Lolita for the first time. I do.
Freshman fall in college
. It was 1989 and I had just turned 18. I curled up under my Laura Ashley knockoff floral comforter and cracked
Lolita open for Professor Shepard’s English 101 class. The story moved swiftly. It was electrifying. I could not put it down. I did not question that it was Lolita who seduced Humbert first. I believed that Humbert loved her. I somehow did not catch most of her tears. Dare I admit “
Lo. Lee. Ta.” pinged me with romantic longing? Professor Shepard was young, mustached and uproariously funny. His recitation in class of Humbert Humbert’s lines in cartoonish voices made us belly laugh at the outrageousness of this loser’s confessions, many of which we had missed in our own readings. And in this way the scariness of what H.H. was confessing to lost some of its power. Shepard played Humbert like Groucho Marx might do Dracula. In an exaggerated voice he deftly dropped in the games Humbert was playing as narra