Subject
Auberon Waugh: Book of the Century (fwd)
Date
Body
At 01:23 PM 4/5/99 -0700, you wrote:
>I find the statement by Auberon Waugh:
>
> The "effect of Lolita, by contrast, has been enormous". It is described as
> about a 37-year-old professor and "a 12-year-old schoolgirl called Dolores
> Haze, who seduces and later deserts him". Now, as a result of this book,
> "we all agree that paedophilia is wrong. At last we have a common, shared
> morality. This is quite an achievement for a mere novelist".
>
>(quoted by Charles Harrison Wallace) difficult to believe.
>
>I don't feel the the common view of pedophilia was changed by "Lolita". If
>anything the common view is that that "Lolita" is a "dirty" book because it
>describes acts of pedophilia.
>
>Even worse, Nabokov certainly had no intent to establish a "common, shared
>morality"!
Surely Waugh was joking--as you point out, what he said was absurd, but
satire is supposed to be absurd. His comment about _Pale Fire_ failing to
achieve the (apparently desirable) result of closing down English departments
is also obviously facetious.
...
>I find the statement by Auberon Waugh:
>
> The "effect of Lolita, by contrast, has been enormous". It is described as
> about a 37-year-old professor and "a 12-year-old schoolgirl called Dolores
> Haze, who seduces and later deserts him". Now, as a result of this book,
> "we all agree that paedophilia is wrong. At last we have a common, shared
> morality. This is quite an achievement for a mere novelist".
>
>(quoted by Charles Harrison Wallace) difficult to believe.
>
>I don't feel the the common view of pedophilia was changed by "Lolita". If
>anything the common view is that that "Lolita" is a "dirty" book because it
>describes acts of pedophilia.
>
>Even worse, Nabokov certainly had no intent to establish a "common, shared
>morality"!
Surely Waugh was joking--as you point out, what he said was absurd, but
satire is supposed to be absurd. His comment about _Pale Fire_ failing to
achieve the (apparently desirable) result of closing down English departments
is also obviously facetious.
...