Emojis

This is one of those posts where I am going to try and work out a train of thoughts as I write, which is a bit of a high-wire act (two metaphors for you there, one dead, one ailing). Written language started with pictures - man (person), antelope, water, food, etc. My guess is that these symbols once introduced (together with the appropriate materials for recording them, cave walls having their limitations) were quickly and very widely adopted. Hierogylphs are essentially these ideographs - symbolic pictures representing at first things, and then later more abstract concepts such as actions. From here the development of written language with letters representing sounds may have been quite a leap, but an inevitable one. There are whole libraries worth of study on this topic, so I am not going to embarass myself by trying to summarise this evolution, but wanted to introduce some thoughts about the direction of language today, as influenced by the introduction of emoticons and emojis. 

Because there is an argument, which I wanted to test, that emojis represent a reversion of language back to its earlier origins, a degradation of the complexity of writing to drawing. Pictures with their limit range of meaning are in this context replacing words. Emojis can have a range of meaning depending on the context within which they appear, but they hardly have the subtly of the tens of thousands of words in the English language, nor are they likely to be as dynamic and fluid in their meaning. We have already seen some wit translating the Bible into cockney - will an emoji version be long in following? Probably not, which probably means that the range of meaning we can convey in these symbols is so profoundly limited that they will not replace words. Probably. Will people communicate solely in emojis in future, the written equivalent of grunting at one another? Written language started as drawings - is it reverting back to its origins?

On the whole I think not. There's no evidence that emojis are anything other than a fun way of supplementing short written messages, often in a clever way, breaking out of the tyranny of 26 characters. A winky face can make the ironic tone of a message clear in a much simpler way than laboriously spelling it out. One to watch - will these symbols begin to proliferate and intrude into more formal contexts, outside the setting of texts and emails, and increase in volume and complexity, or have they found their niche?

George Gissing – New Grub Street – 1891

Gissing isn’t really read very much today. His novels – or at least some of them – are still in print, but I doubt if he makes his way onto many syllabuses or reading lists. Certainly I would not be reading him now if ‘New Grub Street’ hadn’t appeared on the Guardian’s best 100 list. Does that really matter? There is a relentless Darwinism at work in determining what books are read and which are forgotten, and if Gissing is steadily dropping out of sight it is probably for a good reason.

‘New Grub Street’ tells at considerable length the story of a small group of lower middle class but educated people trying to make a living from professional writing. Some write novels, others articles for publication, reviews, and short stories. All are utterly obsessed with their financial situation.

“Poverty is the root of all social ills; its existence accounts even for ills that arise from wealth. The poor man is a man labouring in fetters. I declare there is no word in our language which sounds so hideous to me as “Poverty”” (page 33)

George Orwell, in an article about Gissing which ironically was probably written simply to keep the writer’s income flowing, claimed that we had “very few better novelists”, although he does go on to say that “His prose, indeed, is often disgusting”. Disgusting is a bit strong, but clumsy, undoubtedly. Take this sentence for example:

“Fixed in his antipathy to the young man, he would not allow himself to admit any but a base motive on Milvain’s side, if, indeed, Marian and Jasper were more to each other than slight acquaintances; and he persuaded himself that anxiety for the girl’s welfare was at least as strong a motive with him as mere prejudice against the ally of Fadge, and, it might be, the reviewer of ‘English prose’.”

But it’s not all stodge – some of the descriptive writing, of which there is admittedly little, is very well put, as in here when he describes one of his younger female characters:

“So exquisitely fresh in her twenty years that seemed to bid defiance to all the years to come”. (70)

There is a relentless focus in ‘New Grub Street’ on money – who has how much, what interest can be expected from savings, how much an article of novel might bring in, and so on, at extraordinary length. Rarely a chapter goes by when money, and its absence, is not the focus of the narrative. Even when ostensibly the story moves on to a discussion about relationships, these are determined solely in respect of the relative wealth of the participants. Creative endeavour can only be measured by the income it generates. Despite the grinding poverty that most of the characters suffer, the distinction between this group of people, who earn their living, such as it is, by writing, and the social group immediately below them who work for a living, is preserved at all cost. One character, Edwin Reardon, is actually left by his wife because he proposed to take a clerical post, rather than continuing to try to earn a living by writing novels.

