The Hard-Nosed Father and Lolita

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It's not a travel book I don't think because you spend so much time wrapped up in okay fair enough humburt and what humburt's thinking like that. The journey is important only in so far as it's important to the relationship between him and Lolita. They settle in new England for a couple of years she goes to school he kind of successfully passes as heard her sort of traditional the hard-nosed father sure. He doesn't really want her to go out and hang out with boys uh,huh and and you know anybody who could be a challenge to him sexually romantically and it is.

Usually books try to make you root for the protagonist. Even if he or she is flawed in some crucial way, most stories try to make you feel something for the person whose mind you're inhabiting. That is not the case in Vladmir Nabokov's Lolita.

This week we share with you an uncomfortable discussion about how it feels to read a book told from the perspective of an unrepentant pedophile—how do you feel about him? How do we feel about him? How does he feel about him? The difficult subject matter is just one of the things that has earned Lolita its place in the literary canon.

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