I just learned of this thanks to the other HN post yesterday(?) and turned it on, with it enabled and visiting the site in this post (multiple times just to be sure) I get no cookies at all saved from them, as well as no "accept our cookies" popups. I'm sold.
"Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful."
The actual article title is "How Would the Publishing World Respond to Lolita Today?" The title here is a small bit from the article. Unless the submitter here is the author I don't think it's appropriate to link this article under this title.
The article consists of the story of how Lolita was published in the US mixed with background on the political setting of the era it was published in.
The overall claim of the article seems to be that Lolita is still politically interesting and sparks debate.
I disagree with this conclusion. The world is all too fond of sexuality, and especially with controversial sexuality.
I am actually the author of a somewhat popular website involving written erotica, and what I've found is that controversial erotica is wildly popular regardless of the specific content. You could publish all manner of twisted crap today and it would mostly be met with praise.
There are, of course, puritanical haters that will go out of their way to whine and cry about it, but the world has reached a point where it is broadly understood that written erotica is freedom of speech and trying to ban it or make it stop is pointless.
> the world has reached a point where it is broadly understood that written erotica is freedom of speech and trying to ban it or make it stop is pointless.
Unfortunately, this isn't entirely true, even today.
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 from a sexual wellness perspective, but simultaneously I think children are abused very frequently even in this era and we should continue to do everything we can to protect them from abuse.
I still see plenty of "stories of my childhood" on erotica websites, and I don't see anyone going out of their way to shut them down. Example: solotouch ( not my website, but a common example with many such stories )
Another legal example that comes to mind is the man who was convicted for importing obscene hentai manga. I personally believe hentai should be considered free speech but that is certainly not the case in the legal arena right now.
My point remains that I believe the world is very accepting of many types of erotica that I had previously thought would be highly frowned upon.
I will point out that under the miller test ( the main law concerning this in the US ), textual material that is artistically meaningful as writing does not constitute illegal writing. I myself shy away from writing any erotica describing explicit sexual activity of minors, but I still believe it to be legal if written well enough... I does though fail 2 of the 3 prongs on the miller test:
1. The average person would agree that description of explicit child sexual activity is illegal. ( fiction wise at least; I think accounts of childhood activity may be deemed acceptable by many normal folk )
2. Description of child sexual activity is patently offensive.
In the case of Lolita, for the most part, the book isn't terribly explicit in nature. It also ensures its legality by being an instance of well written fiction.
Other applicable law is "activity contributing to the delinquency of minors". So, it isn't unreasonable for something that is otherwise legal to be illegal ( for good reason ) if it is used to encourage minors to engage in sexual activity ( with adults or for the entertainment of adults )
Essentially, the world is very accepting of erotica in many forms. The world simultaneously has many laws to attempt to protect children while maintaining the general acceptance.
What's wtf about it? It's biologically accurate. What they mean is you shouldn't tell a teen that sex is bad and evil and their instincts for sexual contact are not bad and evil.
I agree with your points, but the wording in the post is very vague. If they mean teens, they should say teens directly, rather than using the word "children" which is easy to misunderstand.
I understand how this will seem to be a screwy thing to say, but it is a reality and is something any parent deals with when their child grows old enough.
Once puberty hits children engage in some amount of sexual behavior, and that is natural. Many parents have to explain to their child not to masturbate in public for example.
What I am saying here is that telling your child "masturbation is sinful" is unhealthy. It is also unhealthy to tell your child "masturbate any time you want!" It is sort of like eating dessert in my mind. Occasionally, with moderation, is acceptable. All the time, incessantly, is problematic.
I am not, by the way, suggesting that adults become involved in the sexual activity of anyone underage. What I am saying is that parents should help their children ( by explaining things to them ) to be balanced and not fearful of their own sexuality. Life is difficult enough without being raised to be disgusted by your own feelings.
Some things which people write or draw are certainly repugnant, extremely repugnant, including some particular forms of hentai manga, and if someone were actually acting out the activities described within, then I would want them to go to prison for a very long time.
But, committing a terrible act, and writing about it from a fictional perspective are completely different things. I don't think people are so brainless as to blindly follow what is happening in a hentai manga.
Someone doesn't simply "become" the sort of person who would do that, just by consuming fictional material, and if they're using purely fictional material, it could be even argued they're actively avoiding it.
