He was in Paradise.

The central theme is exploitation of a child by an adult, as directly said by Nabakov in the forward to its third printing.

I don't see the label of 'Lolita' in this context as anything less than an indictment on adult behavior at the expense of the kids.

and recently watched the movie version with Jeremy Irons as Humbert. So I didn't read the forward.

I think most readers can grasp basic theme, context, and content. And as it's been such a long time, rereading it as an adult may be shed new perspectives into the human condition... and maybe provide us insight into separating Implication from Inference.

As were Epstein and his ‘friend’.

that's how those fucking narcissistic predators are!

Via Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita_Express

The jet was nicknamed the Lolita Express by the locals in the Virgin Islands, because of its frequent arrivals at Little Saint James with apparently underage girls.[2]

[2] Whalen, Andrew (July 9, 2019). "What is the Lolita Express? Epstein's infamous sex plane included VIPS like Bill Clinton". Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/jeffrey-epstein-lolita-express-bill-clinton-flight-logs-1448367" target="_blank">Archived from the original on November 27, 2019. Retrieved November 28, 2019.


Clinton disclaims

Excellent. The last week has been full of snickering coverage at times, even from progressives. This is about violence against children and minors.

Last edited Mon Jul 21, 2025, 03:00 PM - Edit history (1)

couldn't help himself -"it was her fault". No mention of exploitation or abuse.

I'm familiar with the term "Lolita" from the move, which implies a cutesy, wink/wink, pedophile "relationship".

It's a cute name "Lolita" and many pedophiles use the excuse "she seduced me, it was her fault, she enjoyed it" as their excuse. - Pretty darned disgusting.

I can't really speak to people using Lolita as a cute name as no one I acquaint myself with would implicitly debase themselves by doing so.

"I can't really speak to people using Lolita as a cute name as no one I acquaint myself with would implicitly debase themselves by doing so." (your words). Why would it be called the "Lolita Express" if it would "debase" anyone? Especially the girls who were victims. Why isn't it called the Epstein/Trump Pedophile Express?

As to why X is used instead of Y, I dunno. Sounds like a great opportunity for Research! I hope you share your objective findings with us after all is said and done.

to "people I acquaint myself with", so you might be mistaken about what the term "Lolita" means to the majority.

EDIT to correct "people I know" to "people I acquaint myself with" - not a big misquote, but I corrected it and apologize.

He became obsessed w/her, thinking he was her "world". The Lolita character was a young teen who enjoyed her friends, going places, being a young teen. He was a fucking loser who wanted to glob onto her youth and energy. I see it as exploitation and abuse, but the take away for so many is that it was her "fault" because she dressed like that, acted like that, went to that place, etc. - "she needed to be more modest" - sarcasm.

Stanley Kubrick's - which was made in 1962 and Adrian Lyne's in 1997. Jeremy Irons (who loves to play rogue characters) is in the later one. I think his is a more nuanced performance. But in the end he is a ruined man.

Just the name "Lolita" is disturbing to me - old, evil man exploiting a young victim (I was very young). The Lolita Express my ass - the pedophile express is the correct name.

There is nothing literary about the "Lolita Express."

Ironically, it is Quilty who rescues Lolita from Humbert. In the movie he is even more disgusting than Humbert, but they recognize each other as having the same sickness.

Lolita is victim of rape. And kidnapping. Humbert is a rapist. Lolita did not "seduce" him. That Nabokov made you feel anything positive for Humbert was on purpose to drive home his point that "regular" people are rapists and they aren't just white-van-driving psychopaths.

Humbert comes up with the term "Lolita" to imply that she seduced him. But the meaning of Lolita in popular usage is a seductive young girl.

"Lolita" implies that the young girls seduced the older men, when in fact they were raped.

Lots of people don't get literature. If they think that Lolita is a seductive young girl, they didn't get the novel and are likely a little gross. People also think Romeo and Juliet is a love story when it absolutely isn't.

But NOTHING in the novel points to the character to be a seductress.

Here I am!

And if you think that Lolita, in that book, is a seductress, then, yeah, that's a little gross. I don't know how anyone reads that and blames her for what happens to her. SHE'S TWELVE. He didn't make her 17; he made her twelve frickin' years old. You know why? So that we would all know that she isn't the one making sexual advances on him. He's raping her. Please tell me you got that from the book.

The reader infers a thing, an author implies a thing. You are inferring a meaning he did not imply, and attempting to assert it's the commonly held definition without any evidence to support the assertion.

He very much understood surrealism. That his novel is told in first person through Humbert is making it CLEARLY an unreliable narrator. HE is the only one that gives us any indication that Lolita is a seductress. And those incidents of seduction are not that. She puts her legs over his at one point? She's twelve.

So you are telling me that Nabokov wanted us to believe Humbert? Do you have anything in the text that supports that? Because I have plenty that supports my unreliable narrator argument, mainly, he rapes a 12 year old repeatedly. I don't believe him when he says anything about her role in that "seduction."

I'm entering year 35 of being an English teacher, but thanks for the infer vs imply lesson.

My mistake. My aoplgies.

Oh, and also: long days and pleasant nights.

Humbert seduced himself. Lolita went along with it because short term, he was a means to an end. She seduced a lot of men but he wasn't one of them. At the end of the book, when he finally sees he rfor who she is and realizes how one sided his great love was, he can't live with it.

Unfortunately, all those paunchy businessmen who ponied up the big bucks to go visit pedo island will always think of themselves as the divine gift to teenaged girls and will blame the girls for seducing them. Ask the girls, it was rape.

So yeah, the Lolita Express trope holds up. Lolita put up with her stepfather in bed for survival. The teenagers on Epstein's island put up with old creepers for the same reason.

And if you're going to accuse Lolita of seduction you'd better clear it with the other posters on this thread who absolutely deny it.

and it was a novel about self deception.

If it had been the male model of a young teenager seducing a vulnerable old man, that old man would simply have replaced her with another thirteen year old seductress when Lolita decamped to be with a lover she'd chosen. Suicide would not have been in Hunbert's future had simple seduction been all there was to it.

I suspect people will argue over this novel as long as men see a heartless barely pubescent seductress and women see a heartless stepfather who repeatedly raped her. The truth is that Humbert deceived himself completely about everything, whil Lolita herself was as much of a realist as a girl that young can be, trading sex for support.

(By the way, that appeal to the bandwagon fell totally flat. It is a fallacy. It doesn't work)

Last edited Mon Jul 21, 2025, 09:49 PM - Edit history (1)

(OP stated they hated the term “Lolita Express.)

People using "Lolita" to describe sexualized young girls are not referencing a Russian novel from 1955.

Anybody remember "Long Island Lolita," Amy Fisher? She wasn't called that because of some literary interpretation.

Amy Fisher, the so-called “Long Island Lolita,” is arrested for shooting Mary Jo Buttafuoco on the front porch of her Massapequa, New York, home. Fisher, only 17 at the time of the shooting, was having an affair with 38-year-old Joey Buttafuoco, Mary Jo’s husband. The tawdry story soon became a tabloid and talk-show fixture, the source of three television movies and countless jokes.