andamu

The version of Lolita that I borrowed from the library is the Everyman's Library edition, with an introduction by Martin Amis. He starts,

"Like the sweat of lust and guilt, the sweat of death trickles through Lolita. I wonder how many readers survive the novel without realizing that its heroine is so to speak, dead on arrival, like her child."

And that fortifies me through my reading, the thought that someone else understands that this book is not so much to be read as to be survived.
I am staunchly opposed to banning books. I state firmly, with Oscar Wilde, "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all." I am the first to take up Heinrich Heine's cry: "Wherever they burn books, they will also, in the end, burn people."
Yet there had been many times in my struggle through this book (currently not quite two-thirds done) that I had to explicitly remind myself of my convictions.
The book is undoubtedly well written. It is slow going not because of any failures of the mechanics of the writing, but because of the frequent breaks I feel the need to take in the light of the horrific nature of the subject matter.
And still I carry on, wrestling with my feelings and my convictions, and forcing myself to finish the book before I can continue with Reading Lolita in Tehran.
On a more positive note, Nabokov excellently captures so many aspects of America, American life and its objects of interest in his narration, in turn summarizing and caricaturizing hotels and motels, clothes, monuments and points of interest, institutions, movies, restaurants, magazines and even human nature. His is a deft and detailed brush, which makes the terrible story so much more realistic and horrifying.
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With the tsunami and its toll much on everyone's mind, Sri Lanka has been frequently in the news recently. Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai is an excellent novel set in Sri Lanka, the story of a young boy growing up and realizing that there are echoes of struggle everywhere - within himself, his family, his community and his country.
A brief, incomplete and in large parts inaccurate synopsis of the country can be found in a flawed simile with Northern Ireland.
Northern Ireland's people are divided along religious lines that originally had a strong ethnic origin (Celts and Anglo-Saxons) although over the ages those ethnic lines have blurred. There is a majority and a minority, with (at least ostensible) power residing with the majority. A minority of the minority is militant about the situation, as is a minority of the majority. Large parts of both the majority and (as in this novel) the minority are not violent, and caught in the middle.
I did warn at the outset that the simile is flawed, and bears no close scrutiny, nor can it be extended beyond the most superficial bounds. But it does serve to create a broad overview of the situation.
The book itself is wonderful. If anyone reads it, I'd love to discuss it.
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Enough procrastination now, though. Lolita awaits, unfortunately.