Lolita turns 60
5 things you didn’t know about the novel
Art & Design
October 29th, 2015
October 29th, 2015
Lolita is a timeless book. Work of Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov, it tells the obsession of a literature professor for a 12-year-old girl, of whom he will later become the stepfather. This brief introduction to the events is enough to imagine the scandal caused by the work at its debut, in 1955.
The impact the book had on the public was amazing, also thanks to the movie of the same name directed by Stanley Kubrick (1962), that consecrated it as cult of modern literature. Lolita turns 60 today – yet remaining more modern than never – and we decided to celebrate the event unveiling you the five most interesting curiosities about it.
#1 Nobody wanted to publish the novel. Nabokov spent almost five years writing Lolita: he began in 1948 and ended it in December 1953. For almost two years he looked for a publisher willing to print it, but everyone saw the work as an ode to pedophilia. In 1955 the first edition of Lolita finally saw the light, in Paris, thanks to the American publishing house Olympia Press, specialized in erotic literature. The book sold like hot cakes.
#2 Lolita is not Lolita. While the name Lolita is now part of our everyday language to describe a young, beautiful and malicious girl, only a few know or remember that the real name of the protagonist of the book is Dolores Haze. Called Lo, Lola or Dolly by her mother, the girl becomes 'Lolita' only to the eyes of Humbert, her tireless admirer.
#3 The choice of cover. Being a complex work difficult to label, Lolita gave a lot of trouble to the publishers for the choice of the cover. Currently there are 185 covers of the book, but none is considered, by those who know the book very well, fully effective or satisfactory. The cover of Lolita is such a challenge that someone wrote a book about it: Lolita - The Story of a Cover Girl.
#4 The decline of the name Lolita. "I have heard of young female poodles being given that name since 1956, but of no human beings" Nabokov said about the name Lolita in an interview with Life magazine in 1964. According to the statistics conducted on the names by the US government during the various censuses, the popularity of the name Lolita has been inversely proportional to the success of the book: carrying it entailed numerous ethical prejudices.
#5 The autobiographical notes. From the first pages of the book the reader gets to meet a very mysterious female character, Vivian Darkbloom. 'Vivian Darkbloom' is the anagram of Vladimir Nabokov, and therefore the author's signature hidden between the lines of his own novel.
