The Importance of Humbert Colored Glasses in a Relationship

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Everything you get is from his perspective and so you don't really know how lollita feels about their relationship most of the time. He just casually tosses off at one point that pretty much every night after she thinks he's asleep he hears her crying like it'sPretty clear that she is not as into him as he is into her of course but like it I don't know like they they start having sex traveling across the country and he takes issue with with all the stuff that she doeslike she just wants to eat candy and go see movies and read magazines.

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.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.