The actual risk factors for abuse (and not merely creating / consuming prohibited content) I know of are:
Some people have poor mental health. Being unable to express yourself and having to shut things in would not help. Luckily, we have many ways to improve someone's mental health. Mental health can also improve if someone has supportive friends. This could be considered the main factor.
There are people who look for substitutes for a partner and unscrupulously pick that.
Someone may be physically incapable of feeling anything to adults and only to children. A recent scientific paper said that some address their loneliness by creating dolls and talking to them to keep them company. Banning and prohibiting things might frustrate them, but it wouldn't actually solve anything, other than making it clear that they have nothing to lose.
I am sure there are other possible factors, but I don't think I have ever seen "I saw it in a book" mentioned as one. Even Dr. Seto, who is a leading expert in this area, believes that those who would abuse, are those who would have abused either way, irregardless of this content being available.
I agree that hentai manga can be very disgusting. Rape scenes involving children is a theme that is commonly available. Having set foot in a doujinshi shop in Akihabara ( down a random alley in the basement ), they are apparently also quite popular in Japan. The cover of many doujinshi ( of that variety ) are of undressed children in explicit poses. I would have snapped a photo of said shop if there weren't signs everywhere saying "no photos allowed", to show people just exactly how much this is a thing.
So long as the creators are sourcing their artistic style on imagination and/or non-sexual source art, I don't think there is any real harm being done, and therefore I personally believe such should still be legal. I do, though, question the purpose of it and agree that it is pretty disturbing content.
I disagree that you cannot become a twisted person by viewing sufficient twisted content. The perspective matters of course, but I could readily believe that an otherwise harmless pervert could become inclined to enacting harm against others after reading a sufficient amount of such content. The pervert has their fantasies enthralled, and thus begins to believe more-so that enacting things in the way described is acceptable.
In this way, I think the way the perverse content is depicted matters. If it is depicted in a way that makes it seem like wonderful fun to abuse others, then I agree it should become illegal. I also can't think of depictions that I would approve of myself and can only think of depictions less likely to encourage harm.
I agree with the idea that hentai manga provides an outlet for people who may enact their fantasies in reality if they did not have that outlet. The idea is that the hentai serves as a punching bag of sorts.
I could believe that some believe they can only be attracted to children and not to adults, but I don't think that justifies and means they have a right to view sexualized kids or art of it. I'd argue that such individuals are better off just enjoying normal manga and hentai instead of getting involved in hentai.
As I mentioned previously, I author erotica. One question I have asked myself many times is "Am I encouraging or causing others to engage in the fictional behavior I have imagined and written?" Having read the reviews of my writing by readers; I strongly believe the answer is "Yes. Whatever fictional content I create, should it be believable and seem sufficiently safe, will be enacted by readers as a result of learning about it."
The "readers should understand it is fiction and not enact the fantasy" excuse doesn't fly in my mind. Many readers will not understand that clearly, regardless of even being told to keep this in mind, and will still enact the fiction.
As a response to your dead comment, not only do they not have feelings towards adults in any meaningful sense, other than making a friend, but they actually feel disgust and revulsion towards sexual settings involving adults. In a way, it is as if their sexual axis has been inverted, and instead of being disgusted by one, they're instead disgusted by the other.
It's also not a belief. The science has put it clearly that such people exist. Saying otherwise is to deny the science. Not only can the science measure someone's response to material, but even their neuronal response to it. It _is_ a spectrum, so there are types who aren't that bad off, and perhaps, even ones who are lightly touched by it. But, the idea that it is purely a form of deviance and twisting is flawed.
There are pieces of anecdotal science (studies on small samples of people who report it helping them not have to commit crime), a country level study on crime in the Czech Republic, and expert opinions from half a dozen experts which would suggest that at worst it is neutral and at best it reduces crime.
Most importantly, there has never been evidence that it causes crime. This property has largely been assumed, and has never been tested in such a fashion, despite a lot of people assuming it has been tested and produced such results. There is an exception where prisoners wanting to get early parole / better conditions play along with flawed studies.
According to Dr. Seto, those who commit crimes are largely antisocial individuals who were leaning and moving in that direction to begin with. And that they ultimately would have reached that conclusion.
At most, I might advise putting a content warning on a site or a piece that explains that it is a piece of fiction, and that it should be not be enacted. But, I've never seen actual evidence, only conjecture, that that it could be a problem. It's just not listed in actual psych profiles.
