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L*lita and TW (Trigger Warnings)
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Dear List Nablers,
When I first read Lolita I was already in my early thirties and only vague
rumors about its pedophilic content had reached me. They exercised no
influence over my first reaction to my reception of it: simple hair-raising
enchantment. It was my first Nabokov novel but I had ordered it from England
in an edition that held four other works: The Gift, Invitation to a
Beheading, King Queen Knave and Glory, which I enjoyed but not as
passionately as it was the case with Lolita. After Pale Fire, Speak
Memory and subsequent re-readings I became addicted to V.N.
Yes, It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
Nabokov altered completely my relationship to the English language, to the
power of words and to art, particularly because he forced me into thinking
about the conjunction of objective humanity and fiction in unsuspected
ways, VN demands of me a permanent revision of established ideas in a
strangely universal ethical way. Besides, surprises never stop coming in
to upset any cozy accommodation to VNs writings, no berth of certainties
and closures.
While I was googling for Dorothy Parkers Lolita which, as I remembered it
correctly, was published at The New Yorker, I came to a more recent
article in which Lolita impelled the writers considerations towards
trigger warnings. Judging from what happened with me (fortunately let
loose in the wild), I can only say that the only TW that might be
acceptable in relation to great works of art would be Keep in mind that
Literature and Beauty are extremely dangerous testimonies and expressions of
the human soul and the world of fantasy.
<http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/trigger-warnings-and-the-novelis
ts-mind>
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/trigger-warnings-and-the-novelist
s-mind
PAGE-TURNER, MAY 21, 2014 Trigger Warnings and the Novelists Mind BY JAY
CASPIAN KANG
(longuish excerpts): During a graduate-school lecture on Lolita, my
professor stood up in front of a crowded classroom and said something I have
never been able to shake: When you read Lolita, keep in mind that what
youre reading about is the systematic rape of a young girl.
I had read Lolita in high school and then again in college, when it became
my personal literary liquor storewhenever I got stuck in a scene, or
whenever my prose felt flat or typical, Id open Lolita to a random page
and steal something. My professors pronouncement felt too didactic, too
political, and, although I tried to put it out of my mind and enjoy Lolita
s cunning, surprising games with language, I could no longer pick up the
book without feeling the weight of his judgment. The professor wasnt wrong
to point out the obvious about Humbert and Dolores Haze, and I dont
believeat least not completelythat literature should only be examined as
an object unto itself, detached from time and history, but I havent read
Lolita since.
I thought of that professor and his unwelcome intrusion when I read a
page-one
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/us/warning-the-literary-canon-could-make-
students-squirm.html> story in last weeks Times about how several colleges
across the country have considered placing trigger warnings in front of
works of art and literature that may cause a student to relive a traumatic
experience. For example, a student might be forewarned that J. M. Coetzees
Disgrace details colonial violence, racism, and rape with a note on the
class syllabus that would read something like Trigger Warning: This book
contains scenes of colonialism, racism, and rape, which may be upsetting to
students who have experienced colonialism, racism, or rape.
The storys headline, WARNING: THE LITERARY CANON COULD MAKE STUDENTS
SQUIRM, and the inclusion of some seemingly innocuous titles, like The
Great Gatsby, as candidates for such warnings, dredged up all my distaste
for my professors prescriptive reading of Lolita. If he could produce
such a chilling effect, what harm could a swarm of trigger warningseach one
reducing a work of literature to its ugliest plot pointsinflict on the
literary canon? What would Trigger Warning: This novel contains racism do
to a reading of Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man? What would Trigger
Warning: Rape, racism, and sexual assault do to a reading of Toni
Morrisons Beloved? [ ]
Censorship was never the point, Alexandra Brodsky, an editor at the Web
site Feministing, told me. We knew that violent and traumatic narratives
could have a grave effect on the reader, so we, working together as a
community, created guideposts for people to navigate what has always been a
tricky terrain. Those guideposts helped. Trigger warnings made people feel
like they could write explicitly and honestly about things that they may
have not written about under different circumstances, Brodsky said. They
let people know that this was going to be a different type of conversation.
