October 29, 1999
BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Humbert Would Swear This Isn't the Same Lolita
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
LO'S DIARY
By Pia Pera
Translated by Ann Goldstein. 292 pages. Fox Rock Books. $22.95.
Lolita, the lovely, lilting nymphet of Humbert Humbert's dreams, the love and light of his twisted life, was described by Vladimir Nabokov as a mixture of ''tender dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity,'' a combination of ''naivete and deception,'' ''blue sulks and rosy mirth,'' an ''exasperating brat'' whose childhood was stolen and besmirched by her stepfather.
As for Nabokov's classic 1955 novel, which recounted the story of Lolita from Humbert's point of view, it was not merely a study in obsession and guilt and forbidden love, but also a coyly crafted and jeweled literary puzzle: a witty, wicked meditation on time and mortality and the irretrievability of the past; a satiric take on postwar America, as seen through the jaded eyes of a European emigre, and a self-delighting exploration of the luxuries and limits of English prose.
Pia Pera's controversial new novel, ''Lo's Diary'' -- which is being published for the first time in the United States, after the settling of a 1998 lawsuit over copyright infringement brought by Nabokov's son -- depicts Humbert's nymphet as a scheming 12-year-old seductress, a selfish young thing who determines to snare a handsome older man from her hated mother. The novel is a dreary, monotonous and heavily Freudian account of incest and abuse and mutual manipulation -- a book that is completely bereft of the love of language that animated Nabokov's famous novel, and devoid, too, of that earlier novel's wit and glittering subtext.
Given the long and distinguished tradition of authors' reimagining earlier writers' works, it's hard to see how Nabokov's estate had a case against Ms. Pera. After all, Aeschylus, Shakespeare and Joyce all reinvented older stories; so, too, with varying results, have such writers as Jean Rhys (''Wide Sargasso Sea,'' taking off from ''Jane Eyre''), John Updike (''S,'' taking off from ''The Scarlet Letter'') and Michael Cunningham (''The Hours,'' taking off from ''Mrs. Dalloway''). Two novels -- A. M. Homes's ''End of Alice'' (1996) and Emily Prager's ''Roger Fishbite'' (1999) -- have even used ''Lolita'' as a jumping-off point in recent years.
The problem with ''Lo's Diary'' isn't that it's derivative. The problem is that Ms. Pera seems to have no understanding whatsoever of what Nabokov was up to in ''Lolita,'' and so cannot begin to reimagine his story in any meaningful way.
With Humbert, Nabokov's book gave us an unreliable narrator, a self-justifying, silver-tongued child molester who thinks of himself as a poet and who draws us into his own romantic rationalizations. He was, as Nabokov later wrote, ''a vain and cruel wretch who manages to appear 'touching.' ''
There is no such narrative tension in ''Lo's Diary,'' which gives us a flat, irony-free portrait of Lolita as a calculating vixen, a pubescent girl who acts and talks like a woman twice her age. Ms. Pera's Lolita studies a book called ''How to Catch a Man: 101 Winning Strategies,'' then vows to ensnare this man her mother covets for herself. ''Since I know how to seduce Humbert and Mom couldn't do it in a million years,'' she reasons, ''why should I leave him to her?''
Throughout this leaden book, Ms. Pera depicts Lolita in the most unsympathetic of terms. She reviles her mother as ''Plasticmom,'' a ''humanoid hen,'' a ''viper'' and a ''fossil,'' and when she learns of her death, evinces not the slightest bit of sadness or regret. ''The fact that the hen is dead opens up interesting prospects,'' she observes. ''Totally new prospects. Hummie, whether I like it or not, is mine now.'' This Lolita complains that Humbert is ''a lousy lover'' and she quickly learns to trade sexual favors for presents and money.
No doubt this Lolita's cynicism -- and attraction to older men -- stems in part from her fixation on her late father, a creep, in Ms. Pera's telling, who used to kiss his daughter on the mouth, his lips wet with beer. His favorite hobby, we're told, was electrocuting lizards in the garage -- a taste for tormenting small animals that Lolita shares. When her pet hamster, Nelson (named after her dead brother), misbehaves, she places the creature on a hot light bulb and burns him so badly that his feet fall off and he dies.
Because ''Lo's Diary'' hews closely, in terms of central plot developments, to Nabokov's story line, it's initially amusing for the reader to compare scenes from the two books. Humbert thinking that he's gently pressed his mouth to Lolita's fluttering eyelids as a gesture of affection; Lolita thinking that he's stuck his tongue in her eye. Humbert thinking, in the famous lap scene, that Lolita hasn't noticed his arousal; Lolita thinking that she's succeeded in seducing him and that he now belongs to her.
Such comparisons, however, quickly grow tiresome, for Ms. Pera demonstrates no ability to work variations on Nabokov's text that illuminate the original story or stand on their own as genuinely imaginative improvisations. Instead, she has turned Humbert into your run-of-the-mill child molester, Lolita into an underage slut and their story into a crude sex farce -- a book that is as leering, uninspired and mechanical as Nabokov's was dazzling.
