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I just reread Lolita at 45, for the first time since I was 14. I slogged through it the first time, and didn't particularly enjoy it. All I remember from the first reading is that HH seemed kind of icky. I was barely older than Delores was in the first half of the novel, and I didn't really understand all the implications. I probably skimmed a great deal of the book without paying attention to it. Much of the subtlet…
It is a remarkable story on many levels. It's also very disturbing, as it manages to make you feel sympathy for an odious character. I did end up wondering how Nabokov could so completely imagine this world and this character, which was also troubling. I don't think anyone is ready to read this as a child, not because it is going to corrupt children (who are routinely exposed to exactly this sort of manipulation in t…
As a writer, I have an extremely vivid imagination. Same with my friends who are writers. We all joke that our Google searches have us on every FBI watchlist that exist and a few that don’t.
The same goes with many artists. Embracing creativity involves some degree of getting rid of self-censorship.
I can imagine entire worlds of horrible things. In my head, I can examine human nature unbound by cultural norms, design whole societies based on different rules.
There is an unfortunate belief that a person’s writing is representative of their personal beliefs and moral codes. Such things influence someone’s writing, of course, but you’re examine things from the wrong direction if you try to apply the writing back to the author.
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My father reads voraciously. Whenever we talked about a book I was assigned in high school, he would say, "Literature is wasted on the young." Now I understand what he meant and I agree with him. I understand so much more of literature now that I am well into adulthood.
Literature, history, and math are all wasted on the young. We get exposed to a lot of things that we don't understand and can't appreciate, in the hopes that it will click for us later. I honestly don't know if that really works, or if it's just cargo cult. I do know that I considered my English classes, and now I run a Shakespeare theater troupe. Much of my goal there is to present the Shakespeare that would have ap…
I think there's something to this idea. I remember we first read the apology in translation sometime in early highschool. everyone thought it was boring af and no one cared. totally different when we read it later in my ancient greek class. the teacher really knew how to play to her audience, and at every bit of (mostly untranslatable) wordplay she would stop to point out how socrates was roasting his interlocutors. to be fair, it's a certain kind of student that self-selects into highschool ancient greek, but the class definitely got a lot more out of it that time around. you might not like to teach the apology as "the story of socrates the chad", but you gotta meet your audience where they are.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a remarkable story on many levels. It's also very disturbing, as it manages to make you feel sympathy for an odious character. I did end up wondering how Nabokov could so completely imagine this world and this character, which was also troubling. I don't think anyone is ready to read this as a child, not because it is going to corrupt children (who are routinely exposed to exactly this sort of manipulation in t…
My father reads voraciously. Whenever we talked about a book I was assigned in high school, he would say, "Literature is wasted on the young." Now I understand what he meant and I agree with him. I understand so much more of literature now that I am well into adulthood.
The difficulty I have with it is that you can use it almost anywhere to justify anything. Star Wars and Superman? Perhaps there are two Kansas farmboys named Luke and Clark next to one another in an asylum, living out their fantasies, and all we see is the fantasy they choose to relate. You can begin to cram all kinds of unlikely conclusions into places once you bring up the idea that the author is not being entirely faithful in relaying what has transpired to the text.
As such, I would love to see if anyone has covered Lolita pointing out "Oh, but over here he said something completely different," because the bulk of the N.U. focus I have seen approaches the topic from the axiomatically assumed lack of culpability of Lolita herself; Humbert must be lying because otherwise she is complicit in this part over here. I would rather see contradictions within the text, but I haven't found anything with that kind of focus.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is a remarkable story on many levels. It's also very disturbing, as it manages to make you feel sympathy for an odious character. I did end up wondering how Nabokov could so completely imagine this world and this character, which was also troubling. I don't think anyone is ready to read this as a child, not because it is going to corrupt children (who are routinely exposed to exactly this sort of manipulation in t…
My father reads voraciously. Whenever we talked about a book I was assigned in high school, he would say, "Literature is wasted on the young." Now I understand what he meant and I agree with him. I understand so much more of literature now that I am well into adulthood.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alright. This is a fair point. I go way out of my way to discourage underage visitors to the erotica website I run, and I do agree that there is tremendous sensitivity in the current era towards the notion of anything sexual involving children. Despite that, I don't think such sensitivity is unreasonable. I do believe that children are sexual from quite an early age, and that that should be accepted and encouraged fr…
"I do believe that children are sexual from quite an early age, and that that should be accepted and encouraged from a sexual wellness perspective." wtf?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alright. This is a fair point. I go way out of my way to discourage underage visitors to the erotica website I run, and I do agree that there is tremendous sensitivity in the current era towards the notion of anything sexual involving children. Despite that, I don't think such sensitivity is unreasonable. I do believe that children are sexual from quite an early age, and that that should be accepted and encouraged fr…
"I do believe that children are sexual from quite an early age, and that that should be accepted and encouraged from a sexual wellness perspective." wtf?