John Ray, Jr., Ph.D.

Who is John Ray, Jr., Ph.D.? John Ray is, in short, the editor of Humbert Humbert's manuscript. He is Humbert's lawyer's cousin, and an academic, so the lawyer thought it a good idea to have him edit and write the foreword to the text. His foreword tells us much about the coming story. First, though it is clearly a fictional foreword, it situates the text in the real world. By including this faux-academic preamble, which starts with the backstory of how John Ray came to edit the piece in the first place, the reader is convinced that this is a true-crime story. Second, it tells us that the names have been changed. From the first time Humbert is mentioned in quotation marks, we know that there is something off. Then, in the second paragraph, Ray explains that all he did to the manuscript was change names to protect the innocent. He goes on to give us the present day whereabouts of characters we have obviously not yet met, which serves to further the idea that this is a "true" story. Then he gets into the literary criticism, which is where his choice in language changes slightly from the wordy roundabout techniques he uses in introducing himself and the novel. His sentences shorten. His word choice itself sometimes seems plain wrong. So who is John Ray? Probably a bad professor at a bad school. A fictional character unto himself who serves to introduce a crazy story in a novel way.