"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

One of the apparent bugs on Plinky is apparently it has no idea that when I type in "Lolita" I don't mean "Reading Lolita in Tehran". So ignore the picture. Moving on!


"Lolita" stops your heart. It puts its fingers in the valves and squeezes, leaving you faint.

Aside from a meticulously contructed plot and horrific but deftly crafted characters (Humbert Humbert being the fictional character I would most like to have lunch with and then see hauled away to rot in jail), the real seductive power of the novel lies in the language. Kinetic and mercurial, it is writing infused with a supple grace that takes a particular kind of genius to handle. The more miraculous thing is that such craft came from someone who didn't operate in English as a first language, who always considered it a poor second cousin to Russian: Vladimir Nabokov.

Nabokov puts all of us native speakers and writers of English to shame. "Lolita" is the perfect example of the way I want to write, the way I wish I could write and fear I will never come within a hundred miles of. Yet every time I open the book, I am again reminded of the force of language, the transformative power of writing. With the first whisper of Lolita's name, the hope is reborn that perhaps, if I tap my tongue right, the words will come.

Lo. Lee. Ta.