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*Ranked as one of the Top 100 Fiction of the 20th Century*
I’m not quite sure how to put this in words. Hell, I’m not sure what I intend to say, so this is going to be ugly. If you want to sit in on this exercise be my guest, you’ve probably got more important things to do, such as organizing your cassette tapes and LPs before shoving them in a box destined for the attic, believe me, your time will be better spent, especially when you take that stroll down memory lane and consider how killer it would be to rock out to Depeche Mode and A-Ha all afternoon (it’s possible you’re one of those badasses with some Dead Kennedys on cassette, more power to you, feel free to tear off your shirt and bathe with a 40oz of Big Bear). You might want to clean your bong while you’re at it; you never know how immersed you’ll get in the hazy recollections of your exploits during the New Wave or burgeoning Hardcore era and might prefer a soundtrack to complement your deranged thoughts.

As for Lolita, maybe this tangential bullshit will help get my point across�� I’ve recently taken a keen interest in watching “Deadliest Catch��, but as soon as the show concludes I wonder “What have I walked away with, after investing 50 minutes and 4 rum & cokes to the accompaniment of these awe-inspiring images of man battling the elements to strike bepincered gold?�� Not much, appears to be the answer; it’s just a bunch of crabs, crabs, crabs, and master-baiting, the simple ingredients of all my friendships and relationships. Sure, it’s awesome to watch sea-faring maniacs risk life and limb to haul in the nasty creatures that pay their bills, but there’s nothing else to it, just dudes getting stoked over a huge haul of crabs, or lamenting some element of the life they’ve chosen. Then you get to thinking how these dudes�� wives manage without them at sea for 20+ days at a time; obviously they are in the crab-catching business as well. And the real kick in the ass is that I don’t even eat crab, hell, I’ve never even tried a dish that incorporates any crab. When I consider the ridiculousness of it all, it seems pretty disheartening. This sort of pointless introspection is probably how Des Esseintes got his start, so I’ll leave it at that before it becomes habit-forming.

I can’t say that my opinion of Lolita is much different. It’s just Humbert Humbert endlessly rhapsodizing about nymphettes, most substantially, his nymphette, Lolita. And that’s it; I’ve probably never read anything so one-dimensional in my life. I’m sure the upper echelons of literary critics found myriad reasons beyond my primitive sensibilities for including this in the Top 100 works of 20th century fiction, I just don’t happen to see it. One of these qualifiers might be this absurd statement on the back cover, ‘Lolita is also the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America��. Now, when we consider the social climate at the time of publication, with book-banning and obscenity trials recently being all the rage, and you know that in order to somehow foist upon the public a tale concerning a grown man’s obsession and fornication with a 12 year old girl the defenders of this thinly-veiled smut have to somehow show that there is something above and beyond mere prurient interest hidden between the covers of the book, so statements like the one above are thrown out there to mind-f#ck all. I don’t even know what the hell that statement on the cover is supposed to mean, but ‘postwar America�� were powerful buzzwords at the time, and truly, what else could you possibly use as a thematic defense for this book, seeing as the book has nothing to offer except the ridiculous tale of a weathered old pervert ogling young girls on the hopscotch courts, finding one that epitomizes his unacceptable desires, and eventually having his way with her before attempting to completely control her young body and mind during a trek that can only be considered kidnapping on the grandest scale. Let’s not forget that when his precious nymphette is purloined by an unknown fiend, he goes off to ambush the guy and shoot his ass; this is not the behavior of the ‘hypercivilized��; my own rather sloppy upbringing declares that anyone with a shred of civility offers his adversary a duel rather than attack him unawares, Humbert is a lowly coward of the worst disposition. The ‘hypercivilized�� don’t go around bagging 85 pound kids sporting skinned knees from spills at the roller-rink, real men fish for those awesome and voluptuous Amazonians, the women who proudly stand 5��10�� or more and have generous curves that modern fabrics fruitlessly struggle to contain from spilling forth in all their fully-developed glory. Our man Humbert has no such redeeming qualities; he’s a scoundrel of the lowest and basest rank. Let’s not forget that he weeps, and when I conjure a mental image of the elusive ‘hypercivilized European��, weeping like a bitch and throwing a tantrum doesn’t enter the picture.

While the frauds who compiled the Top 100 Fiction list and I might diverge in our estimations of Lolita, I will agree with our man John Updike when he states “Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically.�� There is no denying that the book is phenomenally written, but the repetition of nymphette-this and nymphette-that simply overwhelmed me; I was left with an indelible image of Nabokov sitting there alternately referencing his thesaurus and a collection of kiddie porn for inspiration while hammering this out. I’d have enjoyed this book a thousand times more had it been about turtles, or walnuts, or my mother's first communion, hell, anything else. Nymphettes suck: there is a reason I don’t go trolling for trim at the nearest bus station, who the hell wants to put up with the behavior of a pubescent trollop?

There isn’t a whole hell of a lot that I know, but I do know this; if my choices were either read Lolita again or spend a day crabbing in the arctic, I’d better be prepared to get some frostbite on my beanbag.