And while I will condemn someone acting out the crimes, condemning someone for consuming / producing a piece of media is going to feel like an adversarial attack on them (which fuels in-group bias, meeting up with like-minded people, distancing, and conspiracy theories), and it ultimately just deprives them of pleasure, without any real gain (and that is in the best case).
If someone does feel it is making them really likely to do something that they shouldn't, I would strongly advise that they don't read it, and I don't feel that a level-headed individual would just run all the way to doing a crime.
As for those reviews, I would have to know what they actually say. But, people say all sorts of things when they're "horny". And critics will critic.
From what I know, it is getting appealed to a higher court, so yes and no. The verdict will be in sooner or later, and at that point, we will know. But, I'll also argue that this never should have gotten to a trial, it is appalling that the police think this is something someone should get charged for to begin with.
The other case is also going up for appeal, from what I've read, although I don't know how the higher court will respond to it.
It’s a little awkward to comment on moderation but I want to say I’m glad to see this comment visible again after it was marked dead, because it is an interesting contribution and there’s no reason to snuff it out.
You might sound like someone who doesn't understand 'freedom of speech'.
This does not allow you to do whatever you want.
In germany for example it is written like this:
"These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to personal honour."
And its not different in the USA, you have limitations as well as the general good is more important than your personal.
"The world is all too fond of sexuality, and especially with controversial sexuality."
And what distrubs me the most on your comment: Just because their are pedophiles, doesn't make pedophiles okay. Yes i used here the extrem form of 'controversial sexuality' but to be clear: you should know your boundaries in comparison to the normal society. Just because you are part of that sub group of people, in my circles 'controversial sexuality' is not typical at all.
You have a responsibility and just because you can and some other are having the same moral compass as you have, doesn't make your niche okay on a moral/society point of view.
And it could be that your 'controversial sexuality' is actually okay but how you express yourself, it feels already that you crossed a line i wouldn't.
> [Freedom of speech] rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to personal honour.
You seem to imply that controversial written erotica shouldn’t be covered by freedom of speech protections, as it would be in the name of protecting children. Do you think censoring it would reduce the incidence of child abuse? If so, would banning videogames like GTA reduce the incidence of shootings or traffic rule violations?
> in my circles 'controversial sexuality' is not typical at all
It seems like the author of the comment you’re replying to might be in a unique position to gauge what controversial sexuality might be of interest to your circles even if yourself aren’t privy to it due to its controversial nature.
No, my argument is, that 'freedom of speech' doesn't allow everything as the author indicates. Thats not even something i have an opinion on, the law already defines that and i highly suspect that it falls under usa laws as it does for germany.
Like laws going in direction of 'proection of minors'.
I'm not sure if you are allowed to just put a website online which is advocating for pedophility (lets keep the extreme to simplify). But here is where youth laws require you to make sure kids can't access it.
Same goes for GTA, you also have youth laws protecting them.
The author is probably part of a subcultural group of people in their own bubble. I highly doubt that his experience is in any way ever statistically relevant enough and reaches any majority at all.
And just to clarify one thing: i don't care about known fetishes or weird erotica. Let people read and write what they want but its easy to cross lines in fiction you wouldn't dare in real life but starting to getting used to the thoughts, images and ideas.
How do you think would freely advocate that kids should express their sexuality as it is just 'normal'? Kids which are just playing and learning and perhaps lern to touch themselves as a normal growing up process or adults sexualising those kids? No kid needs an adult supporter to learn how to masturbate and there are 1000x more important things for people to learn like taxes before they should learn how to have a very diverse sex live in their adult life.
Don't get me wrong, we do put a lot of stigma on it as a society but its probably better to advocate to the adults and not to minors at all.
For something to be wrong you have to prove a harm. Limitations to speech are because the harm of that speech weighs more than the chilling effect of suppressing it.
Fictional stories and images on the internet have no relationship with reality. There are no victims, there is no one harmed. You don't have to like the content, that is fine, but there is no good argument about bad morals or government intervention unless you're proving actual harm.
I also have a dislike for punishing someone for the acts of someone else. If someone who commits a crime, just so happens to have a particular book, it doesn't mean all the owners of that particular book should be punished for their transgressions.
It's an unpleasant form of collective punishment. And it means that all of them have to suffer for something which has nothing to do with them.
Lolita isn't erotica, which puts this in a different context. This is like comparing BDSM pornography to rape scenes in film. The latter is going to have a different audience and intent and might be more controversial to ratings agencies and production companies.
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 subtlety of the story and all of the brilliant writing went right over my head.
