proposal

kubrick vs. nabokov

A NY Times film review published in 1962
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F00E7DF163DE63BBC4C52DFB0668389679EDE
film review/reflection by Troy Olson, writer of blog entitled "Elusive as Robert Denby."
http://troyolson.blogspot.com/2009/09/movie-review-lolita-1962.html
Gary Susman's film review in which he explores a little about the production of Lolita
http://news.moviefone.com/2012/06/11/lolita-stanley-kubrick-vladimir-nabokov/
Stuart Mitchner's thoughtful afterthought
http://www.towntopics.com/wordpress/2012/09/05/revisiting-stanley-kubricks-lolita-at-50-you-gasp-as-you-laugh/

Hollywood culture/censorship in the 50s
http://www.shmoop.com/1950s/culture.html
http://www.pictureshowman.com/articles_genhist_censorship.cfm
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/doherty-hollywood.html
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/film_censorship.cfm
http://www.hollywoodmoviememories.com/articles/hollywood-history/hays-code-brings-censorship-motion.php








As many have said before, the absence of Humbert's first voice dramatically changes the feel of Kubrick's adaptation of Lolita.  In fact, not only is Humbert's voice absent, but many elements are different in Kubrick's adaptation from Nabokov's novel.  Humbert is a different character, Lolita is older, and Clare Quilty has a much larger presence.  The differences between the novel and the film will be explored and how they ultimately change the film into its own being and what Kubrick intended for the viewers to get out of watching his film.  The late 50s and early 60s culture also had a large impact on Kubrick's reimagination of the narrative.  It was a time when films were more leniently produced as the audience's tolerance and the diversity grew.  In these boundaries, Kubrick had to direct a film that was suited for the audience of that era and to his vision.

chapter 8 section 2

In chapter 8, section 2, Nabokov lists and describes successively the spellmasters that he's had as a child.  Ordo comes first, next an unnamed Ukrainian, athletic Lett, then a Pole whom Nabokov refers to as Max because of his resemblance to a French actor, Max Linder.  It's interesting the way he describes Max because Max is the first one that he actually liked.  "Max lasted from 1908-1910 and won my admiration...I saw Max half-draw from an inside pocket a small automatic with which I forthwith fell in love."  Nabokov is attracted to power and toughness.  Nabokov has created an image of an idol in his head of a "tough guy" and a doer, and is surprised when signs of Max's "untoughness" shows and is "taken aback when [Max] complained of migraine and languidly refused to join me in kicking a football around or going for a dip in the river."  Furthermore, Nabokov confesses, "I know now that he was having an affair that summer with a married woman whose property lay a dozen miles away."  He was also subconsciously attracted to people who break the rules, and do things that they're not supposed to do.

"the water"

     "The water," Humbert said, "must have been quite cold," in response to Charlotte's previous remark.
     "That is not the point," said Charlotte.  "He is subnormal, you see.  And I have a very definite feeling our Louise is in love with that moron."
     The Humberts walked on, sandaled and robed, their way down the path cut through the pine forest to the lake.
     "Do you know, Hum: I have one most ambitious dream," said Charlotte, lowering her head, "I would love to get a hold of a real trained servant maid like that German girl the Talbots spoke of; and have her live in the house."
     "No room," Humbert said.
     "Come," Charlotte smirked, "surely, chéri, you underestimate the possibilities of the Humbert home.  We would put her in Lo's room.  I intended to make a guestroom of that hole anyway.  It's the coldest and meanest in the whole house."
     "What are you talking about?" reacted Humbert.
     His face stiffed as the discussion proceeded.  As Charlotte disclosed her plans to send Dolly away to school, Humbert's eyes quickly slid down to her wrists and up.
     "Oh, I had forgotten my sunglasses in the car.  I will catch up with you after I walk back to the parking lot."  Humbert walked back the path he and Charlotte had been taking.  As he hurried, he glanced at his own wrist and twisted it lightly as to test the waters.  As he hurriedly reached the parking lot, Humbert pumped a handful of water and gulped it down his throat.  For a moment, Humbert sat on the edge of one of the rude tables, under the wooshing pines.  In a distance, he stared at the two little maidens in shorts who came out of the restrooms.  After a moment, Humbert got up and headed back to Charlotte.
     Charlotte started as Humbert sat down beside her.  Humbert and Charlotte both headed toward the water.  As they slowly swam out into the shimmer of the lake, Humbert noticed two men, in a distance, working, building a wharf.  As the Humberts made their way deeper into the lake, Humbert periodically glanced at those two men.  Humbert watched with, a certain reservation, Charlotte as she swam with solemn satisfaction.
     They sat down on their towels in the sun after had gotten out of the water.  Charlotte loosened her bra and turned over on her stomach.
     "I love you," said Charlotte and sighed deeply, then reached for her cigarettes.  She sat up and smoked and kissed Humbert heavily with open smoky mouth.

