Quote Originally Posted by Johanna
I am embarrassed to admit that unlike both of you (Olya and Gromozeka) I completely missed the greatness of the book. Perhaps I was truly too young, or the wrong gender to really "get" it. But the language made no particular impression, the pace was slow and the plot didn't interest me..
There's nothing wrong with not liking a book, even a classic one. Especially when the subject is rather controversal. I believe the language could not make an impression, because the words you read were not Nabokov's words, it was a translator's attempt to find a substitute. The more refined the prose, the harder it's to translate. It takes away all the magic. Also it depends on whether you can relate to the main characters (I could relate to Humbert, despite his.. er... shortcomings).
Haha, my school probably banned the book in the 1960s or so, and simply forgot to "un-ban" it later. There were lots of other books available with explicit scenes, perhaps that one was just the first to break a taboo. Nabokov was not covered at all in Litterature in school.
And yeah, it's becoming clear to me that things were not as laced up in the USSR as the rest of us thought!
Oh, I don't want to mislead you. It WAS absolutely impossible to imagin this book in an "oldschool" Soviet school (say, in the 60s). But in late 80's-early 90's things became very lax, and we studied a lot of books which were banned or not approved at some point of history (Bulgakov, Orwell, Solzenitsin, Nabokov, etc.)
Hilarious that you actually made a presentation about that scene! Did you wear that old-fashioned style of school uniform that with an apron, that looks like it is from ca 1890, lol..?
It'a pity, but no. As far as I remember we did not wear school uniforms in high school.