New Grub Street is a depressing place to be. One writer dies of a consumptive-like illness which is not specified by is clearly derived from years of poverty; another commits suicide when the failure of his magnum opus becomes apparent, a third marries purely for money and social advancement, abandoning a young woman as soon as her inheritance falls through. It’s not just the world of writing that Gissing is condemning, but the society in general - Reardon, the one person who throws it all in and gets a proper job suffers just as badly as the rest.

A novel about writing is bound to break the narrative fourth wall from time to time. It is obvious at points that Gissing is writing from personal experience about trying to earn his living. The scenes where Reardon suffers horribly from writer’s block also have a poignancy suggesting Gissing had probably suffered similarly, as well as having felt the pain of having to write for payment by the page. But overall it is hard to feel too much sympathy for most of his cast of characters, and I feel no compulsion to seek out any of Gissing’s other novels for now. Just to end with one of my favourite quotes from an Amazon reviewer of ‘New Grub Street’. Missing the point with uncommon accuracy – “It's not funny at all”

 

 

1984 - George Orwell - 1949

When I re-read a novel (as here) for the umpteenth time, I always look carefully for things I have forgotten or overlooked the last time. It's surprising what you miss - I wrote about this here a while back. The first thing that struck me about '1984' is what a brilliant opening it has. Not just the extraordinary first line - "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen" - but the opening chapter. Orwell packs so much into these few pages it positively fizzes - Big Brother, the anti-sex league, the two minute hate, the Ministry of Truth, doublethink and newspeak. It's such a detailed and comprehensive evocative of the new world we are plunged into that it is shocking.

Orwell was the first writer who spoke to me personally through his works, and I absorbed all his novels, even those he wrote simply for financial reasons, and would have been happy to have seen pulped, as well as his journalism, letters, and anything else available. So making a dispassionate judgment about 1984 is impossible, and I am not even going to try. Orwell's fierce intellect shines from every line - this has to be the most quotable novel ever written, particularly when you think that it was not written as a series of epigrams (unlike, say 'Dorian Gray') but as a dystopian horror story. The concepts that Orwell develops in this novel have become part of our popular and political culture - 'Big Brother' for example, as a short-hand phrase to describe the over-intrusion of the state into our private lives, (as well of course as a reality TV gameshow). 1984 is a passionate warning cry against the evils of totalitarianism. 

But, and there is always a but, post-war ration starved Britain had already rejected the hopelessness of '1984'. In electing a Labour Government with a mandate for radical change, they had decided that they didn't have to settle for the permanent rule of the party, and that things didn't always have to be dreary and hard. The proles had rejected the lie of the ruling class that things can never get any better. Orwell seems to have completely missed that sense of optimism. Winston Smith believes that if there is hope, it is with the proles, the working class. But the proles of 1984 are so easily distracted by pulp fiction, machine produced porn, and a fake lottery that there is never any prospect of them organising and gaining a class consciousness which would allow them to "rise from slumber, in unquenchable number". By 1949 the Attlee Government was clearly struggling - was that really the time to warn of the risks of a Soviet takeover of Western Europe?

I can't find the faintest trace of hope in 1984. Some readers claim the post-script essay on the introduction and development of Newspeak suggests IngSoc did not last, but that seems clutching at straws. By the end of the main novel, Winston is broken, looking forward to the bullet in the back of his head as a mercy. There is no suggestion that the future holds anything but the stamping of a boot on a face, forever.

Eton-educated George, or should that be Eric, was always a stranger in the slightly smelly, uncomfortable world of the working class. His sense of alienation from the working class - even, one could argue, his submerged class hatred - is vivid in 1984. They are an utterly alien species, with goldfish like memories, no class consciousness, and representing nothing of value. Winston is amazed at their stoicism, as well as their ability to reproduce so prolifically - Orwell shares similar sentiments in, for example, 'The Road to Wigan Pier'. If the proles are the only hope, then there is no hope. I appreciate I am criticising '1984' for not being a socialist manifesto, when of course it was never intended as such. But it handed a potent weapon to the critics of socialism, and all Orwell's subsequent comments about the intention of his writing had little impact on the perception that he was a trenchant critic of English Socialism. Which is a pity, because there are few writers in the twentieth century who wrote as interestingly or as well as Orwell on social issues.

