ent from Nabokov’s. One consequence of this difference is that the subtype of
bonding through naïve defamiliarization is not available for Nabokov’s use. A
second consequence is that bonding unreliability through playful comparison
is likely to be a very attractive technique. And in fact, Nabokov employs it on
the very first page, where Humbert writes, “You can always count on a mur-
derer for a fancy prose style” (9). The playful comparison works to highlight
similarities—and an important difference—between Nabokov and Humbert.
Both are self-conscious stylists, both intend and enjoy the irony of Humbert’s
statement, both are making an important disclosure while calling attention to
their style. The authorial audience appreciates the playfulness and the skill of
both tellers and, in that way, is drawn toward Humbert. But Humbert, unlike
Nabokov, is a murderer, and his irony here suggests the authorial audience
needs to be wary about his ethical judgments, as his statement plays with the
ideas that the murder is less important than the style or that the style is com-
pensation for the murder. To get at more of the effects of the bonding unreli-
ability here, I bring in its larger context.
Humbert’s statement is the last sentence of his third paragraph, and it
comes after he has been engaging in some remarkable wordsmithing. It is an
immediate follow-up to his explanation in the previous sentence that he met
Dolores’s precursor “about as many years before Lolita was born as my age was
that summer” (9). But the comment applies not just to that clever circumlocu-
tion but also to the artful first two paragraphs. The first is marked by its lyri-
cal direct address and its carefully crafted parallel structures and alliterations:
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.” The paragraph is
also marked by Humbert’s luxurious celebration of the linguistic glory of her
name: “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.” The second paragraph con-
tinues the linguistic play with her name as Humbert runs through its many
variations: Lo, Lola, Dolly, Dolores, and back once more to Lolita. “She was
Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola
in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in
my arms she was always Lolita” (9).
Thus, when Humbert opines that “you can always count on a murderer for
a fancy prose style,” his jest calls attention not only to the master stylist behind
his own fancy telling and, on this measure of style at least, to their similarity;
it also calls attention to the link between the style and the keen perceptions
about Dolores it conveys. Consequently, one effect of the playful compari-
son is to align Humbert with the implied Nabokov along the axis of percep-
tion. To be sure, as with the “you can always count” statement itself, Nabokov
includes in the first few paragraphs some important warning signals against
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