That logic eventually found its way into the academy. Last year, Bailey
Shoemaker-Richards, a masters student at the University of Findlay, in
Ohio, started using trigger warnings in her academic presentations on cyber
sexism and online abuse. The warning, she said, takes up roughly fifteen
seconds at the start of a talk, and serves only as a reminder that those who
are uncomfortable discussing online abuse are free to leave the room. I
dont think a trigger warning will prevent conversations that may be
upsetting, Shoemaker-Richards told me. But they might force people in the
class to think through their reactions a little more. [ ] Brodsky feels
conflicted about university-mandated trigger warnings for potentially
troubling works of art and literature, as do other feminist thinkers I spoke
to, but she still thinks that they should be used in the classroom. You
cant copy the language from a Jezebel post and paste it onto a syllabus,
Brodsky explained. With that being said, literature is important, and has
effects beyond momentary pleasure and discomfort. [ ] Many of the op-eds
and articles on trigger warnings published this week have argued on behalf
of the sanctity of the relationship between the reader and the text. For the
most part, I have agreed with them. A trigger warning reduces a work of art
down to what amounts to plot points. If a novel like José Saramagos
Blindness succeeds because it sews up small yet essential pockets of human
normalcy against a horrific backdrop, a preëmptive label like Trigger
Warning: Violence and internment strips it down to one idea.[ ] Why is
the depersonalized, apolitical reading the one we should fight for? I
admit, this was an angle I had not yet considered [ ]A good reader may
very well finish Lolita and conclude that the book is about the systematic
rape of a young girl, or that such a troubling text should require a trigger
warning, but a writer should have the freedom to look at Lolita as nothing
more than a series of sentences that exist only for their own sake. If
reading, as Joyce Carol Oates wrote, is the sole means by which we slip,
involuntarily, often helplessly, into anothers skin, anothers voice,
anothers soul, a trigger warning, even through gentle suggestion, guides
us into that skin. For writers, who cull everything from what they read, any
amount of guidance will lead to dull conformity.[ ] Any excess languagein
the form of a trigger warningamounts to a preëmptive defacement
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
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L
When I first read Lolita I was already in my early thirties and only vague
rumors about its pedophilic content had reached me. They exercised no
influence over my first reaction to my reception of it: simple hair-raising
enchantment. It was my first Nabokov novel but I had ordered it from England
in an edition that held four other works: The Gift, Invitation to a
Beheading, King Queen Knave and Glory, which I enjoyed but not as
passionately as it was the case with Lolita. After Pale Fire, Speak
Memory and subsequent re-readings I became addicted to V.N.
Yes, It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.
Nabokov altered completely my relationship to the English language, to the
power of words and to art, particularly because he forced me into thinking
about the conjunction of objective humanity and fiction in unsuspected
ways, VN demands of me a permanent revision of established ideas in a
strangely universal ethical way. Besides, surprises never stop coming in
to upset any cozy accommodation to VNs writings, no berth of certainties
and closures.
While I was googling for Dorothy Parkers Lolita which, as I remembered it
correctly, was published at The New Yorker, I came to a more recent
article in which Lolita impelled the writers considerations towards
trigger warnings. Judging from what happened with me (fortunately let
loose in the wild), I can only say that the only TW that might be
acceptable in relation to great works of art would be Keep in mind that
Literature and Beauty are extremely dangerous testimonies and expressions of
the human soul and the world of fantasy.
<http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/trigger-warnings-and-the-novelis
ts-mind>
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/trigger-warnings-and-the-novelist
s-mind
PAGE-TURNER, MAY 21, 2014 Trigger Warnings and the Novelists Mind BY JAY
CASPIAN KANG
(longuish excerpts): During a graduate-school lecture on Lolita, my
professor stood up in front of a crowded classroom and said something I have
never been able to shake: When you read Lolita, keep in mind that what
youre reading about is the systematic rape of a young girl.
