Image by Giuseppe Pino, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

There may be no more a despi­ca­ble yet ridicu­lous nar­ra­tor in twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry fic­tion than the sleazy, con­de­scend­ing Hum­bert Hum­bert. And there may be no bet­ter name in twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry fic­tion than Dolores Haze, Humbert’s 12-year-old step­daugh­ter and love inter­est, whom he calls, among oth­er things, his “nymphette,” Loli­ta.

Vladimir Nabokov’s tragi­com­ic 1955 nov­el Loli­ta still has the pow­er to shock, dis­gust, and elic­it wry laugh­ter from read­ers, with its satir­i­cal take on deca­dent old Europe and wise­crack­ing young Amer­i­ca. True to its mid-cen­tu­ry U.S. set­ting and sen­sa­tion­al­is­tic sub­ject mat­ter, the nov­el is packed not only with Humbert’s obses­sive­ly creepy descrip­tion and lay­ers of lit­er­ary allu­sion, but also with plen­ty of pulpy action, if we are to believe in the events Hum­bert nar­rates.

In the novel’s penul­ti­mate chap­ter, Hum­bert tracks down Clare Quilty, anoth­er preda­to­ry old­er man who takes advan­tage of Loli­ta. Hum­bert con­fronts, then kills Quilty (or so it seems). In the final chap­ter, Hum­bert  also dies, and we learn that the nov­el is in fact his mem­oir, willed only to be pub­lished after he and Loli­ta have died. In the audio clip at the top, hear Vladimir Nabokov him­self read from the cli­mac­tic chap­ter in which Hum­bert faces Quilty down, and direct­ly above, see the author read those first unfor­get­table lines: “Loli­ta, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta.”

Find more record­ings of Nabokov read­ing his work here.

Note: You can down­load essen­tial works by Vladimir Nabokov as free audio­books (includ­ing Jere­my Irons read­ing Loli­ta) if you sign up for a free 30 Tri­al with Audi­ble. Find more infor­ma­tion on that pro­gram here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vladimir Nabokov on Loli­ta: Just Anoth­er Great Love Sto­ry?

Vladimir Nabokov Talks About Life, Lit­er­a­ture & Love in a Metic­u­lous­ly Pre­pared Inter­view, 1969

Vladimir Nabokov Mar­vels Over Dif­fer­ent “Loli­ta” Book Cov­ers

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

I’m impressed by the under­tak­ing. Neville Jason and Nax­os Audio Books have com­plet­ed an unabridged audio ver­sion of Proust’s epic, sev­en-part nov­el, Remem­brance of Things Past. Proust pub­lished the first vol­ume, Swan­n’s Way, one hun­dred years ago, in 1913, and com­plet­ed the last vol­ume, Time Regained, four­teen years lat­er, in 1927. By that time, Proust had a mas­ter­piece on his hands — a very long mas­ter­piece. The clas­sic (avail­able in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks) spans some 3,000 pages and con­tains more than 1.5 mil­lion words. Until now, Remem­brance of Things Past has nev­er been avail­able in an unabridged audio for­mat, per­haps because it would amount to the longest audio book ever made (or some­thing approach­ing that). But Neville Jason has pulled it off, pro­duc­ing a 151-hour record­ing that’s now avail­able on Audible.com. Below, we’ve pro­vid­ed sev­en free audio excerpts (one from each vol­ume), and if you care to sign up for Audi­ble’s 30-Day Free Tri­al, you can down­load any one vol­ume for free. NB: Audi­ble is an Amazon.com sub­sidiary, and we’re a mem­ber of their affil­i­ate pro­gram. If Proust isn’t your cup of tea, you can find many oth­er great works in our col­lec­tion of 630 Free Audio Books.

Swan­n’s Way 

With­in a Bud­ding Grove

The Guer­mantes Way 

Sodom and Gomor­rah

The Cap­tive 

The Fugi­tive 

Time Regained

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Mon­ty Python’s “Sum­ma­rize Proust Com­pe­ti­tion” on the 100th Anniver­sary of Swann’s Way

Arthur Conan Doyle Fills Out the Ques­tion­naire Made Famous By Mar­cel Proust (1899)

I first encoun­tered Oscar Wilde’s sto­ry “The Hap­py Prince” while work­ing part-time as a tutor on New York’s Upper East Side. Look­ing for suit­able read­ing mate­r­i­al, I came across Wilde’s children’s sto­ries, which I had not known exist­ed. They were perfect—vivid, charm­ing, lit­er­ary fairy tales with some­thing more besides. Some­thing best described by avid Wilde read­er Stephen Fry.

