Friday, July 15, 2022 (reread)

Lolita or Lola or Dolores Haze, she (this novel), is a stream of consciousness, a confessional, and a deluge of thought and metaphor from our protagonist H.H., Humbert Humbert. Though the subject matter Nobakov is writing about is horrendous, every line of it is poetry. And it’s perhaps because of that dissonance that the experience of the book is heightened.
 
I had read (and promptly didn’t finish) this book for school. And although I had heard some of these passages several times before, there’s something about the lyricism of the writing that makes it very hard to get tired of. Nobakov’s sparse use of paragraph breaks makes this a strain on the eyes, but the experience of it in any other format affects the rhythm of the thing I think.
 
I don’t think I need to say it. Every content warning under the sun. This isn’t exactly a light beach read. But it’s undoubtedly a masterpiece that I feel the need to pick apart with my teeth and scope the spaces between the words on the page. It was part of the reason why I was perfectly fine reading some passages thrice over for assignments. Each reading is as unique as if it were the first. And this certainly won’t be my last.