More On Lolita

Stacy Schiff, biographer of Mrs Nabokov, offers this overview and appreciation in the novel's 50th year:

"The wonder is that - in a confessional culture, in taboo-toppling, hail-Britney times - [Lolita] still startles and sears...She travels light, without moral or agenda. Her plot still makes headlines; 'outlandish perverseness' is us. But art is meant to transgress, to venture beyond what we permit ourselves. On all counts Nabokov's is a deeply subversive work, a humorous novel about a state of damnation, an enchantment and an ache."