>Guy destroys multiple lives, potential lives and his own life just to experience his aesthetic idealHow is this not the most based thing ever written
>destroys livesDolores completely consented to everything and had ample opportunity to leaveShe literally left to be a pregnant underage porn star but somehow this is /ourguys/ fault because uhhhhh le unreliable narrator
You guys are funny
>>25285862i think you're funny too anon
>>25285673toward the beginning she was into him, but it became clear at some point in their journey that she wanted out. They were always getting into fights and he was super protective of where she was and who she talked to.Also being on the road the whole time she didn't exactly have a good way to escape. Where was she gonna go? Surely that was a part of Humberts reasoning to keep moving. Once they had a sort of home base to send her to school she immediately started devising a way out. I can't recall if Humbert sniffing that out was the reason they got back on the road though.She's also a young girl who hasn't experienced much life yet, but she knows that Humbert liked her and took her away. This teaches her that another older man interested in her could be a path away from Humbert. She doesn't know much else, so you can't really blame her for her decision to join Quilty. She could have always gone to the police but Humbert brainwashed her against doing that
>>25285618it is
>>25285618>By this time I was in a state of excitement bordering on insanity; but I also had the cunning of the insane. Sitting there, on the sofa, I managed to attune, by a series of stealthy movements, my masked lust to her guileless limbs. It was no easy matter to divert the little maiden’s attention while I performed the obscure adjustments necessary for the success of the trick. Talking fast, lagging behind my own breath, catching up with it, mimicking a sudden toothache to explain the breaks in my patterand all the while keeping a maniac’s inner eye on my distant golden goal, I cautiously increased the magic friction that was doing away, in an illusional, if not factual, sense, with the physically irremovable, but psychologically very friable texture of the material divide (pajamas and robe) between the weight of two sunburnt legs, resting athwart my lap, and the hidden tumor of an unspeakable passion. Having, in the course of my patter, hit upon something nicely mechanical, I recited, garbling them slightly, the words of a foolish song that was then popular - O my Carmen, my little Carmen, something, something, those something nights, and the stars, and the cars, and the bars, and the barmen; I kept repeating this automatic stuff and holding her under its special spell (spell because of the garbling), and all the while I was mortally afraid that some act of God might interrupt me, might remove the golden load in the sensation of which all my being seemed concentrated, and this anxiety forced me to work, for the first minute or so, more hastily than was consensual with deliberately modulated enjoyment. The stars that sparkled, and the cars that parkled, and the bars, and the barmen, were presently taken over by her; her voice stole and corrected the tune I had been mutilating. She was musical and apple-sweet. Her legs twitched a little as they lay across my live lap; I stroked them; there she lolled in the right-hand corner, almost asprawl, Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice, losing her slipper, rubbing the heel of her slipperless foot in its sloppy anklet, against the pile of old magazines heaped on my left on the sofa - and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty - between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock.
>>25285673>Dolores completely consented to everything She was 12 you sick fuck!! A child would even consent to drinking alcohol and drugs just because they don't know the negatives of it. >and had ample opportunity to leave Lol no. After her mother's death humbert became her only guardian. She wouldn't even look for an orphanage if she leaves him just like many other children would in her case.Also when the story leads further dolores ended up resisting humbert's temptation. Called him a rapist in the car scene, and a murderer during their fight.she clearly lost her interest on him and the interest she likely got from him was either through stockholm syndrome or cuz of her rebellious youth that wanted to gain more freedom from her over protective mother. >She literally left to be a pregnant underage porn star Again she was likely at the age of 14-15 when she left herbert for good but ended up being a sex object for that Quilty guy. Same argument applies to him too. >but somehow this is /ourguys/ fault because uhhhhh le unreliable narrator Yes exactly,even nabokov mentions this in the very first introduction of the book lmfao. Oh you dumb slut ,were you jacking off while reading the entire book?