The History of Mr Polly - H G Wells - 1910

Most Victorian novels were about prosperous people. Yes, they sometimes had money worries, but they weren't urban working class. Dickens changed all that, and people from all parts of the class spectrum became suitable subjects. However, the petit bourgouise, the shop keeping class, technically bosses in that they were self employed, but dirt poor nonetheless, were largely ignored. That changed with the Grossmiths' 'Diary of a Nobody' in 1892, and 'The History of Mr Polly' is an early entry in this 'little man and his troubles' or 'white collar' genre.

'Mr Polly' opens with him sitting on a stile, grumbling. He hates his life. He doesn't love or particularly even like his wife, he finds his job as a shopkeeper dull and unfulfilling, and he mourns the absence of any romance or culture in his life. He also suffers horribly from chronic indigestion, representative of his dissatisfaction with life. The first half of the novel is a flash-back from this point, chronicling how he has always felt this way, more or less, and how he reaches this nadir. He settles on suicide as the only logical escape, and having made that decision implements his plan quite calmly. Inevitably he botches the job, and in the process burns half his street down. Ironically this provides him, in the form of insurance money, an escape route, and he runs away. The final section of the novel sees him settled as a handyman at a country pub, living a bucolic but largely culture-free lifestyle that seems to suit him. This life is threatened by uncle Jim, the nephew of the landlady, a thug who menaces her for money. Polly discovers the hero inside himself, stands up to Uncle Jim, and in comic bumbling fashion defeats him.

Polly is quite an engaging anti-hero. He reminded me of Anthony Burgess's Enderby, one of my comic legends. He has a kind heart, and does his best to avoid causing harm. he takes the hardships in life as they come, and looks for pleasure in small things. He has a way of mangling the language which is intended as humorous, and which just about manages to raise a smile. Despite his ineptitude in most things, somehow he manages to come out on top. Some of the set-piece scenes in the novel, such as his father's funeral, where remote relatives descend on the wake and have a great day insulting one another, are enjoyable. If one looks hard for more serious themes, such as any traces of Wells' Fabianism, they can be found, but the novel is not openly political. The main 'message' of Mr Polly's history is that one should be true to oneself:

"when a man has once broken through the paper walls of everyday circumstance, those unsubstantial walls that hold so many of us securely prisoned from the cradle to the grave, he has made a discovery. If the world does not please you, you can change it. Determine to alter it at any price, and you can change it altogether. You may change it to something sinister and angry, to something appalling, but it may be you will change it to something brighter, something more agreeable, and at the worst something much more interesting. There is only one sort of man who is absolutely to blame for his own misery, and that is the man who finds life dull and dreary"

Mr Polly didn't have such a terrible life. While slowly going bust in his shop, he didn't suffer the privations many people experienced, and enjoyed many of the comforts of his Edwardian idyll - an idyll that was to be lost forever just a few years after this novel was published.

Time and Time Again - Ben Elton - 2015

Time travelling. Could there be a more tired, worn-out plot line than time travelling? If 50 years of Dr Who hasn't explored every single crevice and wrinkle of the multiverse, Ben Elton decided to give it a go. And for 95% of the book he very nearly gets away with it.

Hugh Stanton, ex-special forces, and recently widowed, is asked by his old Cambridge history professor for a Christmas drink. Here he is inducted into a secret society preserving the mystery of time travel, and in fairly quick order he is off to 1914, to save Franz Ferdinand, and kill the Kaiser. We all by now know enough about chaos theory to know that the chances of it all going smoothly are slim, and sure enough, despite mission being (sort of) accomplished, the law of unintended consequences kicks in and things start to go pear-shaped.

Elton has clearly done a lot of research into the origins and causes of the first world war, and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. Sarajevo and the events of the day of the assassination are recreated faithfully and realistically, as Stanton casually stalks Gabriel Princip.

In telling a time travel story the reader is invited to accept one huge implausibility. Having done so, with however much pseudo-scientific hoopla to provide a veneer of credibility, we then reasonably expect that the rest of the story will have an internal coherence, complying with the rules of common sense and order. So when Stanton is propositioned by a young woman on the train to Berlin, who proceeds to sleep with him at the first opportunity, something that in 1914 would have surely been pretty exceptional, alarm bells start to ring. This character, Bernadette, an Irish suffragette, is there to provide romantic interest and an opportunity for Elton to contrast 21st century social and sexual attitudes to those of 100 years earlier. It's all a bit worthy and predictable.

