âMy Poor Little Girlâ: Lolita and Nabokovâs Faulkner1 Ahmed Honeini (bio) âDown with Faulknerâ? Nabokovâs Postmodern Response to Faulkner Vladimir Nabokov had exacting literary tastes. He considered the âmasterpieces of twentieth century proseâ to be âJoyceâs Ulysses; Kafkaâs Transformation; Bielyâs Petersburg; and the first half of Proustâs fairy tale In Search of Lost Timeâ (1973, 57). Two of the few modern American writers he admired were J. D. Salinger and John Updike â he was more amenable to nineteenth-century U. S. authors such as Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe (1973, 57; 64). Nabokovâs disdain for William Faulkner, however, was notorious. Nabokov admitted he was âamused by fabricated notions about so-called âgreat books,ââ specifically that âFaulknerâs corncobby chronicles can be considered âmasterpiecesââ (1973, 57). He made clear, in fact, that Faulknerâs work âmean[t] absolutely nothing toâ him (1973, 102). Literary critic Edmund Wilson was surprised by Nabokovâs stringent dislike of Faulkner, opining that âYour failure to see his genius is a mystery to meâ and that âI think you would be rather congenial to him.â Unlike Nabokov, Wilson considered Faulkner âthe most remarkable contemporary American novelist.â Nabokov bluntly rejected Wilsonâs pleas, however, quipping âDown with Faulkner!â (Karlinsky, 211; 230â31). Given Nabokovâs severe dismissal of Faulkner, scholarly comparisons between their work are virtually non-existent. Edward A. Malone explains that this paucity in comparative studies on Faulkner and Nabokov is compounded because âIt is difficult to determine precisely how many books by Faulkner Nabokov had readâ: [End Page 65] He was definitely familiar with Light in August. He may have known Sanctuary. His quip about Faulknerâs âcorncobby chroniclesâ suggests the scene in which Popeye rapes Temple Drake with a corncob. [ . . . ] There is no indication, however, that Nabokov was familiar with any other novel or short story by Faulkner.2 (65) This essay builds upon Wilsonâs contention that Nabokov should have been âcongenialâ to Faulkner by proposing that Lolita, one of the central works of transgressive postmodernist literature, was written in response to three of Faulknerâs own modernist âcorncobby chroniclesâ: The Sound and the Fury, Sanctuary, and Absalom, Absalom!3 I argue that key aspects of Humbert Humbertâs character, personality, and actions are comparable to, and indeed a distillation of, Quentin Compson, Popeye Vitelli, and Wash Jones. Dolores âLolitaâ Haze, meanwhile, is an amalgamation of Caddy Compson, Temple Drake, and Milly Jones. In his pursuit and sexual victimization of Dolores during their two-year journey across the United States, Humbert is driven by base, socially transgressive instincts which mirror Quentinâs sexually perverse desire for his sister Caddy; the routinized violence and abuse which Popeye subjects Temple to while she is held captive at the Old Frenchman place; and Washâs exploitation and murderous rage towards Milly. Despite Nabokovâs overt aesthetic disdain for Faulkner, I urge a reevaluation of his position on Faulknerâs modernism through Lolitaâs explicitly postmodern lens, especially because Nabokovâs concerns with the abuse, silencing, and subjugation of women often parallels and intersect with Faulknerâs.4 By positioning Nabokov as a distinctly postmodern author responding to the quintessentially modernist Faulkner, I echo Brian McHaleâs formulation [End Page 66] of postmodern aesthetics, which âproduces new insights, new or richer connectionsâ to modernism (4): Postmodernism is not post modern, whatever that might mean, but post modernism; it does not come after the present (a solecism), but after the modernist movement. Thus the term âpostmodernism,â if we take it literally enough, Ă la lettre, signifies a poetics which is the successor of, or possibly a reaction against, the poetics of early twentieth-century modernism, and not some hypothetical writing of the future. (5, italics McHaleâs) Following McHaleâs lead, I argue that, within Lolita, Nabokov interrogates and critiques traditional, heteronormative notions of sexuality and desire through his depiction of Humbertâs perverse relations with Dolores. In doing so, he follows on from precisely the kinds of questions and concerns which Faulkner raises about male desire and female subjugation through Quentinâs destructive penchant for incest, Popeyeâs relentless victimization of Temple, and Washâs objectification of Milly. Nabokov...