CarversDog
RIP
Well, I did not manage to work in a Bukowski quote like I did at the end of the Sam Fuller piece but my new Deconstruction Zone column for Pop Matters is on a subject many here may be interested in, namely the 50th anniversary of the publication of Nabokov's "Lolita" in the United States:
The postwar social, cultural, psychological, and moral landscape that Lolita was laid down upon was soiled by muddy boot prints from the get-go. Oh, yes, American readers in 1958 were all too familiar with the sexual charms of children and the hidden terrors of molestation by family members, Vickers says, but it was not a topic for discussion in any way, shape, or form, as Nabokov discovered himself in 1954. When Lolita threatened to pull back the mask of their shame - it was too late to ignore the book because it was already a scandalous international sensation - the collective American reaction was to accept and absorb the book culturally but turn it into a cruel joke, instead: Little girls who behave in a sexually provocative manner deserve whatever fate they may have coming to them. That's how the culture ate it up and spit it back, with the name Lolita becoming a synonym for, to use the dialect of the times, "a fast little article". Never mind the fact that the fictionalized life of Lolita in Nabokov's novel purports otherwise.
The Panting Maniac: Chasing Lolita
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