>>25286014>lazy China postWhat’s this board coming to lmao
I find it ironic that Nabokov throws himself into writing amazing prose for his monstrous protagonist and everyone slavers over it either as an excuse or justification for what his protagonist is doing.
>>25286017migapede chimes in
>>25286203Because the amazing prose is the protagonists words and it elevates him from old pervert to aesthete.
>>25286238I wonder if it serves some larger purpose in the narrative?
Second half got repetitive until the end. 3/5.
>>25285618A woman liking this book is a red flag. Be warned.
I think Epstein himself planted the obsession with this book on this board.
>>25285890>>25286014>she was into it but then she wasn't and that makes it rapeah, the femoid defense
>>25286863if you consensually fuck a girl once you don't get to fuck her for the rest of time no matter what she says and call it consensual. You only think that because PP feel good and you need to justify italso she was like 14 or some shit so it's fucked either way
>>25286245Makes the book good
i count four bodies, one of them twelve at the start of the book (lest we'd forget). charlotte got hit by a car so humbert could have proximity to dolores. the aesthetic ideal is humbert's word for a child and the confession is written from a cell waiting on a trial that never happens because he dies first. three hundred pages of a rapist telling you he has taste and that's what gets remembered. and seventy fricking years of this exact post recycled ad nauseam.
>>25286998Finally someone who understands this fucking book
>>25285618We all know u guys read this because ur secretly a PDF and u don't read this for the prose
>>25286952roastie cope
>>25287353naw I'm a guy I just get pussy and don't have to fuck kids or girls who don't wanna fuck me to make PP feel good
>>25287382and I'm the prince of Wales
>>25286014What if I told you a 19 or 21 year old woman is identical mentally to a 12 year old girl?
>>25285862>>25285890>>25286014JK Rowling called this book a great and tragic love story. Only creepy insecure dudes winge over "but he's a bad man", like, yeah, no shit, women love a bad boy.
>>25285618>aesthetic idealIs that what we're calling it now?
>>25285618I liked this book. it was messed up. hearing about the discourse around it solidifies that I am in a tiny minority of thinking persons with intellect and agency, since i could both appreciate the novel as a work of fiction -allowing me to experience things that i would otherwise not wish to experience- and i could recognize the eloquent voice of hh without being swayed into thinking he's a character that i should morally defend. it seems to me that many people who read the book have a emotional meltdown, and can't believe that this is a work of fictions. Another camp of people somehow find hh as defensible, just because he sounds smart.
>>25285924I am intelligent enough to understand every word, and I can tell you this is incredibly boring. It's just a long monologue about trying to sneak glances at the young girl's body for the speaker's sexual gratification.This is one of those works people claim is "good" only because so little of it exists or existed elsewhere, in combination with the prose being far above a level they'd be capable of creating themselves, no matter the fact the skill is being deployed for such lowly material.
>>25287702that's a rather poor summary of the plot, but what do you think the story is?
>>25287731>that's a rather poor summary of the plotif you meant the "plot" of the passage, no it is notif you meant the plot of the novel, then no attempt at summarizing it was even made
>>25287736For some reason, I thought you had replied to the OP, and not a quoted passage. My mistake.
HH is a hero
>>25285924
>>25285618This is the most lame and gay thing ever. Art is fake. Aestheticism is a spook. Plato was right, it makes you a pussy whipped cry baby bitch. Ditch all that faggotry. Become a man. Pursue Knowledge, and Money and Status.
>>25285673>She literally left to be a pregnant underage porn starThis isn't true>"I said no, I'm just not going to blow your beastly boys, because I want only you. Well, he kicked me out."and she only gets pregnant once she's gotten married
>>25288072True dat brother
>>25288119Kek
>>25285618Do you guys think he self-censored by making her 12? My mental image when I read it a decade ago was 8 or so, lap scene for example. 12 is 2 years off from naive, but legal in a lot of places. Normal sex having age. Not trying to be edgy, but it doesn’t seem like THAT big a deal.
>>25288119>must feel good must feel good
