Peter sarsgaard is sitting across from me, spoiling the ending of Lolita. It’s early December, and we’re at Rucola, an Italian spot in Boerum Hill that he frequents, and the conversation has turned to Vladimir Nabokov, whose work I’ve somehow never read. But that possibility doesn’t seem to cross Sarsgaard’s mind when he starts to describe one of the novel’s final scenes, in which the protagonist, Humbert Humbert, corners Clare Quilty, who, like Humbert, is obsessed with 12-year-old Lolita. “He shoots him and he shoots him. Then he goes up the stairs, and he shoots and shoots and shoots,” Sarsgaard says as I nod along. “The amount of anger that Humbert has for a guy doing the same thing that he does, it’s like he’s killing himself. It’s almost comedic. Such a clever book.”
This story is from the January 3-16, 2022 edition of New York magazine.
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This story is from the January 3-16, 2022 edition of New York magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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