America’s Poshlust Vacuum: The Young-Girl, Émigré, and Artist in Nabokov’s Lolita

Abstract

In his biography of Nikolai Gogol, Vladimir Nabokov identifies the Russian term poshlust as “Not only the obviously trashy but also the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive.” In this presentation, Meg Cook reads Nabokov’s Lolita through the lens of poshlust as it applies to American commodity fetishism; the Eden-esque mythology of manifest destiny (both the physical and bodily landscapes conquered therein); and mid-century notions of nationalism, consumerism, and adolescence. Cook unpacks the roles of Lolita’s main characters, Lolita and Humbert, as well as how Nabokov himself is implicated in the American poshlust he critiques.