![]() ![]() But we also have the character’s own words, his own voice: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. We have Nabokov’s electric prose, of course. So why does Nabokov win? Why do we go along with Humbert into the dark? His Humbert Humbert is one of literature’s most ghastly and sorry creations, but we find ourselves listening to him, following him across America, even as we recoil from his desires. Loathsome as he is, I will argue for this book every time. It turns me into a gawper, a gasper-not so much for its horrors as for its own wild gamble. What writer can pull off the tale of an aging, predatory child molester without scattering readers like pigeons at a gunshot? ![]() It took a lot of writing and rewriting. And one of the books that influenced me, perhaps surprisingly, was Lolita, whip-smart and shocking. But would other people want to read about a long-dead American frontiersman? (And, hang on, would they even know who he was?) Once I was hit with the memory of an old National Geographic article about Daniel Boone, I couldn’t stop thinking about him and his story. The whole idea behind my novel, All True Not a Lie in It, was a gamble. ![]()
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