Love and Lolita

I always knew I'd fall in love with Vladimir Nabokov's controversial masterpiece Lolita. As a long time lover of fucked up literature [check out White Oleander, Fight Club, Disco Bloodbath] , I always thought of Lolita as the queen bee.

Last summer, I finally got around to ordering a copy of my long-awaited scandal novel, but didn't start reading it until around fall. It took me far too long to finish Lolita, much longer than the pace I had read books throughout the summer. A lot of that has to do with Nabokov's masterful writing style. He writes so richly, and ornately that I often went back and read passages several times over.
But this language also kept me caught in a trance. I would hang on to every word as I flipped through pages of devious, fantastical, and wildly passionate scenes.

The thing about Lolita is that while the relationship between main character Humbert Humbert and fantasy girl-child Dolores Haze (Lolita) is universally wrong and disturbing, make no doubt about it that this is a love story. Vanity Fair calls it "The only convincing love story of our century". And the deeper you fall into the story, the more you realize just how true it is.

Many passages struck my heart to the core.

• "Sometimes, while Lolita would be haphazardly preparing her homework, sucking a pencil, lolling sideways in an easy chair with both legs over its arm, I would shed all my pedagogic restraint, dismiss all our quarrels, forget all my masculine pride--and literally crawl on my knees to your chair my Lolita! You would give me one look--a gray furry question mark of a look: "Oh no, not again"; for you never deigned to believe that I could ever crave to bury my face in your plaid skirt, my darling!"

• "...there she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined narrow hands and her goose-flesh white arms, and her shallow ears, and her unkempt armpits, there she was, hopelessly worn at seventeen, with that baby, dreaming already in her of becoming a big shot and retiring around 2020 A.D.--and I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am going to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else."

Reading passages like these affected me even physically. Towards the end of Lolita, whenever I read in public I could feel the emotional toll the words were taking on my facial expressions and body language. I would feel like crying. Often, people in the streets would stop and ask me what was wrong or what I was reading.

I believe Nabokov really achieved something extraordinary. It's hard enough to write about love, but to make it so convincing that the words take a real, emotional toll on the reader takes magic. And he created this magic between a pedophile and a young girl.

Through all his passion, obsession, hopelessness, and insanity, the reader knows clearly of the love that Humbert Humbert has for little Lolita. The reader knows it, and they feel it. And most importantly, they believe it. How strange that one could read a novel with such a torrid, disturbed relationship and leave wishing that someone might one day feel the same way about them?

Suffer for Fashion

I don't feel I belong to any particular subculture, so it's very easy for

me to observe/make fun of everyone else.

I can name qualities from any subculture here in Savannah.

Hipsters

• Can be seen wearing any combination of flannel, raggedy-ass pants, fashion sunglasses, a beard/stache, slutty shorts/skirts, and looking painfully self-important

• Drink PBR and ride fixed gears
• Hang out in packs with other hipsters while denying they're hipsters
• Sentient Bean is their mecca

Crust Punks

• Go out of their way to dress dirty/unkempt/unfashionable but ended up creating a whole new fashion of their own (note the link).
  

• Hop trains, dumpster dive for food/goods, then talk about how they hop trains/dumpster dive with all their crust friends

• Drink cheap liquor and Four Loko, the shittiest alcoholic energy drink ever. Just drink Sparks people!
  
• Hang out at the Pony Pen and listen to terrible music

New Age SCAD Hippies ::shudder::

• Claim to be these worldly, humanitarian, live-by-the-earth people but then post pictures on Facebook of themselves at their parents' million dollar vacation house in the Virgin Islands.

• Wear stereotypical hippie clothing/accessories ironically considering their parents gave them the money for it.

• Don't kill cockroaches, but still eat meat.
• Loaf around in Forsyth Park playing shitty, cliche hippie guitar and hula hooping while consuming goods from Brighter Day.
  

• Once again, claim to be these down-to-earth, natural people, but are really just ASS HOLES!

Gag, gag, gag. Well, the point of all of that was that all these different subcultures have their own codes and inner-workings, but they all have one thing in common--they claim no reason for acting/dressing the way they do. They buy the clothes and adopt the lingo, but refuse to admit that they're doing it because they want to emulate what they see. They choose to go down that path because that's the person they want to be.

Basically, they just like the fashion of it. They like the dress. They like the talk. They want to project themselves in that way. They want to put on the fashion of it and make it their own.

But fashion is a sinful word to most of these people. They'll refuse to admit they're following any kind of trend. Like they've always been the way the are. Whatever.

All I'm suggesting to everyone is how about we just admit we're doing what we do for the fashion. Why don't we just drop the front that we all have of being impervious to trends and style? We all do it. It doesn't matter who you are. We all want to embody a certain ideal. We're all just picking our costumes and striking a pose.

Maybe we'd all get along better, we'd all stop being so snooty, so exclusive, and high and mighty and intolerant of others if we admit that 15% of everything we do is for the fashion of it. Maybe we'd all finally see eye to eye when we admit we have the same, human common ground. You materialist piece of shit. ;-)