The Killing of Clare Quilty

... and this one was Lolita.

In Vladimir Nabokov's novel, Clare Quilty is a doppelgänger to the narrator, Humbert Humbert. Quilty is a successful playwright and child pornographer, who takes a liking to Lolita from an early age. He follows her throughout the story, ultimately kidnapping her away from Humbert. Although Lolita is in love with him, he eventually tires of her. Two years after her kidnapping, Lolita contacts Humbert and reveals that she is married, pregnant, and in desperate need of money. Humbert tracks down Dolores, and promises to give her money in exchange for the name of the man who abducted her. She reveals that it was Clare Quilty; he tried to make her star in one of his pornographic films, but threw her out when she refused. Humbert tracks down Quilty and shoots him dead.

It's while awaiting trial for the murder of Quilty that Humbert writes his memoir (the novel Lolita). After completing the manuscript, he dies of coronary thrombosis. Dolores dies a few months later, in giving birth to a stillborn baby girl.

Quilty is highly literate, but amoral and completely corrupt. In the novel, Nabokov conceals his importance to the story until near the end. The character was greatly expanded in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film, in which he was played by Peter Sellers.

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