>>24531936 (OP)It's an exploration of the mind of pedos and the type of self-serving cognitive distortions they use to convince themselves that raping kids is OK. Nabakov was a victim as a child.
At the time, people thought all pedos were obviously creepy old men who kidnapped children, so the superficially charming and intelligent Humbert is a subversion of that, which is good because most pedos look and act like normal people, it's just that the obvious creeps are caught more often because they're incompetent at hiding / grooming their victims, and probably autistic. Also, it's a great example of the "unreliable narrator" narrative device which in hindsight is one of the reasons why this book is so often misinterpreted. See, you're not supposed to see Dolores/Lolita as having seduced him, that's Humbert's self-serving cognitive distortion speaking. He is presenting the story is a way that shows himself in the best possible light, the reader is supposed to be questioning the narrative and looking at the subtext. The author put too much faith into the public's intelligence and ethics. The fact that so many literature professors took it at face value and interpreted it as a "love story" really makes me wonder about them.
