My wife listened to Lolita as an audiobook this weekend, and one of my students was reading it last week, which reminded me of a couple funny stories about it while I worked at B&N.
1. For reasons that I will never understand, Barnes and Noble put Lolita on the beach read table several summers in a row. I love it just as much as any other self-respecting, edgy English major, but a beach read it is not. Definitely more of an "at home in your study" or maybe "on the bus" kind of book. Potential awkwardness aside, it's a decently heavy cognitive list, not the kind of fluff we usually associate with "beach reads."
2. One time (probably while discussing said beach read table) one of my coworkers was saying it's totally gross, we shouldn't have it, etc. He was a huge Indiana Jones fan (as anyone should be, at least for Raiders) and I remember teasing him about how Marion probably (it's not clear in the movie) isn't that much older than Dolores (though Indy is obviously younger than Humbert). Humbert first meets Dolores when she's 12, and their road trip/kidnapping lasts until she's around 14 or 15. Marion's age is given as anywhere between 15 and 17 (movie vs guidebook vs novel).
The dialogue in question:
Marion: I learned to hate you in the last ten years.
Indy: I never meant to hurt you.
Marion: I was a child. I was in love. It was wrong and you knew it!
Indy: You knew what you were doing.
Marion: Now I do! This is my place. Get out!
(Definitely less bad than Humbert.)
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