by Vladimir Nabokov, Alfred Appel Jr.
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Product Description
The annotated text of this modern classic. It assiduously illuminates the extravagant wordplay and the frequent literary allusions, parodies, and cross-references. Edited with a preface, introduction and notes by Alfred Appel, Jr.
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In 1954 Vladimir Nabokov asked one American publisher to consider "a firebomb that I have just finished putting together." The explosive device: Lolita, his morality play about a middle-aged European's obsession with a 12-year-old American girl. Two years later, the New York Times called it "great art." Other reviewers staked a higher moral ground (the editor of the London Sunday Express declaring it "the filthiest book I've ever read"). Since then, the sinuous novel has never ceased to astound. Even Nabokov was astonished by its place in the popular imagination. One biographer writes that "he was quite shocked when a little girl of eight or nine came to his door for candy on Halloween, dressed up by her parents as Lolita." And when it came time to casting the film, Nabokov declared, "Let them find a dwarfess!" The character Lolita's power now exists almost separately from the endlessly inventive novel. If only it were read as often as it is alluded to. Alfred Appel Jr., editor of the annotated edition, has appended some 900 notes, an exhaustive, good-humored introduction, and a recent preface in which he admits that the "reader familiar with Lolita can approach the apparatus as a separate unit, but the perspicacious student who keeps turning back and forth from text to Notes risks vertigo." No matter. The notes range from translations to the anatomical to the complex textual. Appel is also happy to point out the Great Punster's supposedly unintended word play: he defends the phrase "Beaver Eaters" as "a portmanteau of 'Beefeaters' (the yeoman of the British royal guard) and their beaver hats."
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Duelling opinions, 2008-09-02
Whether you like 'Lolita' depends on whether Nabokov is successful in sucking you into his fractured world of longing for something impossible, persuading yourself you have it while knowing you don't. I really don't think Nabokov intends any value judgments about his characters, any moral conclusions, let alone any comparisons between old Europe and young America. I'm not sure he even feels particularly strongly about the evils of pedophilia (see the sanctimonious ending to the foreword by the book's fictional 'editor'). I think he plays with the situation and the psychology of Humbert Humbert in his lush, literary, inimitable way. For my own part, I can get sucked in, or find myself standing outside. And from there the view is disgusting, as a reviewer - who is highly positive nonetheless - has written on the online magazine Slate. One of Nabokov's many ways to this very point is starkly anatomical. HH describes Lolita as a small-framed 12 year old, 'hip girth, twenty-nine inches...weight, seventy-eight pounds', useful information in the context - HH is buying some clothes to please her. HH describes himself elsewhere as a large and virile fellow, equipped with 'a foot of engorged brawn'. One of Alfred Appel's annotations will underline the problem by drawing your attention - and this is easily missed because it is mentioned only once and Lolita appears under a kind of alias - to Lolita's death four or five years later in childbirth. Not common in the 1950s in the USA. So HH's misuse of Lolita injures and ultimately kills her?
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 Stick with the unannotated edition, 2008-06-07
Appel's annotations are simply insufferable. It's pathetic and depressing to read his sniveling Kinbote impression--is he completely unaware that he represents exactly what Nabokov was mocking in Pale Fire? Even trying to use his annotations as merely a reference to help translate the French in the book will leave you quivering with rage, as Appel submits you to his Stanford ENG 300 course, draws absurd and positively indefensible parallels (some of which that he even admits--with the appropriate quotation from a letter as evidence--Nabokov expressly disavowed), reveals the entire narrative by page 70, and, in a meta-textual burlesque (which, ever self-aware and oh-so-meta, Appel audaciously compares to the effect created by Pale Fire) completely robs your reading experience of the chance to form its own impression of the work.
Under no circumstances buy this drivel. Nasha Vladishka deserves better.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 The essence of perfect writing, 2008-03-20
absolutely beautiful writing. Reading the words Nabokov writes is like fine dining, you can almost taste the words they are so rich and poetic. I do recommend the annotated version unless you are Nobokov. It is just so rich with hidden meaning, symbols, and references to myriad things that it is just impossible to get the full story without it. I wish there was a six star rating!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Approaching Perfection; Incredible Annotations, 2008-02-22
First: Nabokov is a fierce talent; he writes, transcending language, with the whole literary tradition a pun's breath away. Greatest stylist of modern times, etc. Lolita needs no introduction: if you are here, you know.
The Annotated Lolita (2nd edition) also defies easy description. It is incredibly rare for two things to come together so marvelously: 1) A work of Lolita's breadth and caliber, 2) A detailed, scholarly, and inveterately prudent *analysis* of authorial mechanics.
Appel's volume achieves all of this. You may read Lolita for the first time here, no problem - there is ample pencil-space, an astute introduction (perhaps borrowing excessively from Nabokov's Pale Fire, but no matter), and clearly-marked endnotes. The endnotes, often 3-5 per page, track virtually all of Nabokov's direct allusions and much of his miscellaneous and obscure game-playing. There is no attempt to interpret "meaning" for the reader; nothing didactic or obtusely academic (indeed, Nabokov would balk too!). It is, however, a fully comprehensive look at Lolita, which is to say the footnotes from page 1 will assume a full knowledge of the entire plot arc. First-time readers who value plot vagaries may want to save the annotations for a second-reading, although I do not recommend it. Lolita has a wonderful plot, but it is a portrait - telegraphed by the incomparable Humbert Humbert, the narrator-as-censored-artist. For most (if not all), the footnotes *make* the novel.
Many of the endnotes are short identifications of references and allusions, but a delightfully large number are paragraphs and even pages long, including comments from Nabokov himself. Indeed, Appel published this "revised and updated" edition after consulting Nabokov himself on his first-edition comments - a rare, rare treat. These astute, authorized, all-encompassing glimpses into a book like Nabokov simply don't happen very often. The Annotated Lolita is a rare treat, and a re-readers *dream. Indulge and enjoy!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
What is pornography?, 2007-10-06
Having read Lolita over thirty-five years ago, my fondest memories pertain to the comments made by Nabokov in his afterward. Those who would comment on the pornographic nature of the work either ignored this part or misunderstood it.
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