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FW: Respons to Steve Mintz "The Golden Age of Childhood?"
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----- Forwarded message from pstock@brandeis.edu -----
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 22:29:56 -0400
From: David Powelstock <pstock@brandeis.edu>
Reply-To: David Powelstock <pstock@brandeis.edu>
Subject: FW: Steve Mintz "The Golden Age of Childhood?"
To: 'Vladimir Nabokov Forum' Dear Colleagues,
This is the letter I wrote today to the Christian Science Monitor, in
response to S. Mintz's editorial.
Humble regards,
David Powelstock
_____
From: David Powelstock [mailto:pstock@brandeis.edu]
Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2005 10:28 PM
To: 'letters@thenewstribune.com'
Subject: Steve Mintz "The Golden Age of Childhood?"
To the Editor,
I applaud Steven Mintz's demystification of our era's romanticization of the
1950s, an era of appalling hypocrisy. But am stunned, utterly stunned that
a respected professor of history could have so profoundly misrepresented-or
misread-Vladimir Nabokov's novel, Lolita. To suggest that this novel, a
masterpiece of such subtle and powerful moral impact was in any way
complicit in the reprehensible commercializing eroticization of children
that it so persuasively indicts is obscene. It borders on the farcical that
Professor Mintz should adduce to his putatively moral ends this novel, the
first and perhaps the most eloquent critique of the growing appropriation of
defenseless childhood to the corrupt and selfish ends of adults. I wonder
if Prof. Mintz has even read Lolita. Nabokov's masterpiece is not
symptomatic, but if anything diagnostic of the 1950s.
Sincerely,
David Powelstock
Asst. Prof. of Russian & East European Literatures
Chair, Program in Russian & East European Studies
Brandeis University
GREA, MS 024
Waltham, MA 02454-9110
781.736.3347 (Office)
617. 489.4192
----- End forwarded message -----