NABOKOV AS ECOCRITIC: THE PARADOX OF THE HYPERREAL IN LOLITA

In spite of the author’s claim that he has nothing to teach readers or critics, Vladimir Nabokov’s masterpiece has been read from innumerable angles. While he affirms in the Afterword to Lolita, “I happen to be the kind of author who in starting to work on a book has no other purpose than to get rid of that book,” critics have examined the novel’s essential critique of American culture over and over (311).[1] Given Nabokov’s strong opinions about social and moral issues, as Dana Brand has observed, “it is hard to believe that these opinions do not manifest themselves in…his most comprehensive representation of modern American life” (14). Working from this assumption, one may use an ecocritical analysis of Lolita to reveal the direct correlation between the depiction of a decaying landscape and American cultural criticism. Further, perceived ruination of the environment in the novel can be framed to trace Humbert’s transition from aestheticism to the hyperreality of consumerism. Humbert’s quest to possess Dolores, then, proffers a troubling metaphor of the annihilation of nature by consumerist culture