Barnes & Noble East Lansing Essay Contest Winners

First Place Award
Roxanne Russell
East Lansing resident

“Memorizing Deviancy”

     Nabokov, knife of my night, cryer of my bones. My sin, my soul. Na-buh-kov: the nip of the name needing a note to be swallowed down the throat to nest, at last, in the neck. Na. Buh. Kov.
      He was low, plain low, writing of a pedophilio, in love with Lo, Lola, Dolly, Dolores... Lolita. I called him low in slacks. I called him low at school. I called him low on the dotted line. But in my hands he was not so low after all.
      The tangle of thorns presented by Vladimir Nabokov in Lolita is already so inexorably clinging to the lobes of my brain that it is the only choice for my memorized contribution to the exiled society of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. As I hint at above in Knockoffian prose, the horrifying truth that one out of 4 initial girl-childs are the victims of being that fire in a predatorial man’s loins led me to disdain the subject matter and idea of such a novel as Lolita. This is the paradoxical nature of Lolita: it revolts as it enchants, tells the truth while it lies, blames the victim and the perpetrator, and then exonerates them. Lolita presents a humanity that is individualistic and flawed and worthy of escaping the oppression of Bradbury’s future society in Fahrenheit 451.
      With Lolita, one need not imagine a society, such as Bradbury’s in Farenheit 451, that would be prompted to eradicate it because Lolita shows up on list after list of books that have been burnt in ours. Beatty, the fire captain in Fahrenheit 451, tells Montag, the protagonist, that the beginning of the end for books in their society came when special interest groups began to protest offensive portrayals or glorification of anti-social behavior. Of all the books that could easily incite most any group against assaults on common decency--Lolita is the one. Even in prisons which are full of people with a supposedly anti-social moral code, those who prey upon children are ostracized and abused. Nevertheless, Nabokov’s eroticism of pedophilia, one of the most hated aspects of humanity, makes it necessary to save it. Why must it be protected from political correctness? For the same reasons that all forms of self-expression must be protected against the tyranny of the masses. Through facing this fictionalized version of an inescapable human reality, humanity is explored, especially in this novel where the inner workings of Humbert Humbert are only slightly less fascinating than the reader’s reactions to them. How can I, a victim, a woman, a feminist, love this book? love this character? and be turned on? This is not the forum in which to answer that question, but at least in our current society, I am allowed to encounter this uncomfortable reaction and explore it.
      The society of Fahrenheit 451 must squelch individuality, so books became dangerous. Beatty tells Montag, “We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal … A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind.” Individual reactions to books could not be centralized and controlled because they cover too many cultural and personal perspectives. For this society, individuality is risky even in the form of love. Personal attachment has been drained from this society as revealed by Montag’s wife, Mildred, and her friends. They easily move between relationships and disdain nostalgia. A book like Lolita brings to life the kind of personal attachment that drives a man to madness and, most dangerous of all, deviant behavior. No matter how deplorable one might find Humbert’s love for Lolita, it is as real and passionate as any love found in the western canon. Similarly, Montag’s fascination with Clarisse in Fahrenheit 451 is the beginning of his journey out of his society.
      As Faber, Montag’s mentor, tells Montag of a book, “Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores.” As does Lolita. Like a person, it is inconsistent, demanding, and worthy of remembrance by those who encounter it. In a world such as that created by Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451, Lolita, like love, could provide an essential source of questioning and humanity.

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