doing filthy

42:12

things together and never behaving like ordinary

42:14

people. Unquote. He describes their months primarily

42:17

as a vacation, harping longer on roadside

42:19

attraction descriptions than on their arguments,

42:21

and we catch a few of Dolores stray

42:24

words quote, I'd be a sap

42:26

if I took your opinion. Seriously, you can't

42:28

boss me. I despise you, and so on. Humbert

42:31

is lightly paranoid, but mainly

42:33

elated. He goes so far as to fantasize

42:36

about getting Dolores pregnant with a baby

42:38

girl and doing the same thing to her years

42:40

later. Finally, Humbert chooses

42:43

a place for them to settle down a different New

42:45

England town a safe distance from Ramsdale

42:47

called Beardsley, where Dolores is enrolled

42:49

in a private school and he gets a job at

42:51

a local university, and for the first time

42:54

since her mother's death, Dolores is allowed to make

42:56

friends and go to school to an

42:58

extent because a round this time,

43:01

Humbert tightens his control on her considerably

43:03

by creating a monetary system for

43:05

having sex with him. He describes it like this, This

43:08

was more than a generous arrangement, considering

43:11

she constantly received all kinds of small

43:13

presents, and had for the asking any

43:15

sweetmeat or movie under the moon, although

43:18

of course I might fondly demand an additional

43:21

kiss, or even a whole collection

43:23

of assorted caresses when I knew she coveted

43:25

very badly. She was, however,

43:28

not easy to deal with. Only

43:31

very listlessly did she earn her three pennies

43:33

or three nickels per day, and

43:36

she proved to be a cruel negotiator whenever

43:39

it was in her power, which I

43:41

could not live with more than a few days in a row,

43:43

and which because of the very nature of

43:45

love's languor, I could not obtain

43:47

by force when she's

43:49

not paying attention. Humbert steals her money

43:52

back and blames it on the neighbor. He monitors

43:54

her communication forbids her from being

43:56

with boys without his supervision, but insists

43:59

on her girlfriends around so he can

44:01

ugle them, and he only allows her to join the school

44:03

drama club when the headmistress of Dolores's

44:06

school, who interprets his bad attitude

44:08

as being a strict European parent, asks

44:10

him to. In that same meeting, the headmistress

44:13

mentions that Dolores is doing worse in school

44:15

and his quote morbidly uninterested

44:17

in sexual matters, or to be exact, represses

44:20

her curiosity in order to save her ignorance

44:22

and self denity unquote. And while the head

44:24

mistress fails to ever ask Dolores

44:27

why this is, it scares Humbert nonetheless,

44:29

and he allows Dolores to play a part in the

44:31

Hunted Enchanters. Promptly after

44:34

this meeting with her head mistress, he finds Doloris

44:36

in a classroom and gives her sixty five cents

44:38

to give him a hand job. Dolores is

44:40

excited to be in the drama club and the

44:43

Hunted Enchanters is a recent

44:45

play about a nym fete of sorts played

44:47

by her who falls in love with the poet. She forbids

44:50

Humbert from spying on her rehearsals, but

44:52

starts bringing up that the hotel quote

44:54

where you first raped me unquote was

44:57

called the Enchanted Hunters, where Humbert

44:59

had met at strange drunk man. I told you to

45:01

remember the night before the first performance.

45:03

Humbert realizes Dolores has been keeping

45:05

the money for her piano lessons instead of going

45:08

to them, and he confronts her about it. Per Humbert,

45:10

she said I had attempted to violate her several

45:13

times when I was her mother's rumor. She

45:15

said, I was sure I had murdered her mother. She

45:18

said she would sleep with the very first fellow

45:20

who asked her, and I could do nothing about it.

45:23

On this night, he yells at her, grabs

45:25

her arms so hard she's injured, and she flees

45:27

from the house. Humbert's afraid that she's gone for good,

45:30

but not quite yet. He finds Dolorous

45:32

later in a better mood and tells him that

45:34

she wants to leave the school and the town at

45:36

once, and returned to the road. Humbert

45:39

is thrilled back on the road. It

45:41

doesn't take long for humbert suspicion to escalate.

45:44

He's convinced Dolores is communicating

45:46

with another man. Whenever possible, He sees

45:48

her talk to a man in the car, but Dolores insists

45:50

it was a stranger. This happens a couple different

45:52

times, until somewhere in Colorado, Dolores

45:55

gets sick and needs to go to the hospital.

