Vladimir Nabokovs Lolita - The Shocking Lolita Essay examples -- Nabo

The Shocking Lolita Vladimir Nabokov wrote Lolita not only to create controversy and blast the public, but also for money and fame. Nabokov wrote Lolita to get attention. This novel engages moral dilemmas that are sensitive to its readers. The sensitive subject matter created such a controversy that it perpetuated gross revenue and made it a bestseller, and he knew that if he wrote a book shocking and personal enough he would become wealthy. The novel speaks as though it were a lived event which adds to the intensity of Humberts runs and to the shock of the reader. The delivery and depth of his thoughts make one think this is a true story, and the effect can be that the reader encounters the action even more appalling. Simon Karlinsky once declared that the publication of Lolita in America and England signaled the final collapse of the Victorian moralistic censorship that had persisted in Western countries bank the end of the 1950s(Iannone 54). Alternatively, Nabok ov states, Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a dress 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, ecstacy) is the norm(314). This statement is taken from the epilogue that he wrote after the novel to state his intentions. The work has no other meaning than to shock the reader. None. Why would Nabokov bother taking the time to write a three hundred page novel estimable for the sake of aesthetic bliss(314)? Although he dismisses it entirely, moral issues arise quickly in this novel. The first moral is that by the age of twelve, one American female child has already been hop... .... With the new release Nabokov will get more of what he wanted. On the INTERNET if one searches for the key word Lolita, the reader will find several thousand locations in which the word Lolita is synonymous with pornograp hy. Whether or not this is how Nabokov wanted to be remembered, Lolita has its place on the INTERNET. Though we may never be what drove Nabokov to write Lolita, it is still a great novel though immoral. Works Cited Boyd, Brian. The Year of Lolita. The New York Times Book Review 8 Sept. 1991 1-33. Iannone, Carol. From Lolita to wanton Christ. Commentary Vol. 89, n. 1, Jan. 1990 52-54. Lolita and the Critics. New Republic Vol. 139, 27 Oct. 1958 3. Nabokov, Vladimir. The Annotated Lolita. New York Vintage Books, 1991. Schuman, Samuel. Vladimir Nabokov, a Reference Guide. Boston G. K. Hall, 1979.