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Re: Nabokov and Pedophilia (fwd)
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From: Rahat Glass-Husain <rahat@sprintmail.com>
I couldn't agree more.
I don't think that readers in general want to identify VN with this or
that character just because they're coming at the novels from a
psychoanalytic point of view.
I think the audience has been affected by the trend toward
semi-autobiographical works of "fiction" by authors who are more than
willing to discuss how their unpleasant formative experiences factored
into this or that character. Not only do we get their family life in the
novel, but we hear about it in interviews too. The awful Pat Conroy
comes to mind.
It's very easy, in this environment, to feel that VN must have fixed his
loyalty somewhere in the book. Surely his Inner Child must be in there
somewhere! For the naive reader, who is coming to Lolita straight from,
say, "The Kiss", VN's imagination and his level of detachment may be
entirely unexpected and thus incomprehensible unless dragged into the
usual semi-autobiographical frame of reference. The results of this
process are like a Rorschach (sic?) test. I sympathize with Lolita so I
would love it if I could believe VN identified with her. I have
encountered dirty old men on the message boards who were absolutely
certain that VN was their champion, a nymphet lover just like them. I
don't know if any of this is really the reader's fault so much as just
the natural result of being trained to read between the lines, looking
for the author's self-pity.
Rahat.
I couldn't agree more.
I don't think that readers in general want to identify VN with this or
that character just because they're coming at the novels from a
psychoanalytic point of view.
I think the audience has been affected by the trend toward
semi-autobiographical works of "fiction" by authors who are more than
willing to discuss how their unpleasant formative experiences factored
into this or that character. Not only do we get their family life in the
novel, but we hear about it in interviews too. The awful Pat Conroy
comes to mind.
It's very easy, in this environment, to feel that VN must have fixed his
loyalty somewhere in the book. Surely his Inner Child must be in there
somewhere! For the naive reader, who is coming to Lolita straight from,
say, "The Kiss", VN's imagination and his level of detachment may be
entirely unexpected and thus incomprehensible unless dragged into the
usual semi-autobiographical frame of reference. The results of this
process are like a Rorschach (sic?) test. I sympathize with Lolita so I
would love it if I could believe VN identified with her. I have
encountered dirty old men on the message boards who were absolutely
certain that VN was their champion, a nymphet lover just like them. I
don't know if any of this is really the reader's fault so much as just
the natural result of being trained to read between the lines, looking
for the author's self-pity.
Rahat.