45:57

She recovers, but this brief separation

46:00

from Humburg gives her the opportunity to make

46:02

her escape. When Humbert returns to bring her

46:04

back from the hospital, he's told that she has been

46:06

taken already by her quote uncle.

46:09

Finally, at age fourteen, Dolores

46:12

has escaped. Humbert searches

46:15

for her. For years. He traces

46:17

their steps back across the country, trying to

46:19

figure out who Dolores was communicating

46:21

and left with, and fails to do so. He

46:23

dreams of her, but she takes the form of his

46:25

dead wives, Valeria, Charlotte, or

46:28

both. He mentions in the space of a

46:30

sentence that he spends another winter in spring

46:32

in a Quebec sanatorium not focusing

46:35

on his mental health but writing long poems about

46:37

Lolita. He meets and starts a doomed

46:39

relationship with a young alcoholic named

46:41

Rita for two years nineteen fifty nineteen

46:44

fifty two, who he promptly abandons.

46:46

The moment he hears from Lolita for

46:48

the first time in three years, and

46:51

her letter breaks my heart every

46:54

single time. Dear Dad, how's

46:56

everything. I'm married, I'm going

46:58

to have a baby. I guess he's to be a big

47:00

one. I guess we'll come right for Christmas. This

47:03

is a hard letter to write. I'm going nuts because

47:05

we don't have enough to pay our dats and get out of here. Dick

47:07

has promised a big job in Alaska. Pardon

47:09

me for withholding our home address, but you may

47:11

still be mad at me, and Dick must not know. Please

47:14

do send us a check, Dad. We can manage with three

47:16

or four hundred or even less. Anything is

47:18

welcome. You might sell my old things, because

47:21

once we get there the dolls start rolling in. Right.

47:23

Please, I've gone through so much sadness

47:26

and hardship yours expecting Dolly.

47:29

Mrs Richard F. Schiller Humbert

47:31

finds out where she is by tracking her

47:33

down against her explicit wishes, thinking

47:36

that the man she's married to was the same

47:38

one she took off with back in nine and

47:41

arrives with a pistol at a rundown house

47:43

on Hunter Road Enchanted Hunters, Hunted

47:45

Enchanters, Nice Touch and a book off to find

47:47

a seventeen year old Dolores, pregnant,

47:50

poor with a husband close to her

47:52

own age, the sweet mechanic Dick Schiller.

47:55

Humbert realizes that Dick is not the

47:57

guy he's looking for and pushes

48:00

Doloris on the identity of the man from It's

48:03

Clear Quilty, the drunk man from the Enchanted

48:05

Hunter's Hotel, the playwright of

48:07

the Hunted Enchanters who directed Dolores

48:10

and Beardsley, and the nephew of the dentist

48:12

from Ramsdale. It's here where Dolores

48:14

says that she'd known clear Quilty and had

48:16

been pursued by him before she ever

48:19

met Humbert, since she was ten years old,

48:21

and that she'd heard that he'd almost been thrown in jail

48:23

for molesting young girls when she first met

48:25

him, and it was this clear quilty that

48:28

had followed them from Beardsley to

48:30

Colorado and planned her escape. Where

48:32

was he now? Dolores didn't know she, at

48:35

fourteen, was in love with him and thought

48:37

that he wanted to be with her, but quickly

48:39

realized he was much more interested in putting

48:42

her in hardcore pornography. When

48:44

she refused, he kicked her out of the house, and

48:46

a dejected Dolores began making

48:48

her own living as a waitress before meeting

48:50

Dick and getting married. After extracting

48:52

the information he wants from her, Humbert realizes

48:55

as he tells it that he's still in love

48:57

with her. There she was, with how ruined

49:00

looks, and her adult rope

49:02

veined narrow hands, and her

49:04

goose flesh white arms, and her

49:07

shallow is and her unkempt armpits.