"this is royal fun."

Instances where Humbert gives himself cognomens are everywhere throughout the book, and not just in Part 2, but in Part 1 as well.  With this use of language, Humbert gives the impression and convinces himself (and maybe the readers) of a royal descendancy, making himself sound "better" and putting himself above others.  Even as early as his taxi ride with Taxovich and Valeria, he refers himself in cognomens as "Humbert the Terrible deliberated with Humbert the Small whether Humbert Humbert should kill her or her lover, or both, or neither."  In the context of his cognomens—Humbert the Terrible and Humbert the Small—he makes his name even without the cognomen—Humbert Humbert—appear royal.  This struck me early on, because in lieu of presenting the appearance of royalty, it just seemed silly—and maybe it was meant to be.

The lodges that Humbert stays in are mostly named "courts."  Even the nameless ones he refers to them as motor courts, when there are other monikers that are the same things such as motels, motor inn, motor lodge, tourist lodge, auto camps, tourist home, tourist cabins, auto cabins, and cabin camps.  The majority of the ones he does mention by name end with "courts."  "...all those Sunset Motels, U-beam Cottages, Hillcrest Courts, Pine View Courts, Mountain View Courts, Skyline Courts, Park Plaza Courts, Green Acres, Mac's Courts."  Humbert deliberately stays partial to the word "court."

"She had entered my world, umber and black Humberland, with rash curiosity."  Humbert refers himself as "Humberland" as he rationalizes his relationship with Lolita, as Lolita reacts to Humberland with repulsion.  "I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise—a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames—but still a paradise."  This gives Humbert an image not of just a person, but as a whole realm, kingly or not, to be explored.  That he has reign and is in his "elected paradise."

"...so many delights had already been granted me by my traveling companion that the search for a Kingdom by the Sea, a Sublimated Riviera, or whatnot, far from being the impulse of the subconscious, had become the rational pursuit of a purely theoretical thrill."  Humbert is advised by his psychiatrist to take Lolita to a beach, which he refers to as a "Kingdom by the Sea," adding to the previous implication that a kingdom is a place of joy and exploration and possibility.

"...and all around there abides a sustained rustle or potential snakes—que dis-je, of semi-extinct dragons!"  Dragons also paints an image of a fantastical and "middle-earth" sort of kingdom, in which Humbert apparently likes to daydream about living in.

"But I was quite positive that as long as my regime lasted she would never, never be permitted to go with a youngster in rut to a movie..."  Maybe Humbert is not just a kingdom waiting to be explored and indulged, but a kingdom that rules and dictates.

do you know where your children are?

Before Humbert's and Lolita's road trip had ended, and after Humbert's rather theatrical threat or attempt to terrorize Lolita, Humbert begins to find Lolita out and about, possibly with an intention or not—who knows?

"For little Lo was aware of that glow of hers, and I would often catch her coulant un regard in the direction of some amiable male, some grease monkey, with a sinewy golden-brown forearm and watch-braceleted wrist, and hardly had I turned my back to go and buy this very Lo a lollipop, than I would hear her and the fair mechanic burst into a perfect love song of wisecracks."
When Humbert would turn his eyes from Lolita to buy her a lollipop, for which Lolita probably demanded him, she would seemingly flirt with the guys around her.

"...and out of the goodness of my lulled heart allow her... to visit the rose garden or children's library across the street with a motor court neighbor's plain little Mary and Mary's eight-year-old brother, Lo would come back an hour late, with barefoot Mary trailing far behind, and the little boy metamorphosed into two gangling golden-haired high school uglies, all muscles and gonorrhea."

