Dexter precedent

[devohoneybee]

So, I was visiting my sister yesterday, and it was a long afternoon, in the course of which first I took a nap and then she did. And while she was napping, I picked Lolita (the book) off her shelf, and started to read it, never having done so before. And oh. my. god. is that good writing, and I began to see what all the fuss was about. On or about the first page was a line I'd seen quoted before: "You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style." And there he was, the narrator of the tale, Humbert Humbert, delineating his monstrous heart, and what a monster he is, but what a *charming* monster. A monster with wit, with verve, with a fair bit of sympathy, with a fancy prose style. And, not having read more than 20 or so pages, mind you, it occured to me that this is the antecedant of Dexter; the monster we root for, the monster we love.

Has anyone else seen this connection? Is Dexter the inheritor of Nabakov's H.H.? Is there some history of appealing literary monsters I've missed? (John Gardner's Grendel comes to mind -- and yet that reads differently... more like a reversal of a certain colonialism about who gets to write the history).

Discuss.

Comments

[elynross.livejournal.com]

It's very strong trend in literature, I think, the monstrous being shunned and set aside for differences, attacked for being an outsider. Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost springs to mind. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, and to some extent Dracula, although that is more likely reading back into it the romanticization of vampires in general -- but that very romanticization speaks to a certain initial sympathy. Jekyll and Hyde, although the sympathy is more for Jekyll than Hide.

And in movies: the werewolf in the original wolfman movies, Frankenstein's monster, the elephant man, etc. And now my brain gives out. *g*

[devohoneybee.livejournal.com]

True -- but I think in many of those instances, one is supposed to pity the monster... and/or see him as some sort of ojbect lesson. In the case of Lolita (which, admittedly, I only read the first 20 or so pages of), and Dexter, there is more a sense of being *charmed* by him. Lestat, I suppose...though Lestat is more charmed by himself. *s*

Thanks for playing! :)