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BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Humbert Would Swear This Isn't the Same Lolita
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
LO'S DIARY
By Pia Pera
Translated by Ann Goldstein. 292 pages. Fox Rock Books. $22.95.
Lolita, the lovely, lilting nymphet of Humbert Humbert's dreams, the love and light of his twisted life, was described by Vladimir Nabokov as a mixture of ''tender dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity,'' a combination of ''naivete and deception,'' ''blue sulks and rosy mirth,'' an ''exasperating brat'' whose childhood was stolen and besmirched by her stepfather.
As for Nabokov's classic 1955 novel, which recounted the story of Lolita from Humbert's point of view, it was not merely a study in obsession and guilt and forbidden love, but also a coyly crafted and jeweled literary puzzle: a witty, wicked meditation on time and mortality and the irretrievability of the past; a satiric take on postwar America, as seen through the jaded eyes of a European emigre, and a self-delighting exploration of the luxuries and limits of English prose.
Pia Pera's controversial new novel, ''Lo's Diary'' -- which is being published for the first time in the United States, after the settling of a 1998 lawsuit over copyright infringement brought by Nabokov's son -- depicts Humbert's nymphet as a scheming 12-year-old seductress, a selfish young thing who determines to snare a handsome older man from her hated mother. The novel is a dreary, monotonous and heavily Freudian account of incest and abuse and mutual manipulation -- a book that is completely bereft of the love of language that animated Nabokov's famous novel, and devoid, too, of that earlier novel's wit and glittering subtext.
Given the long and distinguished tradition of authors' reimagining earlier writers' works, it's hard to see how Nabokov's estate had a case against Ms. Pera. After all, Aeschylus, Shakespeare and Joyce all reinvented older stories; so, too, with varying results, have such writers as Jean Rhys (''Wide Sargasso Sea,'' taking off from ''Jane Eyre''), John Updike (''S,'' taking off from ''The Scarlet Letter'') and Michael Cunningham (''The Hours,'' taking off from ''Mrs. Dalloway''). Two novels -- A. M. Homes's ''End of Alice'' (1996) and Emily Prager's ''Roger Fishbite'' (1999) -- have even used ''Lolita'' as a jumping-off point in recent years.
The problem with ''Lo's Diary'' isn't that it's derivative. The problem is that Ms. Pera seems to have no understanding whatsoever of what Nabokov was up to in ''Lolita,'' and so cannot begin to reimagine his story in any meaningful way.
With Humbert, Nabokov's book gave us an unreliable narrator, a self-justifying, silver-tongued child molester who thinks of himself as a poet and who draws us into his own romantic rationalizations. He was, as Nabokov later wrote, ''a vain and cruel wretch who manages to appear 'touching.' ''
There is no such narrative tension in ''Lo's Diary,'' which gives us a flat, irony-free portrait of Lolita as a calculating vixen, a pubescent girl who acts and talks like a woman twice her age. Ms. Pera's Lolita studies a book called ''How to Catch a Man: 101 Winning Strategies,'' then vows to ensnare this man her mother covets for herself. ''Since I know how to seduce Humbert and Mom couldn't do it in a million years,'' she reasons, ''why should I leave him to her?''
Throughout this leaden book, Ms. Pera depicts Lolita in the most unsympathetic of terms. She reviles her mother as ''Plasticmom,'' a ''humanoid hen,'' a ''viper'' and a ''fossil,'' and when she learns of her death, evinces not the slightest bit of sadness or regret. ''The fact that the hen is dead opens up interesting prospects,'' she observes. ''Totally new prospects. Hummie, whether I like it or not, is mine now.'' This Lolita complains that Humbert is ''a lousy lover'' and she quickly learns to trade sexual favors for presents and money.
No doubt this Lolita's cynicism -- and attraction to older men -- stems in part from her fixation on her late father, a creep, in Ms. Pera's telling, who used to kiss his daughter on the mouth, his lips wet with beer. His favorite hobby, we're told, was electrocuting lizards in the garage -- a taste for tormenting small animals that Lolita shares. When her pet hamster, Nelson (named after her dead brother), misbehaves, she places the creature on a hot light bulb and burns him so badly that his feet fall off and he dies.
Because ''Lo's Diary'' hews closely, in terms of central plot developments, to Nabokov's story line, it's initially amusing for the reader to compare scenes from the two books. Humbert thinking that he's gently pressed his mouth to Lolita's fluttering eyelids as a gesture of affection; Lolita thinking that he's stuck his tongue in her eye. Humbert thinking, in the famous lap scene, that Lolita hasn't noticed his arousal; Lolita thinking that she's succeeded in seducing him and that he now belongs to her.
Such comparisons, however, quickly grow tiresome, for Ms. Pera demonstrates no ability to work variations on Nabokov's text that illuminate the original story or stand on their own as genuinely imaginative improvisations. Instead, she has turned Humbert into your run-of-the-mill child molester, Lolita into an underage slut and their story into a crude sex farce -- a book that is as leering, uninspired and mechanical as Nabokov's was dazzling.
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“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita”.
