Why We Read Fiction_ Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine [72]
Let me illustrate this point by returning to (and now quoting in full) one already discussed instance of Humbert's using the minds of strangers to insinuate his view of Lolita into readers' consciousness:
Oh, I had to keep a very sharp eye on Lo, little limp Lo! Owing perhaps to constant amorous exercise, she radiated, despite her very childish appearance, some special languorous glow which threw garage fellows, hotel pages, vacationists, goons in luxurious cars, maroon morons near blued pools, into fits of concupiscence which might have tickled my pride, had it not incensed my jealousy. (159)
It is easy to see how on our first reading we subconsciously use the "testimony" of hotel pages and maroon morons to corroborate Humbert's vision of Lolita. Lacking though they must be that creative insight which allows Humbert to recognize a nymphet when he sees one, these men still cannot help feeling that there is something special about that "little limp" girl and respond accordingly by falling into "fits of concupiscence." We trace what is really Humbert's representation of Lolita as a little oversexed "daemon" to the minds of aroused multitudes and, for the time being, buy that representation wholesale.
Snuggled in the middle of Humbert's ravings about the garage fellows' carnal wishes, is, however, a quiet observation that Lolita in fact had a "very childish appearance." Upon our first reading, the "past-tense" Humbert's assured tone as he divines the thoughts of strangers prevents our realization that with her "childish appearance" Lolita is unlikely to affect people the way that the "past-tense" Humbert claims she does. When we are rereading the novel, however, the description of Lolita as a mere child begins to sound like something that the "present-tense" Humbert might have written and thus "faced" (to use Phelan's insight) for the first time.
Of course, he must have faced it only askance. For the "present-tense"
11: Nabokov's Lolita
Humbert is at this point quite a way from finishing writing his "Confessions" and thus attaining that painful clear-sightedness with which Phelan credits him. Still, the sentence can be profitably read in terms of a tacit tension generated by the two source-monitoring strategies that compete for its overall meaning. When we pay more attention to the distributed sources of representation of Lolita as a nymphet, we are being sold, more or less, on Humbert's lie. When we focus instead on the time tags and think in terms of "Humbert then" vs. "Humbert now," we begin to perceive the text as telling us the truth in spite of itself.
I see the same tension sustained until the very end of Lolita. It is this tension that makes possible very different critical responses to the novel's closing sentences, in which Humbert speaks about "the refuge of art" as the only shared immortality that could be granted to him and his (still his!) Lolita. I have earlier read this sentiment as typical of Humbert's manipulation of his readers' source-monitoring ability. If Humbert wants us to think that "the minds of later generations"—a series of seemingly independent sources—will indeed unite him with "his" Lolita, his project of self-exoneration is apparently far from over, and manipulation and deceit go on. In contrast, Phelan, whose interpretation can be seen as geared more toward registering the time tags implicitly present in the novel (i.e., Humbert then vs. Humbert now), reads the same passage very differently. He considers it a "statement of noble purpose," pointing out that "the very last line shows that [Humbert] harbors no illusions about his own redemption: the implication of where he expects to spend eternity—in contrast to where