"Or else, at a ski lodge, I would see her floating away from me, celestial and solitary, in an ethereal chairlift, up and up, to a glittering summit where laughing athletes stripped to the waist were waiting for her, for her."
Another instances where Lolita is possibly being dubious.

"...Lo, bending forward, would let her sunny-brown curls hang forward as she stuck her racker, like a cripple's stick into the ground and emitted a tremendous ugh of disgust at my intrusion."
Lolita's response to Humbert when Humbert tries to involve himself between Lolita and another child playing tennis.

"...I tried to keep as far away from people as possible, while Lo, on the other hand, would do her utmost to draw as many potential witnesses into her orbit as she could."
Humrbert's observation during dinner at a lodge.  These instances where Lolita acts out or misbehaves and mistreats Humbert may only be indications of her personality.  Or she might be purposefully trying to vex Humbert, in scheme of something.

"Her weekly allowance... was twenty-one cents at the start of the Beardsley era—and went up to one dollar five before its end.  This was a more than generous arrangement seeing she constantly received from me all kinds of small presents and had for the asking any sweetmeat or movie under the moon... Knowing the magic and might of her own soft mouth, she managed...to raise the bonus price of a fancy embrace to three, and even four bucks."
As Humbert states, Lolita has no need for such amount of money for Humbert already provides, more precisely, spoils her of all that she needs and more.  And for her to try so hard to receive bonus allowance and increase the overall amount, Humbert wonders—fears–that Lolita plans to run away.  Or even worse.

"Lo who had gone to play tennis at Linda's country club had telephoned she might be a full half hour late, and so, would I entertain Mona who was coming to practice with her..."
At this point, Lolita and Humbert had settled and Lolita is attending Beardsley and had made friends of her own.  Humbert notes that Mona might be pursuing Humbert in a sense, and if Lolita is "playing the pimp."  Or maybe Lolita isn't even at the country club entirely.

uses of imagery

look through the text for signs of the ways Humbert uses imagery to make a point, convince himself or the reader of something, or represent an event as something it is not.

"Therefore (to retrieve the thread of this explanation) the moralist in me by-passed the issue by clinging to conventional notions of what twelve-year-old girls should be.  The child therapist in me (a fake, as most of them are—but no matter) regurgitated neo-Freudian hash and conjured up a dreaming and exaggerating Dolly in the "latency" period of girlhood.  Finally, the sensualist in me (a great and insane monster) had no objection to some depravity in his prey.  But somewhere behind the raging bliss, bewildered shadows conferred—and not to have heeded them, this is what I regret!"

In this passage, as Lolita has just fallen asleep and Humbert wanders inside the hotel waiting for the drug to completely kick-in, Humbert comes to a realization that Lolita is unlike any other girls, and uses an extended imagery chronicling his reaction and recognition.  He first physicalizes a part of himself as a "moralist," the part of him that wants to believe that Lolita is still a child, and a child does what a conventional children do, as in keeping their purity and innocence.  The second part of his conscious or thought that he brings to life, he names the "child therapist," who brings up the "neo-Freudian hash," which I can only assume is relating to the unconscious processes in neurotic behavior and claims that Lolita is just in a latent period, and she does not know what she wants or is not conscious of it, just yet.  The third and final part of him, the sensualist, described as a "great and insane monster" has no objection to the perversity of Lolita. 

Humbert uses these imageries to, firstly, describe the way he feels about his recent epiphany.  However, in describing himself in this manner, he convinces himself, and the reader respectively, of a sense of unintentness.  If he were to say outright that, in a way he feels that he wants to bypass the issue and that Lolita is in a latency period of girlhood, but also has no objection to depravity in Lolita, then it is clear and obvious that Humbert is the one who feels the way he claims.  However, by separating the way he feels, and naming them even, gives a certain distance and an unimpersonable impression, that Humbert cannot help but feel the way he feels, and he feels this way because there are part of himself that he cannot control, such as the moralist, therapist, and the sensualist.

