On reading Lolita

I've started reading Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. The book is, to quote The Guardian, 'an endlessly controversial high-wire act' about how a twelve-year-old girl is lusted after by Humbert Humbert, an adult man. People agree that the book is controversial, to which I agree, but not on the point of why the book is controversial. Some believe it's a pedophile's excuse. Some think the book is sarcasm, an illusory story based on sarcasm and irony. Some see the book as an erotic novel from a pedophile's perspective. Some don't see it as erotic in any sense. Actor Brian Cox, who played Humbert in a 2009 one-man stage monologue based on the novel, stated that the novel is "not about Lolita as a flesh and blood entity. It's Lolita as a memory." The book received very little attention when it was first published in 1955. However, when Graham Greene (perhaps my all-time favourite author) said Lolita was one of his three favourite books that were published in 1955, sales increased notably. When…