TO O CLO S E TO GETH ER, TO O FA R A PA RT
Mass Culture in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita BY LEWIS DUNCAN ILLUSTRATED BY SAMANTHA FRIEND
L
olita is a novel crafted with an exuberant and lavish style of prose. Indeed, Nabokov was a writer who placed aesthetics above socio-political engagement. Any “ethical concepts and metaphysical preferences emerge from… the connotations of [his] definition of ‘aesthetic bliss’” found within the foreword for Lolita. He portrays a state of heightened awareness and ecstasy within which the individual can engage more thoroughly with their environment than ever before. His novel is stylised and his protagonist’s consciousness is constructed through his decadent writing in order to purposefully draw the reader into a temporal state where artistic exuberance is present within every facet of his character’s, and therefore the reader’s, perceived sense of reality. Nabokov said himself that he does not believe in ideological abstractions but rather that meaning is extracted from prose through examination of the details. Indeed, this is reflected in Lolita, a novel which appears to the reader as a finely spun silken web of extravagant phraseology, transcendental language, and yet, at its core, a sense of overtly rational, almost scientific precision and attention to detail is dominant. Contextually, Lolita is a novel written and set in post-War America. The post-War (or Cold War) years were a period of time concerned with methods of re-normalisation – of rectifying the damage done throughout World War II and returning America to a state of comfort and peace. Perhaps influenced by America’s growing fear of com-
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