Invention of a Nymphet

In the opening lines of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita—arguably one of the most famous incipits of all time—the narrator, Humbert Humbert, engulfs the object of his desire in a linguistic caress: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.” By the time his tongue taps three, the reader has been lulled into his upside-down world, coerced into accompanying him on his sordid journey across America with his stepdaughter, Lolita, in tow. The true horror of the novel is not that we bear witness to the psychological manipulation and rape of a twelve-year-old girl, but that, in the thrall of the narrator’s poetic diction, we find ourselves all too complicit.

This premise was shocking in its time, and remains so to this day. While drafting the novel...