New York Times essay on rereading “Lolita” and praising Nabokov’s memoir “Speak, Memory” fails to note his symptoms of multiple personality

The essay decries the pedophilia of Lolita. Since I, too, am against pedophilia, I don’t fault the essay on that basis.

What I do object to is yet another discussion of Lolita that fails to note the novel’s puzzling inconsistency. By the end of the novel, Humbert Humbert is still pursuing Lolita when she is no longer a “nymphet”—a pubescent girl aged nine to fourteen—but is now a pregnant, married adult. It is as if the author of end of the book was not the same as the author of the beginning, hadn’t read the beginning, and didn’t know the novel’s premise.

The essayist also mentions Nabokov’s memoir, Speak, Memory. She had been a “huge fan of Nabokov’s — I had bought copies of his memoir, “Speak, Memory,” in bulk to hand out to my friends at college” (1). However, like many other people who have read, or even taught, Nabokov’s memoir, she makes no mention of his blatant dissociative fugues and memory gaps.

Puzzling inconsistency or self-contradiction, dissociative fugues, and memory gaps are symptoms of multiple personality. I have discussed these symptoms in many past posts, including posts on Lolita and Speak, Memory.

1. Emily Mortimer. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/books/review/lolita-obscenity-cancel-culture-emily-mortimer.html