BOOKS

Lolita

Curator Reviews

Chip Kidd

As a brilliantly merciless portrait of mid-20th century middle America alone, this book is a masterpiece. But we all know it is much more than that. I tend to see it as an intriguingly fiendish parody of “Moby Dick.” 

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Edmund White

This book would probably be shunned today. Even though Humbert Humbert is clearly a villain, the very subject of pedophilia is now considered too transgressive. But Nabokov had to reach far in order to redeem the romantic novel, which had become trite.

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Lena Dunham

This book is unusual in many ways, and gets lots of credit for changing the face of modern fiction—but not enough credit for how fully realized a character Lolita is, despite the fact that we are seeing her through the lens of her stalker. The use of language is just impossibly great.

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Robert Longo

This is simply brilliant writing, especially the way in which he makes the reader complicit. Classically painted, pure American perversion.

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Michael Stipe

His humor and grasp of humanity and language thrill.

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Jo Nesbø

How do you make the reader sympathize, or at least tolerate reading about, a man who is lusting for a child? I don’t know. You have to be good. And it’s probably a good idea to start the novel with the potential child molester declaring his love in a passionate and honest way, so you can always retreat to that later, when you want to flee: he actually loves her.

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Chip Kidd

As a brilliantly merciless portrait of mid-20th century middle America alone, this book is a masterpiece. But we all know it is much more than that. I tend to see it as an intriguingly fiendish parody of “Moby Dick.” 

View Chip Kidd's Top 10 Favorite Books
Terrence McNally

I read this book in high school when it was first published. It had the reputation of being “dirty.” It did not disappoint: I was all of 14. It was also deliciously funny. It still is. Its status is secure and I doubt there’s a “Best” list it’s not on. It’s wildly romantic, scathingly satiric of middle-class Americans as only a European aristocrat can see us, and ultimately deeply moving. Lolita is the light of everyone’s loins. Humbert Humbert’s despair is anyone’s who has loved and lost in vain. Nabokov “gets” America and Americans. He is one of the great writers in English and it wasn’t even his first language.

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Francois Ozon

I read Lolita as a teenager, and would love to reread it from the perspective of these times. Is it a novel in favor of paedophilia or against paedophilia? I think it’s very ambiguous, not least because the reader is in Humbert Humbert’s head. That kind of ambiguity would make it impossible to publish today.

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Sera Gamble

I like how transgressive and wrong this book is and I’m not sorry.

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