49:09

There she was my Lolita, hopelessly

49:12

worn at seventeen. And

49:15

I looked and looked at her and

49:17

knew, as clearly as I am to die, that

49:20

I loved her more than anything I

49:22

had ever seen or imagined

49:24

on earth. He begs to her is to leave

49:26

with him. She asks him if he'll give

49:28

her the money if she doesn't go. He says no, he'll

49:30

give her the money either way, and hands her

49:33

four thousand dollars of his own money and

49:35

what's left from selling the old house in Ramstock,

49:37

the one thing Charlotte was really able

49:39

to give her daughter. In the end, Dolores

49:42

is so excited and Humbert

49:44

asks her to come with him one last

49:46

time. She says no, no, honey,

49:48

no. And she does not say this, but Humbert

49:51

projects this final thought on her, referring

49:54

to clear Quilty. He broke my heart,

49:57

you merely broke my life. Laura's

50:00

is excited to have the money, and she

50:02

sees him off. Humbert leaves tracks

50:05

down Clerk Quilty, murders him, and

50:07

is arrested for nothing he ever did

50:09

to do Laura's hayes, but for murdering Quilty.

50:12

Just one last humberd quote as he overhears

50:14

a group of girls playing towards the end quote,

50:18

I stood listening to that musical vibration

50:20

from my lofty slope to those flashes

50:22

of separate cries, with a kind of demurror murmur

50:24

for background, And then I knew that

50:27

the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita's

50:29

absence from my side, but the absence

50:32

of her voice from that concorde. Unquote.

50:34

The book ends here. But remember we were

50:37

told in the foreword that Mrs Richard Schiller

50:39

dies in childbirth in nWo. That's

50:41

Dolores dying at only seventeen

50:44

years old. And that's Lolita, the account

50:46

from an admitted predator of his rape and kidnapping

50:49

of a twelve year old girl, with a smattering

50:51

of murders depending on how much you believe him.

50:53

I know this was a very long description, but

50:55

I really feel that knowing what happens in the book exactly

50:58

makes it a lot easier for you to see how

51:00

far away many adaptations get away

51:02

from the very difficult source material the

51:05

book of who we really haven't gotten to

51:07

talk about yet, was pretty clear on his

51:09

feelings about Humbert Humbert from the moment of

51:11

publication, saying the following quote,

51:14

Humbert Humbert is a vain and cruel

51:16

wretch who manages to appear quote

51:19

touching unquote. Now, why

51:22

he chose to write this story is something we're

51:24

going to talk about. Who he's pulling inspiration

51:26

from for these doomed characters is something else

51:28

altogether. But as far as the book goes, Lolita

51:30

is designed to lead its readers astray.

51:33

You were told before the narrative even starts

51:35

that you were reading the heavily biased, often

51:37

ridiculously inaccurate account of a child

51:40

molester and murderer who is appealing

51:42

directly to his jurors. From

51:45

the first words, Humbert says, you learned that

51:47

Lolita is not even a name anyone else

51:49

in her life uses except for him. But

51:51

then, well, god damn, he's a pretty good writer. Imagine

51:54

me. I shall not exist if you

51:56

do not imagine me. Humbert says. He

51:59

is extremely manipulative. And

52:01

by the time we learn who Mrs Richard Schiller

52:03

is, and there's Dolores still being named based

52:05

on the dominant man on her life to the very end that

52:08

there is no one else alive to give their

52:10

account of these events. Charlotte

52:12

Hayes is dead, Dolores Hayes is dead.

52:15

Humbert is the only person to tell us his

52:17

version of the events, and even so, with this

52:19

deeply biased account of what he claims

52:22

to be loved, even though Dolores assures

52:24

him just months before her death that it was

52:26

not. There are glimmers of Dolores

52:29

inside of this story. She has raped

52:31

hundreds of times by Humbert, She's

52:33

abducted by him, she's lied to, hit, spied

52:36

to, stolen from, and those facts are

52:38

referenced inside of all this fancy murderer

52:40

prose, and still with no adult

52:43

on earth that she can trust, she gets

52:45

away, and still she only changes

52:47

hands to her next abuser. A

52:50

problem a lot of readers bump up against in reading

52:53

Lolita is that, in spite of how much

52:55

is talked about Lolita from Humbert,

52:58

her exact measurements horrified in

53:00

details of assault, we don't get to know Dolores

53:03

all that well, aside from what Humbred

53:05

shares of mostly their arguments.

53:08

But even through the severe limitations

53:10

that come with a heavily unreliable

53:12

narrator trying to talk you out of thinking

53:15

what you think about him, this is not the

53:17

story of a precocious girl seducing

53:20

an older man, as he describes it, and

53:22

the reality is right there in the pages.

