I have no intention to glorify "H.H." No doubt, he is horrible, he is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conducive to attractiveness. He is ponderously capricious. Many of his casual opinions on the people and scenery of this country are ludicrous. A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning. He is abnormal. He is not a gentleman. But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its author!

As a case history, "Lolita" will become, no doubt, a classic in psychiatric circles. As a work of art, it transcends its expiatory aspects; and still more important to us than scientific significance and literary worth, is the ethical impact the book should have on the serious reader; for in this poignant personal study there lurks a general lesson; the wayward child, the egotistic mother, the panting maniac--these are not only vivid characters in a unique story: they warn us of dangerous trends; they point out potent evils. "Lolita" should make all of us--parents, social workers, educators--apply ourselves with still greater vigilance and vision to the task of bringing up a better generation in a safer world.
John Ray, Jr., Ph.D.
Widworth, Mass

1

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.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer.

Basic set up:

Following a foreword by "John Ray, Jr., Ph.D" (a made up character) about the book's moral and psychological themes, we're introduced to our narrator and his obsession with a young girl called Lolita.

Yeah, this one's rough.

Lolita has become infamous for its controversial subject matter, but we're gonna take a postmodern angle and think not about its creepiness, but about its use of intertextuality. The novel as a whole is full of references to other authors, texts, and types of writing, and we can see this from the early passages quoted above. The opening section, for instance, takes on the guise of a psychological case study by a doctor called John Ray. He's a character made up by Nabokov, but his opening remarks make it seem like a genuine commentary.

P.S. Can you spot the Edgar Allan Poe reference in there, too?

Nabokov doesn't shout about these intertextual references—no, he drops them casually into the text. We may not pick up on all of them, but it's fun to notice them in a "Where's Waldo" kind of way.

And it's not just references to names and phrases, but also to styles of writing: the psychological foreword is written in a totally serious tone and reads like a real Freud-esque case study. It's not real, though: Nabokov is parodying the kind of language and ideas that a psychologist might use when taking a look at this novel.

With Nabokov claiming that there's no moral lesson behind the novel, the comments made by the fictional psychologist take on a parodic vibe. Nabokov isn't telling us how we should interpret this novel as much as he's making fun of pretentious language (a.k.a.psychobabble) and the idea that the book must have some moral, educational value. Yep, Nabokov is definitely showing his postmodern credentials here.