America’s Poshlust Vacuum: The Young-Girl, Émigré, and Artist in Nabokov’s Lolita

Authors

  • Meg Cook Reed College

Keywords:

Nabokov, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Young Girl, Tiqqun, Poshlust

Abstract

In his biography of Nikolai Gogol, Vladimir Nabokov identifies the Russian term poshlust as “Not only the obviously trashy but also the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive.” In this presentation, Meg Cook reads Nabokov’s Lolita through the lens of poshlust as it applies to American commodity fetishism; the Eden-esque mythology of manifest destiny (both the physical and bodily landscapes conquered therein); and mid-century notions of nationalism, consumerism, and adolescence. Cook unpacks the roles of Lolita’s main characters, Lolita and Humbert, as well as how Nabokov himself is implicated in the American poshlust he critiques.

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Author Biography

Meg Cook, Reed College

Meg Cook is a MALS student at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She received her B.A. from Florida State University in 2014, where she studied English with an emphasis in Editing, Writing, and Media. When she’s not thinking about Nabokov, she works for the Portland media arts nonprofit, the Northwest Film Center.

References

Baudrillard, Jean. The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. Sage, 1998.

Borden, Richard. “Nabokov’s Travesties of Childhood Nostalgia.” Nabokov

Studies: Volume 2, edited by D. Barton Johnson, Charles Schlacks, Jr., 1995, pp. 104-134.

Giles, Paul. “Virtual Eden: ‘Lolita’, Pornography, and the Perversions of American Studies.” Journal of American Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1., Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 41-66.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Lolita. Vintage International, 1997.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Nikolai Gogol. New Directions Books, 1959.

Tiqqun. Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl. New York:

Semiotext(e), 2012.

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Published

2019-01-29

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Section

Articles