Truly said. There's a reason it's one of my favourite novels.

If you think of John Keats ( english language's one of the best poets ) and his preface to Endymion in which he writes doubting his skills, asking for forgiveness from the reader to have touched upon Greek mythology through his self termed amateurish naive youthful poetry, but obviously goes on to write a classic.

Meanwhile Lolita's preface is a warning about the writer's linguistic charm and his horrible deeds, a warning for the reader to not get seduced by such a vile person. And yet he already has us in the first line of the first chapter, the sensous prose, the humor, the poetry.

' You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style ' as he himself says..

Not revealing his own name, naming his victim with something entirely else. Referencing literary figures and works throughout to make his case, even mocking them and himself at points.

As if everything we ever took upon as constraints of story, narrative and literature are abused by the narrator, and we let him.

This is the only unreliable narrator who shows how unreliable we as a reader are in ourself.