Then I happened to pick up The Fued, about the friendship and subsequent falling out between Nabakov and Edmund Wilson. It mentioned several times that Lolita was a runaway success, and it made Nabakov famous.
I thought there must be something more to Lolita than I remembered, so I picked up a copy at the library. It was a whole different book. This time, I found the story both riveting and disturbing. On the first read, I knew that what he was doing would be called abuse, but I didn't really understand how he took advantage of her trust and naivety and adolescent rebelliousness. Or how awful it is to dehumanize pre teen girls and characterize them as sexual objects called nymphets.
HH claims to know that he took something irreplaceable from her and ruined her childhood. But - and I think this is why they say he is an unreliable narrator - it's not clear if he really believes what he's saying, or if it's a calculated ploy to garner sympathy.
The writing is incredible. The story is troubling and fascinating, and stayed in my mind a long time after. RIP Delores Schiller.
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 their teen years), but because there are so many levels you'd miss.
Truly a masterpiece, in spite of the icky subject matter, some parts are really dark in retrospect, but it's handled with such a light touch it's hard to look away.
The median age of working adults is probably around 40 or so, including those who's job it is to evaluate literature for use in schools. So it makes sense that you'd appreciate their choices more when you turn 40 or so.
This is an interesting situation, because it creates a reading list that is a "projected aspiration". We hope, I guess, that kids will read precociously. Education is, after all, the teaching of civilization's most important messages compressed into a fixed, very short time-span. School gets kids "caught up" on the civilizational conversations about things. But so much of the art and literature of humanity is like Lolita, in that it requires lots of actual living to appreciate (unlike algebra), so its position is...odd.
I wonder if, by being exposed to these things at a young age, we give kids a "shared coordinate system" to interpret and express their world, and so shape their choices in it.
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 appealed to me at the time. I can't tell if I'm here because, despite, or totally disconnected from my education.
> Much of my goal there is to present the Shakespeare that would have appealed to me at the time.
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.
Sometimes though one falls in love with these things young and it's a life long maturing and appreciation. When I re-read things I always find new things, or new perspectives. The nuances I understood at 25 didn't diminish the impact of a book on me at 15, the way reading it at 35 didn't make it seem like it was wasted on 25 year old me.
> I did end up wondering how Nabokov could so completely imagine this world and this character, which was also troubling.
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.
Every reader has their own interpretation of a text and the author's intent. Personally, looking back on Lolita I can say I'm a little uncomfortable with the level of empathy and identification the writer shows with Humbert Humbert, but I know the intention is to discomfit the reader by making them identify with a horrible character, so...
> I know the intention is to discomfit the reader by making them identify with a horrible character, so...
That's not the intent of the author. Nabokov has absolutely no moral or social points to make.
I didn't realize this until I read Eugene Onegin, which I take as the genesis of Nabokov's general perspective. Onegin is funny and ironic while still being emotionally affecting. Nabokov is much more in the "art for art's sake" camp than most people today are comfortable with.
Can you recommend a good english translation? I've always wanted to read that poem.
But, you're citing a book by Pushkin (or the anti-hero within?) as illustrative of Nabokov's worldview? While he affected amused disdain I think Nabokov did care about the world. Doesn't Onegin too?
I think it's hard to square writing a book about a manipulative child abuser with being utterly disinterested in moral or social issues, because the book probes deeply into both (even if it is a little fantastical and hyper-real). I agree Nabokov has a very dry, aristocratic and distant style, but he wouldn't write about such things if he didn't want to provoke debate. Art has meaning and his has a lot more depth than surface. His position is of course very ambiguous but there is a lot of empathy for Humbert in Lolita, which is partly why it is so entrancing and discomfiting.
I read James Falen's translation, which I thought was great. I don't speak Russian though so who knows.
> But, you're citing a book by Pushkin (or the anti-hero within?) as illustrative of Nabokov's worldview? While he affected amused disdain I think Nabokov did care about the world. Doesn't Onegin too?
That's my view, yeah. The figure here is the disaffected noble (or intellectual) who disdains society, creates his own values, and eventually tragically fails partly because he can't totally leave society behind. I think Nabokov loves those characters. I don't think he's criticizing them.
I am of course not saying you have to agree with Nabokov.
That's my view, yeah. The figure here is the disaffected noble (or intellectual) who disdains society, creates his own values, and eventually tragically fails partly because he can't totally leave society behind. I think Nabokov loves those characters. I don't think he's criticizing them.