In the pro­mo­tion of a recent Kick­starter project to fund a 20-minute ani­ma­tion of “The Hap­py Prince” around Fry’s read­ing of the sto­ry, the actor talks of com­ing to know Wilde’s fairy tales as a child, before he knew any­thing else about the 19th cen­tu­ry Irish writer. He loved the lan­guage, he says, of all of the sto­ries, and “the beau­ty of thought, the nobil­i­ty of thought.” But “The Hap­py Prince” affect­ed him espe­cial­ly, as it affect­ed my young stu­dents and me. It is a sto­ry, he says, “about the cost of beau­ty. It is hard for me to read The Hap­py Prince with­out cry­ing. I guess because it is also some­how a love sto­ry between the swal­low and the Prince.”

Fry alludes to the two cen­tral char­ac­ters in the sto­ry, but I won’t sum­ma­rize the plot here. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured a 1974 ani­mat­ed film of “The Hap­py Prince.” In the video at the top, hear Fry read the entire­ty of the sto­ry, and direct­ly above, watch the video pre­view for the b good Pic­ture Company’s Kick­starter to bring his read­ing, and Wilde’s sto­ry, to new life. The project has met its min­i­mum goal and now seeks more fund­ing for an orig­i­nal score and a self-pub­lished sto­ry­book, among oth­er things.

Fry’s rela­tion­ship to Wilde, whom he calls “Oscar,” has been, accord­ing to him, life­long, capped by his por­tray­al of the writer in the 1997 biopic Wilde. He has dis­cussed how his read­ing of Wilde helped him come to terms with his own sex­u­al­i­ty. But his love for Wilde’s work exceeds the per­son­al. As he says in the video above, from 2008, he “fell in love with the writ­ing of Oscar Wilde” at the age of 11; after see­ing a film ver­sion of The Impor­tance of Being Earnest,” he found his “idea of what lan­guage could be… com­plete­ly trans­formed.” Fry also says above that he was not exposed to Wilde’s fairy tales as a child, in seem­ing con­tra­dic­tion to his more recent state­ments. Did he read Oscar as a child or did­n’t he?  Only Stephen Fry can say for sure. In any case, as an adult, he’s tak­en on the man­tle of Wilde’s pop­u­lar inter­preter, and I think he wears it pret­ty well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Oscar Wilde’s Children’s Sto­ries “The Hap­py Prince” and “The Self­ish Giant”

Oscar Wilde Offers Prac­ti­cal Advice on the Writ­ing Life in a New­ly-Dis­cov­ered Let­ter from 1890

Shakespeare’s Satir­i­cal Son­net 130, As Read By Stephen Fry

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

When we think of Kurt Von­negut, we tend to think of Slaugh­ter­house-Five. Maybe we also think of the short sto­ry “Har­ri­son Berg­eron,” which gets assigned in class by slight­ly alter­na­tive-mind­ed Eng­lish teach­ers. Now that I think about it, I real­ize that those two works of Von­negut’s have both become movies: George Roy Hill’s Slaugh­ter­house-Five hit the­aters in 1972, and Bruce Pittman’s Har­ri­son Berg­eron debuted on Show­time in 1995. But the beloved­ly cyn­i­cal writer pro­duced four­teen nov­els, eight sto­ry col­lec­tions, and five books of essays, and even if we just explore fur­ther into those adapt­ed for the screen, we find a per­haps under-dis­cussed piece of Von­negutia: Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons, his 1973 fol­low-up to Slaugh­ter­house-Five.

The nov­el exam­ines Dwayne Hoover, a deeply trou­bled Pon­ti­ac sales­man obsessed with the writ­ings of pulp sci-fi author Kil­go­re Trout. You may remem­ber Trout from his role in Von­negut’s pre­vi­ous book, whose “unstuck-in-time” pro­tag­o­nist Bil­ly Pil­grim he invites to his wed­ding anniver­sary. Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons sets Trout on a col­li­sion course with Hoover in the fic­tion­al Amer­i­can town of Mid­land City, bring­ing in a great vari­ety of char­ac­ters, themes, and ele­ments from Von­negut’s oth­er work in so doing. In the clip above, you can hear the author’s very first pub­lic read­ing of the book, record­ed on May 4, 1970 at New York’s 92nd Street Y. After it became avail­able to read­ers three years lat­er, Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons would become a favorite among the Von­negut faith­ful. The 1999 Bruce Willis-star­ring film adap­ta­tion… less so.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kurt Von­negut Reads from Slaugh­ter­house-Five

Vonnegut’s Eight Tips on How to Write a Good Short Sto­ry

Kurt Von­negut: “How To Get A Job Like Mine” (2002)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.