Stanton is incidentally a rubbish time-traveller - he can't avoid using 21st century slang, for example, and his lover stumbles across his laptop and guns.

The novel has some interesting things to say about history. When considering the question "if you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?" (Stanton actually changes two things, but that's being picky) Stanton's history professor proposes two alternative positions - either history is about individuals and the choices they make and the things they do, or it isn't. if the latter is right, intervening in Sarajevo in 1914 will have little or no impact on the broad sweep of history. Elton proposes a third choice - that people can make a difference - Gabriel Princip clearly did for example - but chaos theory then kicks in, and the world can be dramatically different from just one simple action. Ray Bradbury did this so much better in 'A Sound of Thunder' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sound_of_Thunder) to which this and all subsequent time travel stories owe a debt. If we can't know whether our intervention will make things better or worse, then probably best to leave well alone, is the overall point being made. The problem with this analysis is that it doesn't just apply to time travellers - it could equally apply to those of us living today. It's an argument for political inactivity. For what it is worth, while Franz Ferdinand's assassination was clearly the trigger for world war one, my view is that the European powers had been shaping up for a fight for a long time - hence the arms race - and if the assassionation had been prevented another reason would have come along soon enough.

At the end, the novel implodes in on itself, collapsing under the weight of its absurdities. (Avoid this next bit if you don't like spoilers). We are asked to believe that Stanton is only the most recent in a long line of travellers returning to correct the future, each making it that little bit - or in Stanton's case a hell of a lot - worse. We are asked to accept that each Master of Trinity would open Newton's "this is what you need to know to travel in time" letter from 300 years previous, successfully form a secret society of supporters to organise the trip, that each time traveller would succeed in their mission, realise that things had not gone as planned, write a letter to the future warning them, but that none of these letters would be found. As usual, unless you skate over the timey-wimey stuff pretty quickly, the ice cracks and you fall in.

Elton writes well, and his short chapters and frequent changes of focus keep the reader engaged, even when we have a pretty good idea where it is all going. The desire to frustrate that predictability leads Elton up some dead ends but does ask an entirely reasonable question - given that the 20th century ended with the end of totalitarianism across almost the entire world, civil liberties making progress in most countries in a way Edwardians would find hard to believe (actually, time travellers from the 1970's sometimes find it hard to believe) and technology that is as close to witchcraft as make no difference - why would we change anything? He invites us to consider whether the world wars and the Holocaust were the price of all this progress? I don't accept that for one second,  nor that we are now living in the 'best of all possible worlds' century, but it's a question worth asking.

Joy in the Morning - P G Wodehouse - 1946

I had a fairly strong reaction when I last read some Wodehouse, and I suspect my record of the event is intemperate. Having calmed down I returned to ‘Joy in the Morning’ determined to be fair minded. In that same spirit of fairness I ought to acknowledge that Wodehouse has some heavy-weight admirers whose opinion I have rarely had occasion to doubt. Douglas Adams no less is quoted on the cover of this Arrow (2008) edition saying “Wodehouse is the greatest comic writer ever”, and Stephen Fry is on the frontispiece describing Wodehouse as the “funniest and finest writer”. High praise indeed.

Written in the early 1940’s during Wodehouse’s internment in France and Germany during the second world war, this novel tells in Bertie Wooster’s first person narrative the story of his adventures at his uncle’s country home in Steeple Bumpleigh, or in Wooster’s words “the super-sticky affair of Nobby Hopwood, Stilton Cheesewright, Florence Craye, my uncle Percy… is one of those imbroglios that Bertie Wooster believes his biographers will refer to as “The Steeple Bumpleigh Horror”.  The Guardian’s recent review described the novel as “both an elegy and an encore” – an elegy for a lost Edwardian Britain, and an encore because this is very familiar ground – Wodehouse recycled this very limited set of characters and situations endlessly. “

‘Joy in the Morning’ (and in my head I keep mixing this title up with ‘Morning Glory’ which is something entirely different) is a ‘greatest hits’ selection of comedic situations: the imposed engagement; a blazing country cottage; a nocturnal confrontation; a fancy-dress ball. The novel also contains an element of self-justification for Wodehouse’s involvement in what some considered war crimes, namely broadcasting on German radio from Berlin. “I doubt,” says Bertie, speaking of the writer Boko Fittleworth, “if you can ever trust an author not to make an ass of himself.”

