Response #10 (for 10/22)

"We are made into Humbert's judge and jury and are accordingly addressed as 'your honor' and as 'ladies and gentlemen of the jury,' for Humbert presents his legal and moral case to us. Beyond that, we are also 'the astute reader' (p. 274) who is called upon to appreciate Humbert's artistry. Although Humbert asks his 'learned readers' (p. 59, p. 135) to view his history with 'impartial sympathy' (p. 59),
he also wants us to recognize how much we have in common with him: 'Reader! Bruder!' (p. 264). Our dilemma is that we simultaneously have to evaluate a man's life and criticize his artistic creation." (Winston 426-427)

Here, Winston has pointed out a number of Humbert's extraneous word choices, more specifically those that attempt to justify his extraneous word choices. He calls us "astute" and "learned" when it would suffice to simply call us readers, and manipulates us into sympathizing with him by speaking to us with pretty adjectives. This is the same thing he does throughout the novel without addressing the reader directly, and the implication is that he wants to make Lolita a work of art for us, and for her, because that's what every party involved deserves. Lolita deserves it because she's the "light of his life, fire of his loins."  Humbert deserves it because he isn't a bad man, just troubled and tortured and in love. And we deserve it because we're so "astute" and "learned" and simple prose wouldn't be good enough for us.

The problem with this method of Humbert's is that it's not hard to see through, and it becomes incredibly easy to see Humbert as a writer of fiction rather than memoir. The rest of his extraneous words start to stand out, as pointed out by Winston's article, and everything becomes unbearably fictional.