September 1, 1955: Vladimir Nabokov Publishes "Lolita"

September 1, 1955: Vladimir Nabokov publishes Lolita, one of the most-hailed, and one of the most-assailed, novels of the 20th Century.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was born on April 22, 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia. His family were noblemen, and his grandfather, Dmitry Nabokov, served as Minister of Justice under Czar Alexander II. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the family fled to Berlin. In 1925, Vladimir, already a published writer, married Véra Slonim, a Russian Jew also living in Berlin. Their son, Dmitri, was born in 1934.

Due to the increasing anti-Semitism of the Nazi Party, the family again moved, first to Paris in 1937, then to New York in 1940. Vladimir's brother Sergei did not make it out of Europe alive, and was taken to the Neuengamme concentration camp, where he died in 1945.

An expert on butterflies, Vladimir found work as an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History. This didn't last long, as in 1941 he was hired to teach comparative literature at Wellesley College, outside Boston. He stayed until 1948, then moved to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he taught until 1959. One of his students at Cornell was a future novelist, Thomas Pynchon. Another was a future Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who cited his influence on her writing of Court opinions.

He wrote Lolita from 1948 to 1953, and, due to its subject matter, had difficulty finding a publisher, until The Olympia Press decided to publish it in Paris in 1955.

The book begins with a spoiler: The introduction states that the narrator, who uses the pen name "Humbert Humbert," has recently died of heart disease in jail, awaiting trial on a murder charge. Due to the subject matter, Nabokov had considered using a pen name for the book, the anagram "Vivian Darkbloom." This became the name of a character in the book.

Humbert was born in Paris in 1910, and his family owned a home on the French Riviera. As a 9-year-old boy, he fell in love with a girl his own age. Given how young they are, nothing happens, and then, when they are 14, she dies of typhus. From then on, his "type" is the girl he knew -- ages 9 to 14.

He grows up, moves to New York, and becomes an English teacher. In 1947, he moves to the New England town of Ramsdale, where he teaches and works on a novel. He rents a room in a house owned by a widow, Charlotte Haze. Sunbathing in the garden is her daughter, Dolores, who is 12, and is nicknamed Dolly, Lo, and Lola. Humbert becomes obsessed -- not with Charlotte, but with Dolores.

While Dolores is away at summer camp, Charlotte confesses that she loves Humbert, and demands that he marry her -- or move out immediately. He marries her, knowing that this will give him access to Dolores. But Charlotte finds Humbert's diary. He says it is only a sketch for a future novel, but she doesn't buy it, and runs out of the house, and is hit by a car, killing her.

As Dolores' legal stepfather, Humbert takes her out of camp. She tells him that she had sex with an older boy at camp, which alleviates his guilt over his feelings for her: Now that he knows that she, despite her age, is not a virgin, he accepts this as consent -- but, given her age, sex with her was still illegal.

They travel around the country, staying in motels. Eventually, when Dolores is 15, she falls ill in Colorado, and Humbert takes her to a hospital. The next night, when he goes to see her, he is told that she had been discharged by a man identifying himself as her uncle. Since Humbert knows she has no living relatives, he knows she has been kidnapped.

For 2 years, he searches for her, without success. Then, he receives a letter from "Dolly (Mrs. Richard F. Schiller)." Now 17, Dolores says in the letter that she is married, pregnant, and in desperate need of money. He goes to the return address, with a gun, and finds her husband, a deaf mechanic. He is not her kidnapper. Humbert finds Dolores, who says her kidnapper was Clare Quilty, the author of a school play she had starred in, who was as obsessed with her as Humbert was. Quilty wanted her to star in a pornographic film he was making, but she refused, and left him.

Humbert wants her to leave with him, but she refuses, seemingly happy with Schiller. He writes her a check for the money that she was owed through her mother's estate, and leaves. He never sees her again. He finds Quilty, and shoots him. He closes his narrative by saying that he hopes that the memoir he has written in jail won't be published until after Dolores' death, but says, "Dolly Schiller will probably survive me by many years." This turns out not to be true: In a final tragedy, on Christmas Day 1952, Dolores dies in childbirth. Nabokov never wrote a sequel to tell of what happened to the baby.

In spite of the fact that Nabokov wrote no explicit scenes, the book was banned around the world. By 1959, however, most of the bans had been lifted. The novel was filmed in 1962, directed by Stanley Kubrick, with James Mason (53 years old at the time of filming) as Humbert, Shelley Winters as Charlotte, Sue Lyon (15) as Dolores, and Peter Sellers as Quilty. Kubrick and James Harrison vastly rewrote the dialogue for the screenplay, so that the film could pass the still-in-effect Hays Code, but gave Nabokov the on-screen credit, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, beginning the restoration of his reputation as a serious writer.