I know this one is late and is solitary, but I wrote a longer post than I usually do to make up for its tardiness and its lack of counterpart.  Sorry!

lolita and ramsdale

I just find it a little comical of Humbert's description or his approach to his description of Mrs. Haze.  "I think I had better describe her right away, to get it over with."  She had "quite simple but not unattractive features of a type that may be defined as a weak solution of Marlene Dietrich,"—basically a vulgar face.  But ultimately, Charlotte is Lolita's mother.  Lolita's features, personalities and/or qualities of being are all derived in some sense from Charlotte, or her husband.  Essentially, Humbert is in love with a previous version of Charlotte or her husband, and neither of those possibilities seem like a really good thing.

Humbert wanted to be in the New England countryside or the sleepy small town because he was getting interested in his studies again, and wanted to spend a studious summer.  On top of that, Mr.McCoo, with whom he was going to stay, had two daughters, one of twelve—a possible victim to Humbert's sinful indulgence.

"the physicalization of intangible things (such as feelings, memories)"

p. 15
The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car.

As he describes the memories that he has of his youth, he physicalizes them into tissue papers.  Right after this sentences, he uses the word "sanitary" to describes relationships with women, a word often associated with medical or home care cleaning products, such as tissue paper.  I'm not really sure what the point or the inspiration for this imagery was.  Maybe he was sitting in a train.


p. 28
A mounting fury was suffocating me.

As Humbert finds out Valerie has another man, he paints the picture of his fury as something with an ability to suffocate, a physicalization of an overwhelming emotion.  I can definitely agree with the physicalization in this case for it really emphasizes the amount of effect his fury is having on him.


p.18
...inly, I was consumed by a hell furnace of localized lust for every passing nymphet whom as a law-abiding poltroon I never dared approach.

Humbert has been describing the art of spotting a nymphet, and how long it takes to master the said art in the previous paragraphs, and then talks about his normal relationships he's had with terrestrial women, followed by an inward lust for nymphets physicalized into a furnace.

"john ray jr."

John Ray Jr., I infer, is a psychology Ph.D. holder, and also a friend to Clarence Choate Clark, H.H.'s lawyer.  Ray Jr. seeks to introduce the book in a way that says, "Yes, H.H. is horrible, but this can be of good use."  He also praises the author on the literature when he says, "But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its author!"  And then ends with a moral/medical lesson to have read the manuscript, that psychologists can learn from this incidence and that everyone could task ourselves of "bringing up a better generation in a safer world."  Whereas, when H.H. gives his justifications and explanations, it's completely toward the self.  The purpose is different.  He gives excuses.  He gives other instances all throughout the world where grown men marrying nymphets is considered normal.  The underlining theme is "it's not my fault," or "it's not that wrong."  Both in The Enchanter and Lolita.

The American Graffiti-style postscript starting with "For the benefit of old-fashioned readers..." sets the undramatic, reality feel to the whole events that occur and will occur in the novel.  It plants this idea that it matters what everyone else in the novel ended up becoming, and that their lives don't just end or vanish after the last sentence of Lolita—which they do, in truth—and that gives the novel a reality feel to it.

"enchanter"

"Never before, though, had the subordinate clause of his fearsome life been complemented by the principal one, and he walked past with clenched teeth, stifling his exclamations and his moans..." (Nabokov The Enchanter 11)
This isn't the first time when Nobokov used a grammatical simile.  Or maybe it was his son, Dimitri, who translated this novella who thought it fit to sprinkle these in there.  Either way, I enjoy them very much.  The Enchanter thinks this as he sees the girl once more as he turns around from walking away after an admiringly descriptive observation of her, also very flattering and lustful, after which he continues to walk away "stifling his exclamations and his moans."