I had read Lolita in high school and then again in college, when it became
my personal literary liquor storewhenever I got stuck in a scene, or
whenever my prose felt flat or typical, Id open Lolita to a random page
and steal something. My professors pronouncement felt too didactic, too
political, and, although I tried to put it out of my mind and enjoy Lolita
s cunning, surprising games with language, I could no longer pick up the
book without feeling the weight of his judgment. The professor wasnt wrong
to point out the obvious about Humbert and Dolores Haze, and I dont
believeat least not completelythat literature should only be examined as
an object unto itself, detached from time and history, but I havent read
Lolita since.
I thought of that professor and his unwelcome intrusion when I read a
page-one
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/us/warning-the-literary-canon-could-make-
students-squirm.html> story in last weeks Times about how several colleges
across the country have considered placing trigger warnings in front of
works of art and literature that may cause a student to relive a traumatic
experience. For example, a student might be forewarned that J. M. Coetzees
Disgrace details colonial violence, racism, and rape with a note on the
class syllabus that would read something like Trigger Warning: This book
contains scenes of colonialism, racism, and rape, which may be upsetting to
students who have experienced colonialism, racism, or rape.
The storys headline, WARNING: THE LITERARY CANON COULD MAKE STUDENTS
SQUIRM, and the inclusion of some seemingly innocuous titles, like The
Great Gatsby, as candidates for such warnings, dredged up all my distaste
for my professors prescriptive reading of Lolita. If he could produce
such a chilling effect, what harm could a swarm of trigger warningseach one
reducing a work of literature to its ugliest plot pointsinflict on the
literary canon? What would Trigger Warning: This novel contains racism do
to a reading of Ralph Ellisons Invisible Man? What would Trigger
Warning: Rape, racism, and sexual assault do to a reading of Toni
Morrisons Beloved? [ ]
Censorship was never the point, Alexandra Brodsky, an editor at the Web
site Feministing, told me. We knew that violent and traumatic narratives
could have a grave effect on the reader, so we, working together as a
community, created guideposts for people to navigate what has always been a
tricky terrain. Those guideposts helped. Trigger warnings made people feel
like they could write explicitly and honestly about things that they may
have not written about under different circumstances, Brodsky said. They
let people know that this was going to be a different type of conversation.
That logic eventually found its way into the academy. Last year, Bailey
Shoemaker-Richards, a masters student at the University of Findlay, in
Ohio, started using trigger warnings in her academic presentations on cyber
sexism and online abuse. The warning, she said, takes up roughly fifteen
seconds at the start of a talk, and serves only as a reminder that those who
are uncomfortable discussing online abuse are free to leave the room. I
dont think a trigger warning will prevent conversations that may be
upsetting, Shoemaker-Richards told me. But they might force people in the
class to think through their reactions a little more. [ ] Brodsky feels
conflicted about university-mandated trigger warnings for potentially
troubling works of art and literature, as do other feminist thinkers I spoke
to, but she still thinks that they should be used in the classroom. You
cant copy the language from a Jezebel post and paste it onto a syllabus,
Brodsky explained. With that being said, literature is important, and has
effects beyond momentary pleasure and discomfort. [ ] Many of the op-eds
and articles on trigger warnings published this week have argued on behalf
of the sanctity of the relationship between the reader and the text. For the
most part, I have agreed with them. A trigger warning reduces a work of art
down to what amounts to plot points. If a novel like José Saramagos
Blindness succeeds because it sews up small yet essential pockets of human
normalcy against a horrific backdrop, a preëmptive label like Trigger
Warning: Violence and internment strips it down to one idea.[ ] Why is
the depersonalized, apolitical reading the one we should fight for? I
admit, this was an angle I had not yet considered [ ]A good reader may
very well finish Lolita and conclude that the book is about the systematic
rape of a young girl, or that such a troubling text should require a trigger
warning, but a writer should have the freedom to look at Lolita as nothing
more than a series of sentences that exist only for their own sake. If
reading, as Joyce Carol Oates wrote, is the sole means by which we slip,
involuntarily, often helplessly, into anothers skin, anothers voice,
anothers soul, a trigger warning, even through gentle suggestion, guides
us into that skin. For writers, who cull everything from what they read, any
amount of guidance will lead to dull conformity.[ ] Any excess languagein
the form of a trigger warningamounts to a preëmptive defacement
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
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L
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