Donald Trump is the Humbert Humbert of Politics

Recently there has been renewed discussion of Vladimir Nabokov's once scandalous Lolita, thanks to an article in the New York Times by the actress Emily Mortimer - How ‘Lolita’ Escaped Obscenity Laws and Cancel Culture - The New York Times (nytimes.com). The impact of her piece was subsequently tainted by the revelation that she had stolen (oops - "plagiarized") some of it from an article in The Atlantic in September 2018 - ‘Lolita’ Continues to Seduce Readers - The Atlantic.

As a grad student at the University of Texas at Austin, I read Lolita in two different courses, and wrote at least one grad-studenty paper on it. While everyone acknowledged that the subject matter was risque, this was treated as a minor inconvenience, serving as it did as a springboard for a dazzling literary song and dance routine and a rhetorical tour de force. Of course it would épater le bourgeoisie, but we were scholars, and obviously too sophisticated to worry about the nattering nabobs of negativism.

As I read Mortimer's article, however, an entirely new thought occurred to me - Humbert Humbert, narrator of Lolita, is a monster eliding over his own monstrous behavior with his European eloquence and inside jokes. Where else have I seen this? Oh...yes. Another monster - Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is the Humbert Humbert of politics, just as Humbert Humbert is the Donald Trump of literature. Trump is, of course, very differently eloquent, but he dazzles his audience, the same tactic that Humbert Humbert relies on. Trump shares Humbert’s predilection for young girls, and rarely misses a chance to remind us that “if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, I’d want to date her” (with the subtext that perhaps that makes the idea even more interesting, as well as being another opportunity to stick it to the elites to the glee of his adoring audiences).

Humbert and Trump each constantly portray themselves as the victim of the larger society. The difference is that Trump’s punching bag is the elites, including the media, who look down on his followers and on him, creating a vibrant “we’re all in this together” bond that no amount of “fake news” or real facts can shake. For Humbert, the witty and wordy European, the punching bag is American mass culture, the crassness of which renders Lolita’s mother virtually sub-human (and her death an essentially comic aside - “picnic, lightning”), and strips Lolita of any claims that his crimes against her are truly serious.

Trump loves to dance on stage to the catchy (and very gay) song, “YMCA,” by the Village People. Humbert loves to perform a tap-dance of words for us, his literary followers, the “ladies and gentlemen of the jury.” For him, his elite erudition and his dazzling rhetorical flourishes of his matador's cape make him “one of us” for “elite” educated audiences, who share an equivalent disdain for his victims and for Trump’s followers. Humbert is a case of white privilege taken to the next level, where he expects us to overlook his predatory child abuse and even his dream of grand-daughter abuse in the future.

Should it be published? In a day where self-publishing on Amazon lets anyone put out anything from the crassest erotica to the most paranoid conspiracy theories, the practical barriers are pretty much gone. Should a publisher publish it? It is easy to see #MeToo-ism as the voice of the New Puritanism, standing in the way of sophisticated literature and art. But I would suggest that overlooking the underlying dynamic of the narrative is more an indictment of our own readiness to follow a dazzling huckster; are we literati all Trumpies in the end?

03/04/21