“Lolita” isn’t even his best book, “Pale Fire” is way better and they’re both totally mogged by “Ada or Ardour” - ThreadSky

theabigailthorn.bsky.social • 10 days ago

“Lolita” isn’t even his best book, “Pale Fire” is way better and they’re both totally mogged by “Ada or Ardour”

JK Rowling on LOLITA

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A love story, of murder, SA, and pedophilia.from someone who claims they love big families. Where the protagonist murders his pre teen crush's mother in the first chapter.
The only way you could see it as a love story is if you read it as a preteen girl who's being groomed.

evie-sophia.bsky.social•10 days ago

Okay, but are any of us actually surprised by this?

soniadcm.bsky.social•10 days ago

JKR, are you ok? Has the black mold in your castle took charge of you again?

flootzavut.bsky.social•9 days ago

Sadly, this was from 2025. I feel like if more of us had seen it, we would've been expecting everything since. I was blissfully unaware of JKR and living in Russia at the time.

elizabethveldon.bsky.social•10 days ago

I recommend ada or ardour to people i think will enjoy it.

Thank you for the video you made that turned me on to a great book

docpaperback.bsky.social•9 days ago

I've taught Lolita to a class of students at St Andrews. Part of the book's brilliance (& you're right, 'PF' is better) is how Nabokov tempts us, via an unreliable narrator, to regard it as a love story. Do we believe his declaration of love towards the end of the book? VN puts it out there for us.

lilmisscalculated.bsky.social•10 days ago

Today i learned Loli isn't some internet term derived from some butchered japanese translation

corneillegrimm.bsky.social•9 days ago

Remember that Lolita was Nabokov's 13th novel(3rd in english)so it represented a culmination of his work up to that point and was very good. I agree that creatively Pale Fire is better.(Gosh Lolita is something though) I like Pnin also. Check out a short story called Signs and Symbols also by him

dottyquil.bsky.social•9 days ago

Proof that even professional best-selling authors can fail their GCSE English class.

docmc.bsky.social•10 days ago

It rather lays waste to her "protect the girls from male predators" grift, doesn't it?

joeypeters.bsky.social•9 days ago

Oh she's a Nazi Nazi

memaw1.bsky.social•9 days ago

OMG. She’s always been awful.

josh592.bsky.social•9 days ago

I always thought Lolita was some kind of porn book. Is it not?

caryngibsonauthor.bsky.social•9 days ago

I went to university for literature/creative writing, and I remember struggling a lot with books where the content was almost entirely objectionable, and yet we were supposed to talk about its merits. "In Praise of the Stepmother" by Mario Vargas Llosa is the one I remember most.

ondm.bsky.social•10 days ago

BITCH WHAT??

ondm.bsky.social•10 days ago

LOVE STORY? JOAN WHAT ARE YOU ON??

zwart-ttt.bsky.social•10 days ago

Black mold I’ve heard

xdresstera.bsky.social•10 days ago

This is way before that, real old news. Some people used it as an example of her media illiteracy and why her own writing doesn't really have nuance or subtlety

transmutedmala.bsky.social•9 days ago

Anti-trans people do tend to be pedophiles and pedophile-apologists, so this checks out. It doesn’t surprise me at all that she finds predators grooming girls romantic

talgrath.bsky.social•9 days ago

How the fuck do people not understand that Lolita's narrator is an unreliable narrator. He is lying to you! It's abuse from the perspective of an abuser! This is not complicated people!

bunnyoharr.bsky.social•9 days ago

Because the bigger Lie, all male narrators should be assumed to be telling the truth - misogynist culture.

mata-hxri.bsky.social•9 days ago

i admit it's been a while since i've read it but i'm consistently shocked by how often and how easily people misconstrue lolita. it's a story about a paedophile who completely destroys a girl's life! that's literally the surface reading! and it's the correct one!