Despite my best intentions I did find myself laughing out loud at some passages. Wooster is such an idiot. But overall the novel is not a success. It is over-long and predictable. Wodehouse claimed to work tirelessly on his plots, and farce well done does require tight plotting in order to be plausible, but the plotting here is a mess. It depends on people behaving in ways that are more than just ridiculous but utterly unbelievable: schoolboys burning houses down, successful businessmen agreeing to conduct private meetings at a fancy dress ball, policemen leaving their uniforms on the riverbank while taking a dip in the river, and so on. The resulting comic situations lose a lot of their impact when they are set up so clumsily – we know Wooster is going to lose an important birthday gift brooch, that Jeeves is going to come up with a cunning plan to rescue the situation, that the imposed engagement will fade away by the end

Wodehouse may have been a collaborator, and may have romanticised a lost Britain that depended on a rigid class system that virtually enslaved the working class to preserve the privilege of a small minority, but he could turn a phrase, for example “There was a sound in the background like a distant sheep coughing gently on a mountainside. Jeeves sailing into action.”

Wodehouse is adept at using the gap between Wooster’s weaknesses, his village idiot view of the world and reality, to comic effect; many of them are having an affectionate nod towards Shakespeare:

 “It was one of those cases where you approve the broad, general principle of an idea but can't help being in a bit of a twitter at the prospect of putting it into practical effect. I explained this to Jeeves, and he said much the same thing had bothered Hamlet.”

“She came leaping towards me, like Lady Macbeth coming to get first-hand news from the guest-room.”

“You can't go by what a girl says, when she's giving you the devil for making a chump of yourself. It's like Shakespeare. Sounds well, but doesn't mean anything.”

The bromance between Wooster and Jeeves is as strong as ever, and even in this strangely sexless world, in which all a chap ever wants is to avoid being ensnared by an eligible young woman (what possible reason could Wooster have for not wanting to get married or be involved with any of the women who circle around him?) is quite touching. Jeeves and Wooster are only going to be apart for a few hours, but still say a tearful goodbye:

 “We part, then, for the nonce, do we?'

'I fear so, sir.'

'You take the high road, and self taking the low road, as it were?'

'Yes, sir.'

'I shall miss you, Jeeves.'

'Thank you, sir.'
'Who was that chap who was always beefing about gazelles?'
'The poet Moore, sir. He complained that he had never nursed a dear gazelle, to glad him with its soft black eye, but when it came to know him well, it was sure to die.'
'It's the same with me. I am a gazelle short. You don't mind me alluding to you as a gazelle, Jeeves?'
'Not at all, sir.”

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - 1955

‘Lolita’ is not an easy book to review. Perhaps more than any other novel that I have reviewed on this blog thus far, ‘Lolita’ comes with a burden of critical responses that make it hard to see the novel for itself. It is an elusive text at the best of times, with its classically flawed narrator, constantly challenging the reader to ask whether Humbert’s words can be taken at face value, as they rarely can. ‘Lolita’ has lost none of its power to shock, even after the passage of more than fifty years since it was published, possibly gaining even more potency as our awareness of child sexual abuse has increased.

So I think I ought to start on safe ground, with a summary of the events and characters of the novel itself. The narrative is told as a recollection of events by the narrator, Humbert Humbert. An introductory chapter purporting to be by the book’s editor, but in fact forming part of the narrative, sets the scene – this is Humbert’s jail-cell confession, written shortly before his death. As with Nabokov’s earlier work, ‘Pale Fire’ there is a significant and palpable gap between the narrator’s view of events, and that of the reader’s, and it is navigating that gap that makes reading ‘Lolita’ both challenging and rewarding.

Humbert is a predatory paedophile, who after a period of grooming establishes a sexual relationship with his orphaned step-daughter, Dolores. It is significant that her name is not Lolita – this is a label given her by Humbert, as part of his attempt to erase her individuality and to control her. It is representative, if you will, of his abuse.

