I recently read Lolita and was really conflicted as to whether I liked it or not. In one sense it was an uncomfortable read but I found I couldn’t put it down. I see a lot of people saying that they hate it because Humbert is such a monster but surely that’s the point? Nabokov makes it such an uncomfortable read through putting it in first person; we are meant to slightly sympathise with Humbert (because of his unreliable narration) and then feel disgusted with ourselves. Combined with the ‘American Dream’/Academia/Psychological Thriller aesthetic it’s almost as much a mockery of society and its romanticisation of crime as The Secret History. This is even proven by Lolita’s resurgence in popular aesthetics and romanticisation.
When it came out, Lolita was seen as rather naughty. When I got around to reading it I couldn’t find anything remotely salacious about it. It’s uncomfortably funny, but the overriding impression you get from the novel is an unbelievable feeling of sadness, that these people are all doomed and we are watching a slow-motion car crash of people’s lives. Most first-person narrator novels can be quite a struggle because often the character is not interesting enough to maintain our attention throughout an entire book, but Humbert kind of seduces you - he’s witty and amusing even when you know he’s absolutely awful. It’s that moral ambiguity that keeps us coming back to Lolita - Nabokov puts you in the horrible position of sympathising with Humbert over Quilty even when you know that that they are both utterly despicable creatures.