mata-hxri.bsky.social•9 days ago

but pale fire is easily one of my favourite books ever so if ada or ardor is better i'll have to check it out

buric.co•9 days ago

If she thinks it's a love story, she either hasn't actually read it or she's got a completely warped mind. OH WAIT—

maalchen.bsky.social•10 days ago

Also, if you want to mislabel a story of paedophilia as a love tragedy, Death in Venice is RIGHT FRKN THERE!

justabby.bsky.social•10 days ago

mogged? this is the first time ive seen that term.

unlimiteddada.bsky.social•9 days ago

"Pale Fire" is great and "Pnin" is good as a companion piece because there's contextual evidence that Pnin is the in-universe author "Pale Fire", but he is this bumbling old professor in his own book.

sableindustries.org•10 days ago

The sheer continental-shelf depths of irony that a woman who claims to protect other women saying, in public, that her favourite book is about the abuse of a young girl is jaw-droppingly incredible.

tamaryar.bsky.social•10 days ago

It's fine if that's her favorite book. Framing it as a love story is the problem. It's not. Nor is it ment to be.

salseragotica.bsky.social•10 days ago

YIKES. 😬😬

highlandkall.bsky.social•10 days ago

I tried reading Ada or Ardour and tbh I'd be more off-put if she cited that one

fairytunes.bsky.social•9 days ago

I AGREE THANK GOD!!! Someone finally said it.

cassesque.bsky.social•10 days ago

I love to be Famously Reclusive by posting non-stop about transed genders

zcorbain.bsky.social•10 days ago

What makes Lolita popular (which isn't the same as good writing) is the idea of the vixen virgin. I've never heard a woman say, "It's my favourite book." Plenty of men. It's like women sexuality isn't frozen at puberty and they know hebephilia is not glorious.

moonlitowl.bsky.social•10 days ago

Except it is written exceptionally well and also does not perpetuate the vixen virgin stereotype. I'm sure men with low reading comprehension (or those who haven't actually read the book) will say they love it, but that doesn't change the book itself.

zcorbain.bsky.social•9 days ago

Having low comprehension doesn't stop many people from simultaneously being Constitutional scholars, vaccine doctors, climatologists, and world historians. Not reading doesn't impede them. Despite Nabokov's excellent writing, that's not what attracted them to Lolita. The one's who actually read it.

zcorbain.bsky.social•9 days ago

True, it's the reader that brings it to the table.
@jamieloftus.bsky.social has a great podcast series on Lolita.

calumbroughingham.bsky.social•9 days ago

Very telling that her knee jerk assumption about lolita is "pornography" too, like a book about a paedophile could *only* be written *for* a paedophile

calumbroughingham.bsky.social•9 days ago

Like, it's very much in line with the ppl who are like "only a bad person could write a bad person, and we are intended to uncritically praise the actions of a protagonist" with just a smidge of sex negative feminism ("the worst kind of pornography" implies that it's *all* bad

athrox.bsky.social•10 days ago

Uffz, it really is a race to the bottom now XD

gerge.bsky.social•9 days ago

I'm petrified of approaching Ada. I thought I'd be ready after reading the first two alongside Despair & Pnin but I'm still not ready

doubleharold.bsky.social•10 days ago

I don't think her liking the book is as much of an issue as her thinking it's a love story and not a horror.

balloonshark.bsky.social•9 days ago

wasnt lolita very specifically a story about an unreliable narrator, and not a love story?

krl.bsky.social•9 days ago

JK has made being a TERF her most famous quality so people often forget that she also is a bad writer with zero reading comprehension

michaelpg.bsky.social•9 days ago

And that's not exactly unique for fantasy writers but she's also insanely unimaginative! Except for like 3 things all her harry potter stuff is borrowed from existing fantasy works. Trolls, goblins, centaurs, as a 12 year old I was BORED.

crissakentavr.bsky.social•9 days ago

I read it for the centaurs and I was still bored.

bumabee.bsky.social•10 days ago

"Every accusation is a confession" never stops being true.

mx-peacekeeper.bsky.social•10 days ago

I suspect that media literacy has never been any one generation's strong suit.

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