Interview # 11

Dolores Haze was born in 1955 with the publication of Lolita by the Russian writer, Vladimir Nabokov, by most accounts a purposeful, imaginative novelist with an intellectual's curiosity and the ability to satirize without his target being aware of the ironic scrutiny.   In a number of interviews, Nabokov expressed his belief that Lolita was his finest work.  Its eponymous heroine was aged twelve at the time of publication; the time frame of the novel extends from its beginning in 1947, when Humbert Humbert, the lead male character, moves into a rented room in a small, fictional New England town with Dolores' widowed mother, to 1952, when Humbert dies of a coronary and Dolores dies in childbirth.  Alternately reviled and praised when first published, Lolita has achieved status as a modern classic.

Interviewer:  Were you at any time actually in love with Humbert?

Dolores Haze:  What do I look like to you?  It was one thing, getting it on with him because I could, but love was never a factor because I had no experience with the stuff I used to think was love.

Interviewer:  Such as?


Dolores Haze:  Hanging out together. Going to movies.  Going shopping.

Interviewer:  Humbert wrote of being appalled with some of your tastes relative to cultural things.

Dolores Haze:  Like that stuff he was always reading or talking about was so hot?  Gimme a break.

Interviewer:  And yet you were intrigued by his being attracted to you.

Dolores Haze:  I was a freaking orphan and along comes this guy who I have some control over.

Interviewer:  Some critics thought Humbert held you pretty much a captive.  A sex slave.

Dolores Haze:  Oh, please!  After that blow up after the school play that old Claire Quilty wrote, who do you think suggested Humbert and I take off on the road again.

Interviewer:  Scholars have suggested Quilty was Humbert's doppleganger.  What's your take on him?

Dolores:  An older guy who didn't have a thing for young girls.  I mean, didn't I try.  But no action.

Interviewer:  Had he been willing--

Dolores:  Like I said, you go where the power is.  I'm supposed to sit around and wait for guys my age to hit on me?  I had five years.  You know, carpe fucking diem.