From the Mayor of Castorbridge to Lolita...

It’s hard to believe, but back in college when the pimply-chinned dork next to me was trying to decide which Friends chick he’d want to boink if he got three wishes from a genie that popped out of a rubbed Schlitz can (I suppose he could’ve gotten all three by burning up every wish, but for my money, I’d have gone for Courtney Cox three separate times—then and now, she’s delectable!), I was paying attention. Gasp! It’s true. I actually read Clarissa. Moll Flanders. Silas Marner—and The Mayor of Castorbridge.

The one novel I liked more than any other? Lolita. No, it wasn’t for the pedophilia, sexual slavery, and unexpected January-December love affair. What snared me was Dick Shiller, the strange war veteran who eventually marries the little sex nymph, Lolita. What did I like about him? He reminded me of my Vietnam shell-shocked neighbor, Rick McGee, who used to go out buck naked in the middle of winter and practice his finger quick-draw against my snowmen. And the 6-year-old in me always gets a guffaw out of a man whose name is “Dick.” (What can I say? I got a blast out of Beavis & Butthead too, especially when they sang “Diarrhea cha-cha-cha, Diarrhea cha-cha-cha.”)

But there’s a lot more to appreciate about Lolita than Beavis & Butthead, it’s true. Most classic books have a good deal of social commentary, and this emotional, lyrical, mocking, ironic number does that in spades. Some example from Nabokov’s novel:


• “My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three.” (Relevance: Fate screws with us all, often in curious unexpected ways . . . or she should’ve passed on having seconds of the lightning rod casserole.)

• “A very old barber gave me a very mediocre haircut: he babbled of a baseball-playing son of his, and, at every explodent, spat into my neck, and every now and then wiped his glasses on my sheet-wrap, or interrupted his tremulous scissor work to produce faded newspaper clippings, and so inattentive was I that it came as a shock to realize as he pointed to an easelled photograph among the ancient gray lotions, that the moustached young ball player had been dead for the last thirty years.” (Relevance: Humbert’s lust blinded him to damn near everything except Lolita . . . or hairstylists are preferable to barbers.)

• “We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night—every night, every night—the moment I feigned sleep.” (Relevance: America is truly a wasteland of hypocrisy . . . or they hadn’t yet been to Dollywood.)


Plus, reading Lolita will infuriate prudes like my parents who nearly lost their lunch when I had to plug through D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and James Joyce’s Ulysses during my junior year of high school. I mean, c’mon! What’s wrong with a little adultery and masturbation? (I can almost hear the Divinyl’s “I Touch Myself” in the background. Or maybe it’s the one by Blondie. Or Eve 6. Or maybe I’ve got it all wrong and it’s the explosively joyous theme to “The Smurfs.”) You’ve probably got someone in your life that you’d like to spank with some reality like that, no?

So for the rest of you who might’ve snored your way through Great Books or Frequently Banned Novels 101, here’s a quick primer to catch you up. (Feel free to watch the 1962 Stanley Kubrick version, or the 1997 one with Jeremy Irons and Melanie Griffith, if that’s more your speed.)


Humbert: Main character and stepfather of Lolita, the 12-year-old girl he is desperately in love with. He’s so bonkers over her, that he marries her uncultured mother just to be near the young Lolita. Later in the book, his jealousy for her constant, undivided attention causes him to murder someone, which is the beginning of his downfall and ultimately his demise. (His full name is “Humbert Humbert,” but that gets confusing, so for our purposes, we’ll simply call him “Humbert the Murdering Pedophile.” On second thought, maybe “Humbert” is simpler.)

Dolores Haze: Teenage “nymphet,” far beyond her years as a sexual being. Let’s call a duck a duck—she’s a sexually promiscuous little manipulating brat who uses Humbert as much as he’s using her. Think Kate Gosselin, only younger. And probably a good deal prettier. (Don’t be confused—this is Lolita, folks, though she’s also called “Dolly,” “Lola,” “Lo” and “L.”)

Vladimir Nabokov: Russian dude who wrote Lolita when he was 56. He was terrifically wealthy as a kid (on his sixteenth birthday, he got an estate worth more than $2 million by today’s standards), though the Russian revolution stole it all away, so he lived in poverty from then on. Things got a bit worse when he moved to Berlin and married a Jewish woman right about the same time Hitler came to town. Talk about some bad luck!

Lolitas pop up in American life all the time now, though when the book came out, the idea of a teen vixen horrified everyone. Just think about all the sexpot youngsters roaming the landscape of American pop culture today.

1) Amy Fisher, a.k.a. “The Long Island Lolita,” a 16-year-old New Yorker who got busy with Joey Buttafuoco before becoming a journalist and, of course, a porn star. 9 out of 10 on the Lolita meter.

2) Celine Dion, the superstar Canadian singer who grew up in an impoverished family of fourteen. As a 12-year-old, she reduced future manager and future husband, René Angélil, to tears with her beautiful . . . voice. He went on to mortgage his home to finance her first recordings. 7 out of 10 on the Lolita meter.

3) The film Hard Candy, in which a 32-year-old photographer is castrated and then ruined by a 14-year-old girl. (Watch for the scene with the neighbor, Sandra Oh of Grey’s Anatomy fame. Bet she wishes she could un-cameo herself there!) 8.25 out of 10 on the Lolita meter.

4) The film Poison Ivy, in which bad teen Drew Barrymore seduces a friend’s father, and eventually stages a fake suicide to rid herself of the meddlesome wife. The movie tagline? “What Ivy wants, Ivy gets.” 8 out of 10 on the Lolita meter.

5) The film Pretty Baby, about a 1917 prostitute and her 12-year-old daughter, Violet, whose virginity is auctioned off. The young girl is left behind when mama runs away to St. Louis with a new husband, so a much older man marries Violet to protect her from the big, bad world. Yeah, right. 7 out of 10 on the Lolita meter.

6) Rod Stewart, Hugh Hefner, David Letterman, and Jerry Seinfeld, plus their respective younger partners/sidekicks/nymphets. To quote the wisdom of Seinfeld: “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!”