The Road to Lolita

I found it interesting why Alfred Appel Jr thought Lolita became such a famous novel and why it has stuck around so long. Despite the immoral story line, the reason the novel was such a success was not so much about what was going on in it but more so how it was described. At the end of this journal, Alfred writes, "the prodigious artistic merit of the final result is due not to what is said but how it is said" (31). The ability for Nabokov to captivate his reader and make them fall in love with a story that is so morally wrong is why he is such a great writer. I've written about that in other posts but it just seems to keep coming back up. Nabokov's way with words is alluring and makes his subject matter positive even if it is not. For example, at times when I was reading Lolita and Humbert Humbert was describing her, I would forget that she was a little girl. His descriptions were so delicate and paints a clear picture in the reader's mind. Even his description of his love for her made me at times forget that this love was between an adult and a child and was therefore wrong. As beautiful as his writing is, it's almost deceitful. It's like a game. He can write about the most horrid situation: sex between an older man and a young child and yet the way he formulates his descriptions makes it beautiful. That is disturbing in a sense but just shows his talent as a writer.