VLADIMIR NABOKOV – Lolita. The novel was written in English, but fear of censorship in the U.S. (where Nabokov lived) and Britain led to its being first published in Paris, France, in 1955 by Olympia Press. [Source: Wikipedia.] Reprinted many times.

   Could be called: ‘The Pedophile with the Broken Heart’.

   Humbert Humbert, our antihero (i think that’s what you call it when you’re embarrassed to call the lead character the protagonist), is a pedophile. He blames it on the fact that when he was 13, he fell in love with 12 year old Annabel. They unsuccessfully attempted to consummate their love on the beach by his father’s hotel. Then she was gone forever.

   Ever since, he’s been obsessed with nymphettes. Nymphettes being girls between the ages of 9-14, still children, but with an awakening sense of their emerging sexual power. Humbert Humbert informs us that not all 9-14 year old girls are nymphettes. Only a select few, but for the connoisseur, they are a coveted delicacy. Readily apparent to the aesthete’s gaze. More to lust at for one’s private emissions, than to physically engage — given our repressive laws.

   Humbert Humbert has a small inherited income, and fancies himself some sort of freelance academic, with credentials enough to pretend he’s working on some major work while employed, at his leisure, at some private all girls school. Ogling away.

   Humbert becomes a lodger at Lolita’s mother’s home. He’s a handsome man, think a mid-30 year old Cary Grant, dressed meticulously, fastidiously mannered.

   He marries Lolita’s mother, solely for access to her daughter. The mother soon dies (luck of luck) and he inherits care of the flirtatious 12 year old Lolita.

   Humbert and Lolita immediately embark on a 3 year road trip across the USA and back, staying at motels speckling the highways while satisfying his every lust.

   Near her 15th birthday, Lolita escapes Humbert’s clutches, absconding with another pervert, the playwright Clare Quilty.

   Humbert Humbert’s life is ruined. All his joy flushed down the old commode.

   All that is left is to hunt and kill Clare Quilty.

         —-

   Nabokov’s prose is incredible:

   “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

   Humbert Humbert is a bad man. And he ruins poor Lolita. His love for Lolita is one sided. And she and her mother are destroyed.

   I can’t say I enjoyed the thing. But there’s no doubting this Nabokov guy can write. Born writer.

   Morally terrible. But a great wordsmith!

   So there!