From then on, "Lolita" has been a byword for sexually precocious girls. In his 1962 song "Sarah Jackman, a parody of "Frere Jacques," Allan Sherman, in character as Jerry Bachman, asks Sarah about various family members, finally arriving at a niece named Rita. Sarah calls her "A regular Lolita!" In 1992, 17-year-old Amy Fisher shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco, the wife of her married, over-twice-her-age boyfriend Joey, and became known as "The Long Island Lolita."

In 1997, the novel was filmed again, directed by Adrian Lyne, with Jeremy Irons (48) as Humbert, Melanie Griffith as Charlotte, Dominique Swain (16) as Dolores, and Frank Langella as Quilty. It has also been turned into stage plays, and even an opera -- in Nabokov's native Russia, with some irony.

The parodies have been many. In 1959, Italian writer Umberto Eco -- whose name is the Italian version of the English "Humbert" -- wrote Granita, about a man named Umberto Umberto, who is obsessed with a very old woman. The same year, in the style of The Ladies' Home Journal's "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" feature, Jean Kerr wrote: "Can This Romance Be Saved: Lolita and Humbert Consult a Marriage Counselor."

In 1995, Pia Pera published Lo's Diary, telling the story from Dolores' point of view, but rewriting the story considerably: She's a sadist who enjoyed killing animals before meeting Humbert and being the aggressor in the relationship, to the point of humiliating him; Humbert doesn't kill Quilty, and all 3 are still alive at the end.

Similarly, in his 1999 book Pure Drivel, comedian Steve Martin included a 6-page story, "Lolita at Fifty," in which Dolores has essentially had the same relationship that she had with Humbert, over and over again. In Martin's imagination, "Lolita" also "had a type," up to the present, by which point she was finally the older one.

Plenty of songs about "jailbait" have become hits, including before the publication of Lolita. Three in particular seem to be influenced by the book: "Younger Girl," a minor hit for The Lovin' Spoonful in 1966, where it never gets any worse than, "A younger girl keeps rollin' across my mind"; "Young Girl," a big hit for Gary Puckett & The Union Gap in 1968, with the chorus of "Young girl, get out of my mind. My love for you is way out of line. You better run, girl, you're much too young, girl"; and "Don't Stand So Close to Me," a 1980 hit for The Police.

That song is narrated by a teacher whose student comes on to him. The lyrics don't make it clear that anything has happened between them, but they make it very clear that everybody in the school, students and teachers alike, think something has happened, to the point where, "It's no use, he sees her, he starts to shake and cough, just like the old man in that book by Nabokov."

In 1961, Vladimir and Véra Nabokov moved to Montreux, Switzerland, and lived there for the rest of their lives. A despiser of Communism, he never returned to Russia, saying, "Russia has always been a curiously unpleasant country, despite her great literature. Unfortunately, Russians today have completely lost their ability to kill tyrants."

He continued to write until his death on July 2, 1977, in Montreux, at the age of 78. Véra Nabokova lived until 1991. Dmitri inherited his father's skill at linguistics, and became a translator, a Russian teacher in the U.S. Army in World War II, an opera singer, and his father's literary executor, and lived until 2012. He never married, and is not known to have had any children, so it is likely that Vladimir Nabokov's bloodline has died out, although his siblings have living descendants.

*

September 1, 1955 was a Thursday. There were only 3 scores on this historic day, all in baseball's National League:

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Milwaukee Braves, 6-3 at Ebbets Field. Roger Craig was the winning pitcher, and was supported by 2 hits each from Roy Campanella, Carl Furillo and Jim Gilliam. Jackie Robinson did not appear in the game. Hank Aaron, in only his 2nd season in the major leagues, did, going 1-for-5 with an RBI groundout.

* The New York Giants lost to the Cincinnati Redlegs (as the Reds were known from 1954 to 1958), 7-4 at the Polo Grounds. Jim Hearn got knocked out of the box in the 4th inning, and Joe Nuxhall went the distance for the win. Dusty Rhodes hit 2 home runs, and Alvin Dark 1, but Willie Mays went 0-for-4. For the Reds, Chuck Harmon went 2-for-4 with a home run and 3 RBIs.

* And the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 7-4 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. For the Buccos, Gene Freese went 4-for-5 with 2 RBIs, and Román Mejías went 3-for-4 with 4 RBIs. For the Cards, Stan Musial went 1-for-4 with an RBI.