Yes I agree he probably would have loved a character like that, though I think part of the attraction is the recognition of their inevitable tragic end (with the implicit recognition that they are mistaken about the world).
Humbert of course is not in that mould (or not entirely), and I'm not saying Nabokov would be so crass as to write himself into Humbert, but he shows a lot of sly sympathy for him in Lolita, and his other books also show a preoccupation with transgressive sexuality in children (Ada), it's a weird obsession.
Art communicates and empathy and sympathy are related.
What a particular work communicates is hard to pin down, and of course open to interpretation which changes over time (for example views of Alice in Wonderland have shifted due to revelations about the character of the author and his relation with his Alice), but it's certainly not possible to discuss whether a book sympathises with the central character if you don't engage with what the book says and instead talk in generalities.
I too read this around 14 and have revisited recently at 30. I was most intrigued by the but I fully written sentences when I was younger but now I’m older see it in a much more complicated light. A good sort of complication.
I think of Lolita as a puzzle of a story. There are quite a few clues that lead to a metaphor that make since of HH’s proclamations at the end. I think Nabokov was satirizing himself as an artist through HH’s character. This view makes Delores the incarnation of “art” and HH the artist. The artist “loves” art as it affirms his whole life and reason for being. He seeks to control art, own it, and manipulate it for his own purposes. HH does not realize till the end that art/Delores lives and breaths on its/her own and that this autonomy outside of his control is truly what makes her her and art beautiful. Her struggle becomes real to him in the end, even if only a glimpse he does to me seem to actually recognize her as something separate not something he owns. He sees that seeking to calcify art only kills what was special about it in the first place; something like worshiping a corpse.
It reminded me of a statement David foster Wallace said once. (I’m paraphrasing heavily here) when I’m done with a book I’m dead and the book lives on through the readers. I think he was trying to say that he does not control the ultimate meaning of his own work and if he did it would be the other way around his book/art would be dead.
Amy Hungerford has 3 lectures on Lolita this is the 2nd one given by a guest speaker. I suggest all of them (Hungerford is a great literary analyst) but this one is a compelling argument for the above.
https://youtu.be/QPnxLNFzA8s
In a "squeaky cleaned up" version.[1] "Gigi is now 18, not 15. (And played by Vanessa Hudgens, age 26 at the time.) ... Recall Maurice Chevalier, playing the narrator, the suave silver fox Honoré Lachaille, singing “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” as he strolls through the Bois de Boulogne, eyeing young girls romping in the park. ... No doubt leading the list of Ms. Thomas’s chores was removing this song from the mouth of an elderly gentleman. It has now been cleverly bleached of lechery, reassigned to two female characters, Gigi’s grandmother, Mamita (Victoria Clark), and her Aunt Alicia (Dee Hoty), becoming an innocuous elegy for the fleeting nature of young girlhood."
I have not read the novel, but put it on my reading list a few days back when I discovered it in the best reads list of "The complete Review" [1], which in turn I discovered via the excellent Conversations with Tyler [2] podcast which I started listening to in order a week or two back. I discovered this in a roundabout way via Hackernews (was mentioned in unrelated linked posts multiple times lately)
Why this comment? If you don't know, please check out the fantastic Conversations with Tyler podcast. And if you are looking for a very diverse, entertaining and informative podcast, try it.
Also the "Complete Review". Wow what a website! Proper 90s feel and still delivering value. If you think Lolita is one of the best books to read, you are probably having a similar taste and the reviews might work for you.
I would also like to tackle Lolita again, possibly through an annotated text, but I have a particular focus: I am uneasy with narrator unreliability.
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.
Chuck Palahniuk takes this to the next level. I agree that it is kinda frustrating. I think of the novel then as more of a tour of a mind, and not as a historical record of some sequence of occurrences. Besides, I prefer non-fiction for the latter style.
I liked Lolita because it was written from the point of view of the perpetrator. Can’t remember many other examples - “The Scarf” from Robert Bloch is one. I have doubts it would be published nowadays, too.
Another one is The Collector by Fowles. It reminded me a lot of Lolita, for example in both books the narrator refuses to take responsibility for their actions.
I'm absolutely convinced that censorship takes one of two forms:
1. Cut out things, overstepping and taking some of the best that humanity has to offer.
2. Avoid cutting out things, leaving many people offended for a wide variety of possible reasons.
The reason I believe Lolita is being questioned is because the pendulum has swung too far toward Type 1. The entire idea of a free society, though, is predicated on lots more Type 2.