53:24

It's the story of a girl having her

53:26

life taken from her by a horrific,

53:29

if well spoken pedophile and all

53:31

of the other adults in her life who failed

53:33

to help her along the way. At the time

53:36

of publication, this was a topic

53:38

that was completely forbidden to discuss

53:40

in the United States and in most of the Western

53:43

world in spite of its reality becoming

53:45

increasingly common. And we'll be discussing

53:48

the real life case that inspired Lolita

53:50

in a future episode. But then, as

53:52

now, I think that your interpretation

53:55

of this book is a bit of a mirror. My first

53:57

read of it was very impacted by

53:59

my age, my experience is up until

54:01

that time, and the aesthetics surrounding

54:04

not just the movie adaptations, but around

54:06

sexualizing young girls in general. And

54:08

after reading this book back four times

54:11

to prepare for this show, I'm now far more

54:13

aggravated with how it was presented to

54:15

me than by the work itself. For me,

54:17

a close read of this work reveals that Nabokov

54:20

is not glorifying the predator.

54:22

I believe it's our culture that has There's

54:25

a quote from Vera Nabokov, Vladimir's

54:27

wife who will be talking about in future episodes,

54:29

on her feelings about Doloris, the character.

54:32

They all missed the fact that the horrid little

54:34

brat Lolita is essentially very

54:36

good. Indeed, or she would not

54:39

have straightened out after being crushed so

54:41

terribly and found a decent life with poor

54:43

Dick more to her liking than the other kind.

54:46

Another take on to Luras I found really impactful

54:49

in my research was reading Lolita

54:51

in Tehran, a memoir by Iranian

54:54

author and professor Azar Nafisi.

54:56

It's the account of an undercovered book club

54:58

that she made for her the students after

55:01

leaving as a teacher at an Iranian university.

55:03

From n Nafisi

55:06

and her group analyze Western literature

55:08

through the lens of students who haven't known

55:10

anything but the oppressive gender roles of

55:13

revolutionary Iran. Per the title,

55:15

they read, Lolita and Dolores's plight

55:17

really affected the whole group and got them

55:19

discussing their own girlhoods. Forty

55:22

years after the book's publication, one member

55:24

of the group, Mascheid, said this,

55:27

it is hard for me to read

55:29

the parts about Lolita's feelings. All

55:32

she wants to be as a normal girl. Now

55:35

goes on to say, Lolita belongs

55:37

to a category of victims who have no defense

55:39

and are never given a chance to articulate their

55:41

own story. As such, she

55:43

becomes a double victim. Not

55:46

only her life but also her

55:48

life story is taken from her. We

55:51

told ourselves that we were in that class to prevent

55:53

ourselves from falling victim to this second crime.

55:56

And as will continue to discuss, there's a lot

55:58

of very valid criticism are around Lolita

56:00

the book, like in Rebecca salm It's wonderful

56:03

essay men explain Lolita to

56:05

Me, which she wrote after getting some extremely

56:08

condescending feedback while making the

56:10

argument that the literary canon that in

56:12

a book golf is very much a part of is

56:15

perhaps dominated by straight white

56:17

guys with a tendency to harp on the suffering

56:20

of their female characters. Huh.

56:23

Here's what Salnick says. So much

56:25

of feminism has been women speaking up about

56:27

hitherto unacknowledged experiences,

56:30

and so much of anti feminism has been men

56:33

telling them these things don't happen. You

56:36

were not just raped, your rapists may

56:38

say, and then if you persist,

56:40

there may be death threats, because

56:43

killing people is the easy way to be the only voice

56:45

in the room. Non white

56:47

people get much the same rubbish about how there

56:50

isn't racism and they don't get

56:52

treated differently, and race doesn't affect

56:54

any of us, and this is

56:56

all very much in the wheelhouse of how Humbert

56:58

Humbert represents Doloras, and the tendency

57:01

to take this information at face value

57:03

from Humbert is a huge contributor

57:05

to why Lolita has come to popularly

57:08

mean the sexualization of young girls

57:10

instead of the story of a young girl's life being

57:12

destroyed when she is sexualized and

57:15

abused. And I'm not saying that every

57:17

appreciator of the book feels this way.

