Krupski, Maureen P.

Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, most often noted for its critique on consumerism in post-war America and the conflict between Old World European values with New World American ones, contains an equally strong critique on consumerism of media. Lolita's narrative style, the memoir of a pedophile and murderer simultaneously seeking absolution and applause, investigates the relationship between a seductive mass media and its prurient and Puritanical audience. Implicit in the narrative technique is the audience's own participation in the mediation of reality.