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“Me hacía preguntas sobre todas las cosas imaginables y yo le contestaba, o le leía un poema o un cuento de su libro de lecturas o de mi propia biblioteca. Le llegué a tomar cariño, pero procuraba no demostrárselo demasiado.”

— Mario Vargas Llosa. Travesuras de la niña mala.

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Créditos a quién corresponda

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La conexión que tuve contigo nunca se volverá a repetir con alguien más.

Loquesemeocurraescribo

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- ¿Todavía sigues enamorado de mi? 

-Lo peor es que creo que si, admití sintiendo calor en las mejillas.-Y si no lo estuviera, volvería estarlo desde hoy mismo

— Travesuras de una niña mala, Mario Vargas Llosa

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“Death and Life” (detail), 1910, Gustav Klimt. Taken by me at the Leopold Museum, Vienna.

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"light of my life, fire of my loins. my sin, my soul."

— currently reading Lolita!!

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A Rant about Lolita

We talk about how the rationale for some banned books makes no sense:

i.e. Animal Farm by George Orwell being pro-communist

But can we talk about Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov???

How Nabokov wrote the novel partially as a way to process the trauma of being sexually abused by his uncle as a child? How he used his own experiences to shape the novel and based other portions on real cases of child abduction in the news that haunted him?

That he wrote the novel from Humbert’s POV to make the reader uncomfortable? To address society’s tendency to believe and sympathize with an abuser (a charming, educated abuser) and to accept that narrative over the narrative of the abused?

And how book printers and critics and movie directors completely misinterpreted the book and accepted Humbert’s delusional narrative that Dolores was the pursuer and that it was a love affair instead of many years of abuse?

How it completely disregards the moments in the novel where Dolores shines through and we see clearly that she is an abused child trying her best to survive an unimaginable betrayal by her stepfather after the death (and from her perspective, possible murder) of her mother?

That the introduction and conclusion to the book explicitly states that Humbert is a reprehensible person whose flowery language obscures his despicable actions and serves as justification for his terrible behavior?

How to this day, it’s still one of the most misunderstood novels and is not studied in critical context but disregarded entirely?

Yeah, this banned book makes me particularly angry. This ends today’s soapbox.

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“Humbert Humbert is a vain and cruel wretch who manages to appear “touching.” That epithet, in its true, tear-iridized sense, can only apply to my poor little girl.” -Vladimir Nabokov on Lolita in 1967

“Do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.” -From Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

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“It is strange how a memory will grow into a wax figure, how the cherub grows suspiciously prettier as its frame darkens with age-strange, strange are the mishaps of memory.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, from The Gift (Putnam, 1963)

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𝒷𝒶𝒷𝓎 𝓅𝓊𝓉 𝑜𝓃 𝒽𝑒𝒶𝓇𝓉 𝓈𝒽𝒶𝓅𝑒𝒹 𝓈𝓊𝓃𝑔𝓁𝒶𝓈𝓈𝑒𝓈

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"I think of you with the most excruciating tenderness."

– Vladimir Nabokov, from Letters to Véra