57:19

I'm not saying that at all, but I do think

57:21

you'll recognize this condescending, missing

57:24

the fucking point tone that Solnett is

57:26

describing here. A nice liberal

57:28

man came along and explained to me this book

57:30

was actually an allegory, as

57:33

though I hadn't thought of that yet. It is, and

57:36

it's also a novel about a big old guy violating

57:38

a spindley child over and over

57:41

and over. Then she

57:43

weeps. And then another nice little man

57:45

came along and said, you don't seem

57:47

to understand the basic truth of art.

57:50

I wouldn't care if a novel was about a bunch of women running

57:52

around castrating men. If

57:54

it was great writing, I'd want to read it, probably

57:58

more than once. Of course, there is

58:00

no such body of literature. And if the nice little

58:02

man who made that statement had been assigned

58:04

book after book full of castration

58:06

scenes, maybe even celebrations

58:09

of castration, it might

58:11

have made an impact on him. One of

58:13

the main problems people have with Lolita

58:16

as a cultural figure is how

58:18

she's shown in advertising. The heart

58:20

shaped glasses, gazing at the viewer, the

58:22

school girl close about to pop off that

58:24

we've seen a million times, But that's

58:27

not the Lolita that Nabokov writes

58:29

about. The subject of all of the abuse

58:31

of this story is Dolores, a

58:34

twelve year old. So before we continue

58:36

into the rest of the series, I want to

58:38

remind you the age Dolores is

58:40

when Humbert first violates her.

58:43

Here's Amanda Buydes at twelve. I'm

58:46

twelve, al yes,

58:55

I can. Here's

58:58

Marseille Martin at thirteen. It

59:00

was amazing, Like, if

59:03

you know, Beyonce is like my favorite

59:05

person. Like we

59:08

are talking about a twelve year old girl.

59:10

And throughout the show, I'm going to continue

59:13

to call the character as we know her,

59:15

Dolores, and the book and the idea

59:17

surrounding it as Lolita, because

59:20

they are two different people. Dolores

59:22

is present in slips of Humbrid's pen, but he

59:24

doesn't let us get too close to her by design,

59:27

the Lolita we meet at subsequent points

59:30

and pop culture require taking Humbred's

59:32

word at face value. When in the book,

59:34

before you hear a word that he says, you

59:37

know that that's the first thing you

59:39

absolutely should not do. The

59:42

cultural legacy of Lolita has

59:44

just as much to do with Dolores's absence

59:46

as it does with the presence of Humbrid's

59:49

distorted fantasy. So if you've gotten

59:51

this far into the episode and

59:53

had some hesitation at that reading

59:56

or rereading Lolita the book beforehand,

59:59

and your will to give it another shot, I'd

1:00:01

be interested to talk to you on the show. So

1:00:04

if you like, I'm going to be cobbling together

1:00:06

a book club of listeners to discuss

1:00:09

the book on discord over the next eight weeks

1:00:11

or so as this series continues to come out.

1:00:13

And for the link on that, I will leave it in the show

1:00:16

notes, as well as a pint to my Twitter

1:00:18

account over at Jamie Loftus

1:00:20

Help. So that's

1:00:23

episode one, and it does require

1:00:25

some addressing that this book was written

1:00:28

by someone whose life experiences

1:00:30

are way more aligned with Humbert's

1:00:32

than Dolores's. So nibulkof

1:00:36

Why the funk Did You write This? Next

1:00:38

week on Lolita Podcast. This

1:00:46

has been a production of I Heart Radio. My

1:00:48

name's Jamie Loftus. I right and host the show.

1:00:50

My producers are the wonderful Sophie Lichterman,

1:00:53

Miles Gray, Beth and Macaluso

1:00:55

and Jack O'Brien. My editor is

1:00:57

the amazing Isaac Taylor. Additional

1:01:00

research and transcription work from Ben Loftus.

1:01:02

Music is by Zoey Blade, and our

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theme is from Brad Dickert. Thank

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you so much to my guest voices on this episode

1:01:09

as well, Aziz Vora as

1:01:12

Humbert Humbert, Robert Evans as Vladimir

1:01:14

nabuk Off, Julia Claire, Anna, Josnie

1:01:17

Sharene, Lanni Units, Grace Thomas, and

1:01:19

Miles Gray. We'll see you next

1:01:21

week.