Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0011791, Wed, 7 Sep 2005 20:45:14 -0700

Subject
Jo Morgan on Sarah Holland-BattÂ’s Review of _Solving LOLITA's Riddle_
Date
Body
Re Sarah Holland-BattÂ’s review of my book Solving NabokovÂ’s Lolita Riddle
(2005)

Holland-BattÂ’s review of Solving NabokovÂ’s Lolita Riddle is most
interesting for what is absent, than what is present. She takes me to task
repeatedly for editorial, syntactical and minor errors (e.g. mistaking Lee
and Leigh etc) and ignores the actual substance of my arguments. I readily
admit I will have to do penance at the ‘Bureau of Spelling and Editing
MishapsÂ’ some time in the near future. But the occasional and relatively
minor errors in my book should not detract from the many new and exciting
insights offered up by my research.

What remains entirely missing from Holland-BattÂ’s review is:

. any discussion of my analysis of the absolute centrality of NabokovÂ’s
battle against Sigmund Freud to his work as an artist. NabokovÂ’s hostility
toward FreudÂ’s Oedipus complex theory of incest is well-documented, both in
his memoirs and his interviews;
. she ignores my contribution about the relevance of NabokovÂ’s scathing
comment about Freud’s ‘police state of sexual myth’ to my reinterpretation
of Bend Sinister (1947);
. no comment is made by Holland-Batt about why Nabokov controversially
advocated of the use of deception in art;
. she offers no considered discussion or reflection on the important issue
of whether Nabokov inserted a code into his writings. On at least two
occasions Nabokov admitted to placing ‘blunders’ or leaving deliberate
errors in his texts (see Strong Opinion (1974) p. 285; Eugene Onegin (1964)
vol. 1, pp. 15-16). I put the argument in SNLR that by doing so, Nabokov
was deliberately playing havoc with FreudÂ’s notion of a meaningful
speech ‘error.’ In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) Freud
discussed how some speech ‘errors’ (commonly referred to as ‘Freudian
slipsÂ’) had a potential to reveal hidden truths;
. any reference to my radical reassessment of the lasting impact made by
Lewis Carroll on VN and his parody of the Dodgson/Carroll double act in
Invitation to a Beheading (1938);
. absolutely no mention is made by Holland-Batt to my ground-breaking
analysis of Nabokov’s fascinating Wonderland chess duel against Carroll – a
duel which I have argued works as a secondary artifice behind his ‘novel’
Bend Sinister (1947);
. any comment on my investigation of NabokovÂ’s otherworldly interests,
including his interest in repetitive patterns and fatidic dates. Why did
Nabokov repeatedly emphasize that he shared a birth date (April 23) with
the gender-bending playwright William Shakespeare as well as Shirley
Temple?

Holland-Batt also writes that I have reached several ‘libelous’ conclusions
in SNLR in relation to pedophilia and: 1) Nabokov; 2) Shirley TempleÂ’s
directors/producers; 3) Calvin Klein Inc; and 4) Dostoevsky.

I am not the first to make the argument about VNÂ’s pedophilia (see for
example Centerwall 1990, 1991). Unlike Centerwall, I have supported my
conclusions re NabokovÂ’s pedophilia by referring to one of NabokovÂ’s own
telling ‘blunders.” In his 1951 memoirs Conclusive Evidence Nabokov
discussed how, as an adult, he would reread the childrenÂ’s story Les
Malheurs de Sophie. When doing so he wrote: “In my own case when I come
over Sophie’s troubles again…” (CE, 43). Yet in the UK edition of Speak,
Memory: A Memoir published in that very same year Nabokov wrote something
quite different, namely “when I come upon the books and read again about
Sophie’s troubles…” (SM, 26) If Holland-Batt wishes to ignore the
confession made by Nabokov in Conclusive Evidence, which was made several
years before Lolita was even published, so be it. Our understanding of
Nabokov will advance no further if we keep the blinkers on. In SNLR I
sympathetically argued that VNÂ’s pedophilia was a deeply unwanted outcome
of his own severe sexual abuse as a child – one aspect of the barred cage
VN found himself living in as an adult. A substantial body of research in
the field of child sexual abuse confirms the dangers of the victim-to-
perpetrator abuse cycle. In SNLR I also state my firm belief that NabokovÂ’s
pedophilia was restricted to his fantasy life.

