In her new novel Fox, Joyce Carol Oates does to Nabokov’s Lolita the same thing that Nabokov does in Lolita. For the uninitiated, both novels are about a charming, cultured pedophile who preys on middle-school girls. If that’s all you see in these books, joke’s on you because the highly literate will know that these novels are word games. If you are in on the game, you can spaz out for hours over every paragraph. In order to derive the full amount of pleasure from Oates’ sly winkles to Nabokov, you need to know his text extremely well. Names of characters, names of places, literary allusions. None of it’s in your face because if you have to explain, you really shouldn’t bother.
There are so many layers, hints, suggestions that you can plunge deeper and deeper. But beyond all this, Fox is also a novel of ideas. Nabokov’s Lolita is not. It is a novel of and about language but it does not address polemical subjects or contribute to culture wars because it was written before all that. I will talk about this in a future post.
Clarissa's Blog 
I disagree that Lolita was written before fiction became polemical weapons in the cultural wars. There were tons of “committed” novelists like Sartre and Camus, whom Nabokov loathed. Humbert even makes a joke about pitching a movie about “existentialism” to Hollywood.
I’ll give Fox a try on your recommendation, though I’ve never been able to read Oates’ fiction. I love some of her essays, – one about Dosteyevsky’s Possessed (talk about a “novel of ideas”!) You can find it online but they won’t let me post a link here.
LikeLike
What are the ideas in Lolita, though? The word games are fascinating but what else is there? Don’t get me wrong, I love the novel. But I haven’t been able to locate anything in it beyond the beauty of the language and the intellectual enjoyment of solving the puzzles.
LikeLike
It has been a very long time since I read Brian Boyd’s book length commentary on Nabokov’s “Ada,” but I recall that Boyd makes a case for Nabokov as a philosophical novelist concerned with the nature of time and the afterlife. Unfortunately, it has been too long for me to reconstruct the argument. I believe that Boyd discusses “Lolita” in his book “Stalking Nabokov,” which I have not read but should. Perhaps he makes a similar argument there.
LikeLike
I guess, the word games themselves are an expression of the writer’s philosophy. In that sense, you can see it as philosophical.
LikeLike
This sounds great but I’m worried I’m not well read enough to enjoy it, tbh. Will be sure to reread Lolita first at the very least.
LikeLike
It’s still very enjoyable and a powerful read without knowing Lolita, I promise. Read Fox, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy.
LikeLiked by 1 person