Lolita (1962)

UK/USA, 152 minutes
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writers: Vladimir Nabokov, Stanley Kubrick
Photography: Oswald Morris
Music: Nelson Riddle
Editor: Anthony Harvey
Cast: James Mason, Shelley Winters, Sue Lyon, Peter Sellers

Vladimir Nabokov, author of the novel on which this is based, gets full credit in the titles for the screenplay of Lolita, but later tales of the production make it clear it's actually much more the work of director Stanley Kubrick. Certainly it's hard for me to believe that Nabokov would have been responsible for the awkward frame here, where James Mason as Humbert Humbert confronts a scenery-chewing Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty in a disorientingly trashed mansion setting. That kind of storytelling device seems more a convention of the early '60s, or perhaps more generally just of movies. But the preamble especially seems to me wasted time in an arguably already too-long picture, and the closing few minutes don't add much either.

Well, they serve as showcase for Peter Sellers, which I suspect was the intent as much as anything. Sellers was a gifted screen comic, a kind of Robin Williams of his time, but I'm not sure Kubrick knew what to do with him as much as he might have thought, here or in Dr. Strangelove either. In what turns out to be more of a concise chamber drama enacted by a small cast set in the middle of a sprawling and almost kinda sorta lurid road movie (it was of course impossible to be as explicit as the material required), Sellers often seems to me the weak link.

Pale Fire (1962)

Vladimir Nabokov here takes high concept to new flights of ecstatic vision, with literary text, criticism, and pulpy narrative so inextricably enmeshed as to be virtually inseparable. It's as entertaining to read straight through as a novel as it is dense and rewarding to parse closely, breaking various sections and their interrelations down to constituent parts—a work that clearly could have been no small feat to produce, but for the most part evidently all in a day's work for Nabokov. Ostensibly it's a critical treatment written by an academic, Charles Kinbote, about a long, previously unpublished poem by poet John Shade. It opens with a foreword by Kinbote, and then reproduces the 999-line poem, "Pale Fire" (of course), which is divided into four cantos. That is followed by Kinbote's line-by-line exegeses, which increasingly ramble off-point as he details his friendship with Shade, Shade's murder, Kinbote's acquisition of Shade's poem in manuscript, and then begins to wander further afield into stories of Kinbote's homeland, Zembia, whose king was recently overthrown in a Soviet-sponsored coup. From there, as it becomes evident that Kinbote is (or believes himself to be) that king, and may or may not be insane, or suicidal, or even a murderer, it grows ever more consumed with paranoia as Kinbote believes there is an assassin on his trail, even as Kinbote is attempting to finish this critical treatise and assemble a publishable manuscript. Though Nabokov plays it as straight as anyone could, the events described are so weird and so funny it's hard not to miss the joke. And that joke is a very good one. The poem itself sprawls across most of the first quarter of the book; it's not particularly easy going for someone like me not accustomed to reading poetry closely, particularly long-form poetry. And no way, I suspect, does that poem ever stand on its own. It's just good enough to be believable and that's all the opening Nabokov needs for this story. Once into Kinbote's commentary, things move briskly, and the plot developments and their implications come from all directions at once. Sometimes you just need to stop for a few moments to contemplate the crazy integrity of it all. I found myself using two bookmarks, one for my place in the commentary and the other for the section of the poem under discussion. You probably don't even need to go through the poem all at once in the first place, as I did, struggling, but can proceed directly from Foreword to Commentary (page numbers obligingly marked out in a table of contents) and absorb the poem well enough that way. Pale Fire is really not one to miss just because the concept might seem so rarefied or intellectualized, though it does, once through, represent a fascinating, seemingly bottomless puzzle capable of sustaining multiple interpretations. At the same time, it's one of the funniest books I've ever read.

In case it's not at the library.

Lolita (1955)

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is no doubt far more notorious than read, a book that it's dangerous to be seen with in public even today. It's understandable enough because the argument against it is so flatly dismissive and easy to make that it's hard to counter, particularly in this day and age: "I don't need to read anything about a pedophile to know it's a bunch of garbage," etc. And that argument comes from all corners, not just fundamentalists and other professional prudes. That's just a shame, of course, not least because the thing is done so well; it's humorous, light, deft, and clever as hell without ever pulling its punches about the events it describes. It is never close to salacious, describing instead grimly pathetic and desperate lives. It is most convincing in those moments when the tragedy of the girl—Dolores Haze, by name, and note even there how well Nabokov understands how hard she is to see, as are most children—is most plain to see, as when she realizes she is well and truly trapped at the side of this man, Humbert Humbert, sobbing at night in their motel beds after she thinks he has fallen asleep, or, later, when the direction of her life as an adult is revealed. That's when the profound grasp of the material that Nabokov has brought to this is most apparent. Yes, it's a story about rape and murder and abuse. It's also a story about America and hypocrisy and the good life—in its second half, it even turns into a genuine road story, Jack Kerouac's raw material given substance and urgency and meaning two years before Kerouac's novel was ever published. The main trick with this book, I think, is simply to sit down and read it. Forget the outrage and especially forget all the highfalutin literary gimcrackery that gets claimed for it and about it. There's plenty of time for that and plenty of critics to read if you're interested, because Nabokov is performing entire series of literary feats within these pages. But first read it. Because perhaps the most significant stunt Nabokov manages here is that he has made it so engaging, so perfectly and rapturously entertaining without ever skipping past any of the unpleasant implications inherent in the very nature of the story. It's really impressive.

In case it's not at the library.