Lit Hub Published from NY Times Article

NABOKOV’s LOLITA

Lolita, it seems, continues to scintillate and argue for discussion. Interesting. Especially interesting to me as I’ve continued to try the book, try to read it, and fail. I just can’t get very far. I find it uninteresting. I periodically read where it’s so exciting right from the start. That of course sends me back to the book. And again. It just doesn’t happen for me.

–Orville Prescott, The New York Times, August 18, 1958; “There are two equally serious reasons why it isn’t worth any adult reader’s attention. The first is that it is dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is that it is repulsive.”

I never got to a repulsive part. That could have been the saving grace for me.

We do need to remember though, the putdown was written in 1958, when the book first came out. I wonder if the same feeling would hold forth after the growing accolades of the critics through the years. Time, and opinions do influence.