Subject
Nabokov and twelve-year-old girls
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"In any case, it is a matter of indifference to me whether VN (or anyone
else, for that matter) fantasizes about sex with underage girls, so long as
he stops short of putting his fantasies into action..."--Jim Twiggs
JT seems to make some contradictory statements in his comments on the
MacLean article. The statement quoted above is easy enough to agree with;
indeed, the act of writing a novel such as *Lolita* requires imagining such
fantasies. However, he goes on to almost endorse MacLean's assumptions
about VN's supposed "unseemly urges" in comments such as "...passion for
sex, much of it with underage girls, runs throughout VN's work," and this
I don't agree with. JT cites the poem *Lilith *(originally written by VN
in Russian in 1928) as support for his statements, even though VN himself,
in the author's notes to *Poems and Problems*, offers that "Intelligent
readers will abstain from examining this impersonal fantasy for any links
with my later fiction," and that the poem was written "...to amuse a
friend." There is a huge difference between artistic fantasy on the one
hand, and assuming a likelihood that someone capable of a *Lolita* is
somehow in the same league as an incurable pedophile who must use
"stuffed-shirtedness" as a "firewall" against unseemly urges! Again, such
statements put MacLean on the same intellectual level as H. S. Thompson and
P. J. O'Rourke, who found it logical that since VN wrote about sordid
subjects, he must have engaged in sordid behavior (using a supposed Sun
Valley sighting of VN with an 11-year-old girl as "evidence"). I disagree
with any such suppositions about VN's urges and passions.
--
Norky
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else, for that matter) fantasizes about sex with underage girls, so long as
he stops short of putting his fantasies into action..."--Jim Twiggs
JT seems to make some contradictory statements in his comments on the
MacLean article. The statement quoted above is easy enough to agree with;
indeed, the act of writing a novel such as *Lolita* requires imagining such
fantasies. However, he goes on to almost endorse MacLean's assumptions
about VN's supposed "unseemly urges" in comments such as "...passion for
sex, much of it with underage girls, runs throughout VN's work," and this
I don't agree with. JT cites the poem *Lilith *(originally written by VN
in Russian in 1928) as support for his statements, even though VN himself,
in the author's notes to *Poems and Problems*, offers that "Intelligent
readers will abstain from examining this impersonal fantasy for any links
with my later fiction," and that the poem was written "...to amuse a
friend." There is a huge difference between artistic fantasy on the one
hand, and assuming a likelihood that someone capable of a *Lolita* is
somehow in the same league as an incurable pedophile who must use
"stuffed-shirtedness" as a "firewall" against unseemly urges! Again, such
statements put MacLean on the same intellectual level as H. S. Thompson and
P. J. O'Rourke, who found it logical that since VN wrote about sordid
subjects, he must have engaged in sordid behavior (using a supposed Sun
Valley sighting of VN with an 11-year-old girl as "evidence"). I disagree
with any such suppositions about VN's urges and passions.
--
Norky
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/