Lolita In Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years

There was an incident following Lolita’s success that had taken place during the 1960s that seemed to appropriately illustrate people's reception to the newly deemed classic. In his biography Vladimir Nabokov : The American Years, Brian Boyd recounts Nabokov remembering a disturbing event one halloween when a young girl came to his door with her parents dressed up as Lolita (Boyd).Whether her outfit replicated the popularized Lolita in Kubrick's 1962 movie adaptation, winged eyeliner and all, or her outfit encompassed the text Lolita’s “boy shirts” (Nabokov 46) and generally “rough tomboy clothes” (Nabokov 48), the child was parading an outfit of a young girl who had been raped and manipulated, exploiting a character with no knowledge or empathy

The interpretation of Lolita still consisted on the ideas of sex and the book as well as the character became a scandal. Nabokov has rebuffed sex themes since the beginning of the book’s publishing. In his famous interview with Playboy, Nabokov rejects the interviewer bringing up America’s sexual mores with “Sex as an institution, sex as a general notion, sex as a problem, sex as a platitude—all this is something I find too tedious for words. Let us skip sex.” (Toffler). His refusal to even talk sex proved how little his tolerance was when it came to humoring the audience about sex themes and sex related questions. In an interview with CBC during the early 1960s, Nabokov is quoted agreeing with an interviewer that believes “sex has become such a cliche, so that people can’t recognize anything else.” (...) which further shows how 1960’s mentalities could see nothing else outside of the realm of sex. In the same CBC interview, Nabokov disputes sex themes more openly and admits that his writing of the book has more to do with Humbert’s artistic nature and how that alienates him and creates unattainable love (...). While Nabokov wrongly uses a young girl’s abuse as a tool of illustrating a man’s “misfortunes” of being an artist, the novel is more than what the 1960’s audience perceived it to be. Nabokov did not intend to write a book about a fetish, nor did he, according to Playboy, wish to satirize American culture. The text included more substinance than what people perceived it to be and as did the character Lolita herself, who was more than a teen temptress. His writing of the book has nothing to do about sex, although his initial theme is flawed and an important example of men’s inability to write books featuring authentic female characters, unless they are being used as tools or over sexualized. And much like Humbert Humbert, no matter how hard Nabokov tried to manipulate the text, feelings of empathy still is evoked