@edgarblythe,
edgarblythe wrote:I'm talking fiction writing, not judging your personal life.
There isn't anything to "judge", thank you. I have read plenty of fiction where the writer attempts to "get inside the head" of a "bad" person, e.g. Nazis, murderers, and, as in Nabokov's book, a truly loathsome pervert. often, in so doing, managing to show us that the person depicted is human like we are, not merely a monster (and thus all the more deserving of blame). It is a considerable feat of artistic creation to do this successfully. For one thing, the author must be very sure of where he or she stands morally when drawing the portrait, so to speak, of the protagonist.
One thing I noticed in the Wikipedia article is that it states that "Lolita" is Humbert's private nickname for the girl, whose given name is Dolores. That nickname for girls and women named Dolores is standard in Spanish speaking countries, like us calling Annes "Annie", which took me aback, so thoroughly has that word become tainted in English speaking discourse.
