How unreliable is Humbert inLolita?

Abstract

i t is notoriously difficult to make sense of Humbert's claim in the novel's final three paragraphs that he started, fifty-six days ago, to write Lolita, first in the psychopathic ward for observation, and then in this well-heated, albeit tombal, seclusion.1 He asserts impressive productivity during his confinement. Motivated by his original intention to these notes in toto at his trial (p. 308), we gather that he leaves his fictional editor, Dr. John Ray, Jr., well over three hundred pages of manuscript which Ray publishes intact after a few minor corrections (p. 3). But the question remains whether Humbert spends the entire last eight weeks of his imaginary life writing. He is in failing health and faces an imminent trial date, so every day must count. Yet a close examination ofthe pointedly detailed chronology of his last nine chapters throws his writing time awry by three days. Ray says on the novel's first page that the protagonist died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952 (p. 3). If we assume that Humbert's first and last use of the title minutes before his heart failure decisively marks its hurried completion, he should have begun his manuscript on 22 September.2 But it is not easy to square this assumption with the book, which leaves him free on that day to collect and read Dolores' letter. Furthermore, he remains at liberty to pursue his insomniac three-day hunt through Coalmont, Ramsdale, and Parkinton to Pavor Manor (pp. 266-93), where he seems to take an hour to kill Clare Quilty on the morning of 25 September (pp. 293-308). Critics have attributed this important factual contradiction to two pos? sible principals. We can convict an artfully unreliable narrator (Humbert Humbert) whose ego still throbs with the certainty that he manipulates time along with the sympathies of his readers as he works against the clock to tie up his narrative threads: thus, he neatly, but implausibly, settles the destinies of the three main characters with a reconciliatory visit to Dolores and revenge on Quilty.