My father died. I was devastated, but I had no money to attend the funeral. Only two weeks after his passing did my birthright (nothing very grand--the Mirana had been sold long before) arrive in the mail.
I decided to marry. It occurred to me that regular hours, home-cooked meals, all the conventions of marriage, the routine of its bedroom activities and, who knows, the eventual flowering of certain moral values, might help me, if not to purge myself of my degrading and dangerous womanizing, at least to keep those distressing drives under control. My striking if somewhat brutal good looks allowed me to enter upon my quest with equanimity. After considerable deliberation, my choice fell on the daughter of a Polish doctor: the good man happened to be treating me for spells of dizziness and tachycardia. We played chess; his daughter watched me from behind her easel, and inserted eyes or knuckles borrowed from me into the cubistic trash that accomplished misses then painted instead of lilacs and lambs.
Let me repeat with quiet force: I was, and still am, despite my misfortunes, an exceptionally handsome male; slow-moving, tall, with soft dark hair and a gloomy but all the more seductive cast of demeanor. Well did I know, alas, that I could obtain at the snap of my fingers any adult female I chose; in fact, it had become quite a habit with me to find women, of no effort of my own, toppling, ripe, into my lap. This was the problem marriage was to solve. Had I not been so impatient to fulfill this get-moral-quick scheme, I might have easily found, among the many crazed beauties who batted lashes my grim face, creatures far more fascinating than Valeria. My choice, however, was prompted by considerations whose essence was, as I realized too late, a piteous compromise for the bachelor lifestyle to which I’d become accustomed. All of which goes to show how dreadfully stupid poor Humbert always was in matters of sex.
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One man's chapter-by-chapter quest to remove the pedophilia from Nabokov's Lolita.
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Welcome. Perhaps you’re here because you and I share a love for the wit and poetry found in Nabokov’s classic, Lolita. For a book fan, Lolita is a trove of voice, alliteration, character, plot, assonance, and mood. It’s chock-full of references and culture. But—and for the morally discriminating reader, there’s always that but—it’s the account of a child rapist, told with fluctuating, insufficient remorse. The narrator’s moral depravity left this reader unsatisfied and I doubt I am alone.
My solution: put on my editor hat go to work, creating an alternate edition of Nabokov’s masterwork, Lolita, Scrubbed. In this new (and I hope, improved) version, I seek to retain the lovable poetry of the book’s original text while excising the book’s amoral core. And while I make no claims to be a writer of Nabokov’s caliber, I plan to “re-see” troubling scenes as the author would, were he convinced of the novel’s problematic nature. I also plan, in an effort to make the book more “of our times,” to apply light cuts here and there in areas where I feel the language goes a little overboard.
I ask fans of the original text to not confuse my re-seeing as “censorship.” I do not wish to see Nabokov’s book banned or burned. I only wish to humbly present a new version, to be enjoyed and evaluated on its own merit. And lest you think I’m a total buzz-kill, there’s still a juicy murder plot at the heart of the story. Enjoy!
- Gerard Kibbey, June 2009
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