Lolita

The crude details of Vladimir Nabokov's story Lolita are well known: The protagonist, Humbert Humbert, marries a widow in order to seduce her provocative teen-aged daughter, Lolita. He succeeds beyond his wildest dreams, becoming in the process not only a child molester (of Lolita) but a murderer (of her lover Quilty). These facts of the story have never been in dispute, but their import has often been the subject of confusion and controversy. Even the book's publication history - it was issued first by a French press known for its pornography in 1955 and finally by the respectable New York firm of Putnam in 1958 - reflects the divided nature of the response to it. Since its publication, critics have categorized Lolita variously as too cerebral or too sensual, too neoclassical or too romantic, too complex or too obvious, too depressing or too witty, too immoral or too didactic. If Lance Olsen would take issue with the "too" in these descriptions, he would also question the "or." In fact, the novel is cerebral and sensual, neoclassical and romantic, complex and obvious, depressing and witty, immoral and didactic. "Like the Roman god Janus," Olsen writes, "Lolita gazes in two directi