Thus, I believe Western society is unsustainable as it stands. We'll either see much more censorship in the coming years, or a company/government will face such a huge public backlash on their censoring that the trend reverses course.
Lolita is only subversive for elderly church going moms who understand a man is subverting a child, anyway.
I remember it as a lesson on self-control, child mindset (they are in a phase where they can manipulate dishonestly but also quickly move on like nothing has consequences), a road trip of the US, a lesson on obsessive passion, on one-sided escalation of obsession.
I read it on the advice of my dad around 16, and I had to admit this was absolute beauty, the main character being French like me helped also. There is nothing to censor, there is nothing to discuss: it can be read by children as a warning, it can be read by teenagers as a disturbing challenge, it can be read by adults as entertainment.
Only in the US do people discuss these things like it's a big deal, it's just the story of a lost man who got manipulated by a airhead child and fell in a criminal trap of his own making to end up with absolutely nothing to show for.
BTW western society doesn't exist. Americans should stop using this word to describe their own ways. We don't, everywhere west of China, agree on the definition of what is proper, what is censorship, what is society and how being west of China should impact how we group with others. So American society is unsustainable, but I'd like to argue that French society has an opinion on the balance of such things that works for us. It involves teaching limits openly and early, embrace free expression is a fantasy and explain why, and not shy away from re-discussing each instance of each issue together and publicly.
I'm still trying to differentiate the difference between Western and American culture. As a general rule, the content that floats here about the rest of the world is either extremely stereotyped or with a severe agenda attached.
To the end of that, I believe almost everything in your last paragraph, with some clarifications as an American:
- Americans are highly ethnocentric relative to the rest of the world. It's because this country is the size of Europe, and its relative newness has made very little variance between, say, Kansas and Wyoming as opposed to, say, France and Germany. Thousands of years of horse-drawn travel have crafted your country's culture, while most of this country has had steam power, especially when you head westward.
- The actual meaning of "Western Society", at least as I defaulted to using it, is to draw a political dichotomy to "Other Societies". Frankly, I think elements of all cultures are useful, but this two-party system over here removes any sense of subtlety to the dialogue.
- I believe that protecting innocence is a losing bet, so I personally give my kids all the information as much as possible. To most Americans, that's offensive because they believe I'm somehow scarring them.
Lolita is supposed to be a challenging piece. In this thread people are discussing the details, but the way I see this and I hope it’s supposed to be seen as is that there is a tremendous contrast between prose and motif. More than any other book ever written IMO. Prose is extraordinarily beautiful, motif is extraordinarily disgusting. It tears the reader apart, inside out. That’s art.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26511997
If they make a cent from users who visit but then leave when they see this giant form, they should be fined into a smoking hole the ground.
What's particularly funny about this form is that the "legitimate interests" they claim, meaning they don't require consent, can be disabled.
Luckily uBlock Origin blocks the stupid form along with 44 other elements.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The article consists of the story of how Lolita was published in the US mixed with background on the political setting of the era it was published in.
The overall claim of the article seems to be that Lolita is still politically interesting and sparks debate.
I disagree with this conclusion. The world is all too fond of sexuality, and especially with controversial sexuality.
I am actually the author of a somewhat popular website involving written erotica, and what I've found is that controversial erotica is wildly popular regardless of the specific content. You could publish all manner of twisted crap today and it would mostly be met with praise.
There are, of course, puritanical haters that will go out of their way to whine and cry about it, but the world has reached a point where it is broadly understood that written erotica is freedom of speech and trying to ban it or make it stop is pointless.
Unfortunately, this isn't entirely true, even today.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/3a8nv3/canadian-author-charg... This is the most famous recent one.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/man-convicted-multiple-obscen... There is also a Texas Man, by the name of Thomas Arthur, who hosted far more disturbing things on his website who got convicted of obscenity.
He appears to have been trafficking in obscene drawings, however the text material is listed as charges as well.
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 from a sexual wellness perspective, but simultaneously I think children are abused very frequently even in this era and we should continue to do everything we can to protect them from abuse.
I still see plenty of "stories of my childhood" on erotica websites, and I don't see anyone going out of their way to shut them down. Example: solotouch ( not my website, but a common example with many such stories )
Another legal example that comes to mind is the man who was convicted for importing obscene hentai manga. I personally believe hentai should be considered free speech but that is certainly not the case in the legal arena right now.