「声に出して読みたい英語」というのがあるとしたら、私はぜひ「ロリータ」のこの詩的な冒頭を挙げたいです。
ナボコフは、とあるパリの植物園のサルに関する記事から「ロリータ」の構想を得たそうです。その記事とは、ある動物学者が何年もの間サルに愛情と努力をそそぎ、“絵を描くサル”に仕立て上げたのですが、描いた絵というのが、当のサルが閉じこめられていた格子のスケッチだったというもの。 だから‘ロリータ’は人間ではないのだと思います。‘ニンフェット’という、ある種の人々だけが感知できるある種の生き物で、単なる美少女でもなければ、また主人公のハンバート・ハンバートをたぶらかすだけの不良少女でもなく、ハンバートのポエジーをまとって初めて存在できる架空の存在なのです。
しかーし、この「LO'S DIARY」の作者Pia Peraさんは、ハンバート・ハンバートの視点から書かれていた「Lolita」をLolitaの視点から書き直してしまったそうです。しかも、そこに立ち表れるLolitaは、a calculating vixen, a pubescent girl who acts and talks like a woman twice her ageと、幼い女狐のようで、''How to Catch a Man: 101 Winning Strategieｓ'なんていう恋愛のハウツー本を読んで、母親が愛しているハンサムな中年男性を自分のものにしようとし、小動物を虐待する趣味を持つ、魅力の無いずる賢く残酷な子供。
Pia Peraさんは本書を出版するにあたって、ナボコフの息子さんに著作権侵害で訴えられたそうですが、Kakutaniさんは、過去の文学作品を再解釈して書き直すことは特に珍しいことではなく、問題の本質は、この「LO'S DIARY」の作者が、ナボコフが「Lolita」で意図したことを全く理解しておらず、また、ナボコフの表現力に拮抗するだけの能力が全く無いことにあるとします。
The problem with ''Lo's Diary'' isn't that it's derivative. The problem is that Ms. Pera seems to have no understanding whatsoever of what Nabokov was up to in ''Lolita,'' and so cannot begin to reimagine his story in any meaningful way.
Ms. Pera demonstrates no ability to work variations on Nabokov's text that illuminate the original story or stand on their own as genuinely imaginative improvisations
そして、ロリータを幼い売春婦、ハンバート・ハンバートを少女をたぶらかす中年男として描き、ナボコフ原作の、意味深長な示唆と言葉への愛情に満ちたa coyly crafted and jeweled literary puzzleを単なるセックスの茶番に貶めてしまったと怒ります。 かなーり怒ってます。 その怒りは十分理解できそうです。
She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita”.
「声に出して読みたい英語」というのがあるとしたら、私はぜひ「ロリータ」のこの詩的な冒頭を挙げたいです。
ナボコフは、とあるパリの植物園のサルに関する記事から「ロリータ」の構想を得たそうです。その記事とは、ある動物学者が何年もの間サルに愛情と努力をそそぎ、“絵を描くサル”に仕立て上げたのですが、描いた絵というのが、当のサルが閉じこめられていた格子のスケッチだったというもの。 だから‘ロリータ’は人間ではないのだと思います。‘ニンフェット’という、ある種の人々だけが感知できるある種の生き物で、単なる美少女でもなければ、また主人公のハンバート・ハンバートをたぶらかすだけの不良少女でもなく、ハンバートのポエジーをまとって初めて存在できる架空の存在なのです。
しかーし、この「LO'S DIARY」の作者Pia Peraさんは、ハンバート・ハンバートの視点から書かれていた「Lolita」をLolitaの視点から書き直してしまったそうです。しかも、そこに立ち表れるLolitaは、a calculating vixen, a pubescent girl who acts and talks like a woman twice her ageと、幼い女狐のようで、''How to Catch a Man: 101 Winning Strategieｓ'なんていう恋愛のハウツー本を読んで、母親が愛しているハンサムな中年男性を自分のものにしようとし、小動物を虐待する趣味を持つ、魅力の無いずる賢く残酷な子供。
Pia Peraさんは本書を出版するにあたって、ナボコフの息子さんに著作権侵害で訴えられたそうですが、Kakutaniさんは、過去の文学作品を再解釈して書き直すことは特に珍しいことではなく、問題の本質は、この「LO'S DIARY」の作者が、ナボコフが「Lolita」で意図したことを全く理解しておらず、また、ナボコフの表現力に拮抗するだけの能力が全く無いことにあるとします。
The problem with ''Lo's Diary'' isn't that it's derivative. The problem is that Ms. Pera seems to have no understanding whatsoever of what Nabokov was up to in ''Lolita,'' and so cannot begin to reimagine his story in any meaningful way.
Ms. Pera demonstrates no ability to work variations on Nabokov's text that illuminate the original story or stand on their own as genuinely imaginative improvisations
そして、ロリータを幼い売春婦、ハンバート・ハンバートを少女をたぶらかす中年男として描き、ナボコフ原作の、意味深長な示唆と言葉への愛情に満ちたa coyly crafted and jeweled literary puzzleを単なるセックスの茶番に貶めてしまったと怒ります。 かなーり怒ってます。 その怒りは十分理解できそうです。
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