Nabokov set himself a huge challenge here – how to portray a monster through his own eyes, without utterly repulsing the reader. And make no mistake, Humbert is repellent. His abuse of Dolores is charted with euphemisms which do little to disguise the nature of the abuse. Some reviewers and critics (and to be clear, this is not an academic work, so I am not going to provide references to support this claim – assume when I write things like this I simply mean “stuff I have read on the Internet”) fall for Humbert’s version of events, and portray Dolores as the under-age predator, sexually precocious beyond her years, and responsible for seducing poor, vulnerable Humbert. The term ‘Lolita’ has over the years been used generically in this manner, which is a pity, because it should mean “victim”. Indeed, in most popular culture representations of Lolita she is portrayed in Humbert's terms - sexually precocious, mature, even provocative. I even read one review online which suggested that ultimately the great achievement of this novel is that it makes the reader “fall in love” with Humbert, and that it is a love story. I recognise I am taking a very moral tone here, but part of the reason for keeping this blog in the first place was to chart my authentic reactions to what I read.

What might be interesting would be to give Lolita back her voice. Not as an imaginative exercise, but simply to look at what she says, as recorded by Humbert, but without his commentary. In the first part of the novel Lolita is only glimpsed, and is almost completely silent. When she is collected from camp by Humbert following her mother’s death, she has a few lines, but these are mainly every day observances. Of her thoughts on her abuse we have scarcely half a dozen lines, including (and to be clear, this is not an exhaustive list of her comments, but I think quite representative):

Before Humbert begins to rape her:

“Don’t drool on me. You dirty man” (130)

“Look, let’s cut out the kissing game”

“Lay off , will you”

And after the attacks begin:

“You revolting creature. I was a daisy-fresh girl, and look what you’ve done to me? I ought to call the police and tell that you raped me. Oh you dirty, dirty old man.” (159)

“Can you remember, you know….the hotel where you raped me”.

"An ominous hysterical note rang through her silly words. Presently, making a sizzling sound with her lips, she started complaining of pains, said she could not sit, said I had torn something inside her" (159)

While you could expect Humbert to do everything possible to avoid this self implication, Nabokov has him implicate himself time and again. He is fully aware that he has no defence to his actions, and that Lolita is far from a willing accomplice, nor partially responsible for the crimes, as some commentators (see above) would have it. Apart from her age, and the significant age gap between them, he is a twice married man, and her step-parent, in loco parentis. He bribes her with clothes and treats, and finally pays her per sexual transaction. He threatens her with entry into the care system if she reports his attacks. He attempts to render her unconscious with sleeping pills in order to facilitate his attacks. None of this is consensual, even were consent to be possible.

“Eventually she lived up to her I.Q. by finding a safer hiding place, which I never discovered, but by that time I had brought prices down drastically by having her earn the hard and nauseous way permission to participate in the school’s theatrical programme. (209) With this clear illustration that even delusional Humbert realises his attacks are nauseating, can critics still describe this as a love affair? (I have found one reference to the magazine 'vanity Fair' describing 'Lolita' as "the only convincing love story of our century".)

“She had entered my world, umber and black Humberland, with rash curiosity; she surveyed it with a shrug of amused distaste; and it seemed to me now that she was ready to turn away from it with something akin to plain repulsion. Never did she vibrate under my touch, and a strident ‘what d’you think you are doing?’ was all I got for my pains. To wonderland I had to offer, my fool preferred the corniest movies, the most cloying fudge. To think that between a Hamburger and a Humburger, she would - invariably, with icy precision - plump for the former” (Nabokov, 166).

Some kind of normality settles on their existence as Humbert and Dolores restlessly criss-cross the country, always on the move to prevent her from making any friends or appealing to anyone for help. But Humbert lets slip that Dolores never comes to terms with the tragedy of her situation, her captivity:

“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”. (199) Is this the behaviour of a young women enjoying the company of her older lover, (as Humbert would love it to be, but cannot persuade himself it is) or that of a deeply traumatised hostage?

‘Lolita’ is an extraordinary novel, written in a complex, allusive and elusive style which almost demands a re-reading. Its subject matter makes it hard to read at points, and I found myself immune to the charms of the monster that is Humbert Humbert. You have to admire Nabokov’s bravery in tackling what remains a taboo subject, and doing so by rejecting an easy stereotypes. In looking for a key to understanding this novel, a fruitless search I know, I keep coming back to the author’s post-script, where he describes the germ of the novel. A newspaper story told of an experiment where a chimpanzee was taught to draw, and eventually drew the bars of its cage. We can ignore the reality of the chimp’s life, but when given the ability to communicate it is the thing it draws. Lolita was caged, imprisoned by Humbert, and deprived of a voice, and we can catch glimpses of the horror of her situation all the more vividly because we see them through the soft-tinted lens of Humbert’s perspective.