Holland-Batt dismisses my investigation of the pedophilic encoding found in
Shirley TemplesÂ’ films. Again, I am not the only person to have raised
valid questions about the many dubious scenes found in Shirley TempleÂ’s
films. The distinguished British writer Graham Greene paid a heavy price
for doing so back in the 1930s. More recently, concerns have been raised
by Sinclair (1988), B. Wood (1994) and Menish (1996). I noticed that
Holland-Batt is a postgraduate student at the School of English, Media
Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland. Perhaps she may
like to watch some of Shirley TempleÂ’s films and judge for herself whether
or not Nabokov delivered a stunning parody of Curly Top (1935) and Bright
Eyes (1934) within Lolita.

Re my ‘libelous’ comments about Calvin Klein: Calvin Klein Inc was
investigated by no less an authority than the US Department of Justice for
promoting child porn following two advertising campaigns in 1995. One
campaign featured bouncing, barely clad toddlers, the other a young teenage
boy who was being propositioned by an unsighted adult male.

Re my ‘libelous’ comment about Dostoevsky: The issue of whether or not
Dostoevsky may have committed an act of child rape has been discussed by
several scholars of this Russian author, including Svinstov (1998). It was
not manufactured by me.

I gather from Holland-BattÂ’s Derrida quote that she refuses to acknowledge
that there may indeed be a central ‘riddle’ or ‘puzzle’ within Lolita. I
put it to her that her argument is with Nabokov, not with me. I can only be
faulted (if thatÂ’s the word) for taking the author seriously.

If, as Holland-Batt seems to infer, mere mention of the word ‘pedophilia’
means weÂ’ve entered the realm of libel, heaven help us all. All in all,
Holland-BattÂ’s petty review merely reinforces my sense that any well-
meaning attempt to tackle the child protection issues raised by NabokovÂ’s
art and life will not receive a fair hearing from his literary scholars. If
anyone is willing to disabuse me of this notion, please be my guest.

Jo Morgan
Sydney

P.S. Please note - Solving NabokovÂ’s Lolita Riddle was published by Cosynch
Press not Cosynth Press.

References:

Centerwall, Brandon. 1990. “Hiding in Plain Sight: Nabokov and Pedophilia”
Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 32(3): 468-484.
Centerwall, Brandon. 1992. “Vladimir Nabokov: A Case Study in Pedophilia”
Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, 15(1): 199-239.
Freud, Sigmund. 1901. Psychopathology of Everyday Life (translated by A.A.
Brill), London: T. Fisher Unwin.
Menish, Lori. 1996. “Cuteness and Commodity Aesthetics: Tom Thumb and
Shirley Temple” in Freakery, (ed.) Rosemary Garland Thomson, New York: New
York University Press: 185-203.
Nabokov, Vladimir. 1989 [1938]. Invitation to a Beheading, New York:
Vintage Books.
Nabokov, Vladimir. 1990 [1947]. Bend Sinister, New York: Vintage Books.
Nabokov, Vladimir. 1951. Conclusive Evidence, New York: Harper.
Nabokov, Vladimir. 1951. Speak, Memory: A Memoir, London: Victor Gollancz
Ltd.
Nabokov, Vladimir. 1974. Strong Opinions, London: McGraw-Hill International
Inc.
Pushkin, Aleksandr. 1964. Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse by Aleksandr
Pushkin (in four volumes - translated from the Russian with commentary by
Vladimir Nabokov), New York, Bollingen Foundation. Pantheon Books.
Sinclair, Marianne. 1988. Hollywood Lolitas: The Nymphet Syndrome in the
Movies, New York: Henry Holt and Co.
Svinstov, Vatalii. 1998. “Dostoevsky and Stavrogin’s Sin” Russian Studies
in Literature, 34(4): 28-55.
Wood, Bret. 1994. “Lolita Syndrome” Sight and Sound, June: 32-34.

----- End forwarded message -----