i wonder if the intent though is to have the book actually build those bridges out to you and kind of scare you a little bit rather than inviting you to sympathize with him. i think it's more of a like holding up the mirror and saying like this is possible this is sure this is a possible end point for this type of behavior or or even what do you feel this way about. The fact that it's not an objective narrator plays into that whole thing um I know they've made films of this book but a lot of what i was reading in prep kind of said that it needed to be it needs to be a subjective experience.
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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