While I actually sympathize with the author's intent, Nabakov is not the best of literary targets, as even his most sympathetic characters form a cabinet of gro

While I actually sympathize with the author's intent, Nabakov is not the best of literary targets, as even his most sympathetic characters form a cabinet of grotesqueries -- vide the protagonists of Pnin, Bend Sinister, or Pale Fire -- and Humbert Humbert is most assuredly a monster. On the other hand, the sexual politics of Nabakov are worthy of interrogation; he is a literary giant, but hardly immune from criticism, and his female characters tend towards the underdrawn at best. But great works are often great in spite of their politics, and the Russian novelists perhaps more so than most. One should not hastily lock away our artistic heritage on the same grounds upon one might dismiss a political jeremiad. Edit: And, to address the contretemps itself, I'm going to take the cowardly middle path and say that, while to identify with Nabakov's characters is to generally if not always misread Nabakov, it is also true -- death of the author and whatnot -- that deliberately misreading an author is a laudable act! The central tenet of postmodernism is the recognition that just as we have unreliable narrators, we also have unreliable authors and, if one feels that Lolita is mistreated not as a matter of plot but of characterization, then interrogation of the text and author is a service to scholarship. The only requirement to misreading an author is to at all times be aware of what the author intended. Accidentally misreading the text is academic malpractice.