Charles Bukowski - American author

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.​