He uses very interesting adjectives to portray the girl in the description.  "Her blazing arm... her misty head... emanating a fierce, chestnut heat... losing the layer of violet that disintegrated into ashes under his terrible, unnoticed gaze."  Some of these I can understand, some of these I cannot relate.  Maybe I don't know as much of urban diction as Nobokov, but in the dictionary, violet is a herbaceous plant.  Maybe he was speaking of her skin and comparing it to the beauty of the layer of violet, but why make it disintegrate into ashes?  Maybe foreshadowing?  That his gaze will make her disintegrate into ashes?  This sort of extended simile and imagery baffles me wildly, mostly because I do not see myself writing anything so supernaturally poetic.  (Then again, that's probably my problem, my shortcomings.)  But what do these adjectives have in common?  Blazing, misty, chestnut, and violet?  Blazing arms could refer to the temperature, and that her arms were pounded by the sunlight or heat.  Misty head, maybe referring to the amount of mist that the heat is producing?  Misty head... why use a word like misty to describe the girl's head?  If it was her face he was describing, misty could mean indistinct, but I'm sure from where you can see so much detail of the girl as to see her arms blazing, her head will have a clear outline.  Chestnut—a nut or a color, probably describing the color of her hair.  Violet, an herb.  Is Nabokov using these descriptions that somehow all make references to heat to finally make that metaphor of his "terrible gaze" as something that will burn her down?

The sentence I quoted in the beginning of the blog, which is also the larger part of the quote that was in Robin's post, baffled me infinitely less.  The Enchanter refers to his life as a "subordinate clause," a clause that has all the qualifications of being a complete sentence, such as a verb and a noun, but is something that still needs a finishing idea.  An incomplete existence.  And says that it has been complemented with its most natural complement, a "principal clause," the clause that stands by itself, a complete idea and sentence, which obviously alludes to the girl.


"On the way to the station he reluctantly stopped by and learned that the person was no more."  This part struck me a little bit.  I didn't sense a bit of minimalism in Nobokov's style of writing, and even the moment when the Enchanter gets the news that the person had survived the operation wasn't at all minimalistic.  It is described as "a total success, surpassing the surgeon's every hope,"—and even an instruction on what to do next—"but that it would be best not to visit until tomorrow."  However, "the person was no more," provides no information, no explanation as to what had happened or what went wrong, missing a significant amount of detail compared to the former news, not even a respectful euphemism for death, as in she had passed away, but a simple, "was no more."  This brings me to this thought.  The Enchanter, when he hears that the person had survived the operation, needed reasons, much more reasons apparently, because that is not the outcome that he wanted, and he needed himself convinced.  But when he learns that the person had died, nothing else mattered than the ultimate fact that the person had died, and that was perfectly and clearly transferred through the text.  All that did matter was his reaction to it, which Nobokov takes a lot to describe the inner turmoil that spurs from this news.

"good readers"

This little piece was so fascinating to read.  I read it, in part because it was of the assignment, and in other, because I wanted to be both a "good" reader and writer, mostly because I felt that I had not achieved the former to the extend that I could.  Certain parts of it, though, I did not understand.  He first "debunks" the conventional method of reading and bringing oneself into the world of the book—by identifying and relating oneself to the world and the characters of the book.  It is "the worst thing a reader can do" when one identifies oneself with a character in the book.  Instead of this "lowly variety," Nobokov wants readers to use "impersonal imagination and artistic delight."  Impersonal.  That is against everything that I've ever creatively done in my artistic journey.  The point was always to be personal, to connect with people.  Nobokov continues on to elaborate more by saying that "we ought to remain a little aloof and take pleasure in this aloofness while at the same time we keenly enjoy—passionately enjoy, enjoy with tears and shivers—the inner weave of a given masterpiece."  But how could one enjoy so passionately that one comes to tears and shivers without being personal?  Why is it wrong to be personal.  Or more specifically, why is it correct to be impersonal?

I have two theories.  And maybe it's one or the other, or a combination of both.  Firstly, being personal distracts us from truly having artistic delight.  It binds us from seeing a work of literature as an artistic form in every intentional way and appreciate it as such that, because, when we put ourselves in the picture, the novel, then the novel becomes about us, and how and whether we connect to it or not, rather than marveling at the world that the author has created.  Secondly, Nobokov didn't want to be associated with the characters that he wrote or would write.  He didn't want to be limited to the amount and the dimensions of the characters he could create because he would later be compared to them as the author.  Or better, he wanted to hide the fact that he was, in some ways, like Humbert in Lolita.

"Literature is invention.  Fiction is fiction.  To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth."  Aren't all forms of truths some forms of stories?  "Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat Nature... The writer of fiction only follows Nature's lead."  Nobokov is justifying his deceitfulness.