-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Eichmann's moral indignation
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:23:29 -0700
From: Laurence Hochard <laurence.hochard@HOTMAIL.FR>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
CC: Laurence Hochard <laurence.hochard@HOTMAIL.FR>


Jansy: Hop-scotching from artistic creation to 'real-life': "an Israeli
guard in a Jerusalem prison gave a copy of ''Lolita" to Adolf Eichmann, who
was awaiting trial. An indignant Eichmann returned the book two days later,
calling it ''a very unwholesome book." The sulphurous halo of Nabokov's
novel was still burning brightly in the popular consciousness of 1960 and
it seems that Eichmann's guard gave the book to him as an experiment--a
sort of litmus test for radical evil: to see whether the real-life villain,
he who impassively organized the transport towards certain death of
countless innocents, would coldly, or even gleefully, approve the various
and vile machinations of Nabokov's creation."**

He didn't. After all, "moral life has its poles"

You can always count on a murderer for self-righteous moral indignation.
Laurence Hochard

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