Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov -1955 - The annotated Lolita / Vladimir Nabokov; edited, with preface, introduction, and notes by Alfred Appel, Jr. - 1970

 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - 1955 - The annotated Lolita / Vladimir Nabokov; edited, with preface, introduction, and notes by Alfred Appel, Jr. - 1970

Vladimir Nabokov

Born - April 22, 1899 - St Petersburg, Russia

Dies - July 2, 1977. - Montreux, Switzerland 

“This was a lone child, an absolute waif, with whom a heavy-limbed, foul-smelling adult had had strenuous intercourse three times that very morning.” And here she is, in the passenger seat of his car, “complaining of pains,” he tells us. She “said she could not sit, said I had torn something inside of her.”  - Humbert Humbert describing his actions.

The annotated Lolita / Vladimir Nabokov; edited, with preface, introduction, and notes by Alfred Appel, Jr. - 1970

“For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.  There are not many such books.” - Vladimir Nabakov .Lolita is for sure such a work.  The only other work of fiction I have read this year that I would apply this without hesitation upon in The Master and Margarita by Michail Bulgakov, both have deep Russian roots.

Clifton Fadiman, in The Life Time Reading Plan, back around 1960, first put Lolita on my to be read list.  He says he is the greatest English prose stylist of our period.  I would for sure place it on The Reading Life Time Plan list were I ever to create one.  Lolita May superficially have an ugly plot line but for sure it belongs in Susan Sontag’s category of high art. 

I read this in the annotated Lolita edition.  The annotations are very learned but I would have found them more useful as notes at the bottom of the page rather than at The end 

This is in no way easy or comfortable read.  The narrator is a monster. Many contemprary feminists feel it should not be taught in schools. Ok, few could now days teach it I fear.