Nevertheless, if I am right about the complex coding of Humbert’s narra-
tion in part 1, then the emergence of the two groups of actual audience mem-
bers I identified earlier—those taken in by Humbert and those who refuse to
take even his self-condemnation seriously—is not surprising. Those who get
taken in privilege the bonding unreliability over the estranging. Those who
refuse to see him as altered in any significant way privilege the estranging
unreliability over the bonding. As I perceive Nabokov’s communication to
his authorial audience, both groups of readers are missing important aspects
of Nabokov’s complex strategy. In both cases, however, the misreadings have
their sources in that strategy itself, in Nabokov’s effort to use the resources of
estranging and bonding unreliability for his purposes of guiding his readers to
a many-layered and evolving set of ethical responses to Humbert.
These conclusions bring us back to the larger questions about the ethics
of the telling in Lolita. Does it make ethical sense—that is, is it fair—to hold
Nabokov accountable for the misreadings of his strategy? By the same token,
does it make ethical sense—is it fair—to say he has no ethical accountability
other than to say more loudly what all authors can say, “Caveat Lector”? I
do not want to answer “yes” to either of these questions, which leads me to
think that there is something wrong with the way they are formulated. What’s
wrong, I think, is that the questions enforce a separation between implied
author and actual audience, when the act of rhetorical reading leads to their
mutual dependence. In other words, both Nabokov and his readers bear some
responsibility for the misreadings, just as both bear some responsibility for the
more successful communication. Since Nabokov’s experiment with unreliable
narration sets up interpretive and ethical traps for readers, Nabokov must bear
some responsibility for readers who fall into those traps. But his experiment
also challenges readers to recognize those traps and avoid them, and they bear
some responsibility if they are not up to the challenge.
More important, however, are the implications of this conclusion for my
analysis itself and for my conception of rhetorical poetics. The conclusion
implies that if I find these other two groups of readers not fully responsive
to Nabokov’s communication, I must in turn acknowledge my own readerly
fallibility. In practical terms, this acknowledgment means that what I regard
as “Nabokov’s authorial audience” is itself a hypothesis subject to further test-
ing and revision. This admission does not mean that the authorial audience
is only a projection of my readerly interests and desires—Lolita, like so many
other narratives I have read, contains too much material that does not con-
form to my interests and desires—but it does mean that authorial audiences
and actual audiences can rarely, if ever, be fully and definitively distinguished.
ESTRANgINg UNRELIABILITY, BONDINg UNRELIABILITY • 115