mondojohnson

I had never read this… somehow I never ran into it in college. I checked it out of the library after reading John Derbyshire’s embarassing, “your-Freudian-slip-is-showing” piece in the National Review. (Which I found via this amusing post by Amanda at Pandagon.)

Having read it, I now place Vladimir Nabokov up there in my novelist pantheon next to Nathanael West and Don DeLillo. The craftwork of the book is great: it is in the form of a windy and self-important recollection by pedophile and murderer Humbert Humbert. Somehow, through Nabokov’s art, we are able to see the other characters’ motives and actions, despite being restricted to Humbert’s pretentious worldview. I was also surprised by the humor and eerily accurate portrait of Americana. Masterful writing… and English isn’t even his first language.