My point remains that I believe the world is very accepting of many types of erotica that I had previously thought would be highly frowned upon.
I will point out that under the miller test ( the main law concerning this in the US ), textual material that is artistically meaningful as writing does not constitute illegal writing. I myself shy away from writing any erotica describing explicit sexual activity of minors, but I still believe it to be legal if written well enough... I does though fail 2 of the 3 prongs on the miller test:
1. The average person would agree that description of explicit child sexual activity is illegal. ( fiction wise at least; I think accounts of childhood activity may be deemed acceptable by many normal folk )
2. Description of child sexual activity is patently offensive.
In the case of Lolita, for the most part, the book isn't terribly explicit in nature. It also ensures its legality by being an instance of well written fiction.
Other applicable law is "activity contributing to the delinquency of minors". So, it isn't unreasonable for something that is otherwise legal to be illegal ( for good reason ) if it is used to encourage minors to engage in sexual activity ( with adults or for the entertainment of adults )
Essentially, the world is very accepting of erotica in many forms. The world simultaneously has many laws to attempt to protect children while maintaining the general acceptance.
wtf?
Something like this goes very quickly in direction of pedophiles.
Once puberty hits children engage in some amount of sexual behavior, and that is natural. Many parents have to explain to their child not to masturbate in public for example.
What I am saying here is that telling your child "masturbation is sinful" is unhealthy. It is also unhealthy to tell your child "masturbate any time you want!" It is sort of like eating dessert in my mind. Occasionally, with moderation, is acceptable. All the time, incessantly, is problematic.
I am not, by the way, suggesting that adults become involved in the sexual activity of anyone underage. What I am saying is that parents should help their children ( by explaining things to them ) to be balanced and not fearful of their own sexuality. Life is difficult enough without being raised to be disgusted by your own feelings.
But, committing a terrible act, and writing about it from a fictional perspective are completely different things. I don't think people are so brainless as to blindly follow what is happening in a hentai manga.
Someone doesn't simply "become" the sort of person who would do that, just by consuming fictional material, and if they're using purely fictional material, it could be even argued they're actively avoiding it.
The actual risk factors for abuse (and not merely creating / consuming prohibited content) I know of are:
Some people have poor mental health. Being unable to express yourself and having to shut things in would not help. Luckily, we have many ways to improve someone's mental health. Mental health can also improve if someone has supportive friends. This could be considered the main factor.
There are people who look for substitutes for a partner and unscrupulously pick that.
Someone may be physically incapable of feeling anything to adults and only to children. A recent scientific paper said that some address their loneliness by creating dolls and talking to them to keep them company. Banning and prohibiting things might frustrate them, but it wouldn't actually solve anything, other than making it clear that they have nothing to lose.
I am sure there are other possible factors, but I don't think I have ever seen "I saw it in a book" mentioned as one. Even Dr. Seto, who is a leading expert in this area, believes that those who would abuse, are those who would have abused either way, irregardless of this content being available.
So long as the creators are sourcing their artistic style on imagination and/or non-sexual source art, I don't think there is any real harm being done, and therefore I personally believe such should still be legal. I do, though, question the purpose of it and agree that it is pretty disturbing content.
I disagree that you cannot become a twisted person by viewing sufficient twisted content. The perspective matters of course, but I could readily believe that an otherwise harmless pervert could become inclined to enacting harm against others after reading a sufficient amount of such content. The pervert has their fantasies enthralled, and thus begins to believe more-so that enacting things in the way described is acceptable.
In this way, I think the way the perverse content is depicted matters. If it is depicted in a way that makes it seem like wonderful fun to abuse others, then I agree it should become illegal. I also can't think of depictions that I would approve of myself and can only think of depictions less likely to encourage harm.
I agree with the idea that hentai manga provides an outlet for people who may enact their fantasies in reality if they did not have that outlet. The idea is that the hentai serves as a punching bag of sorts.
I could believe that some believe they can only be attracted to children and not to adults, but I don't think that justifies and means they have a right to view sexualized kids or art of it. I'd argue that such individuals are better off just enjoying normal manga and hentai instead of getting involved in hentai.
As I mentioned previously, I author erotica. One question I have asked myself many times is "Am I encouraging or causing others to engage in the fictional behavior I have imagined and written?" Having read the reviews of my writing by readers; I strongly believe the answer is "Yes. Whatever fictional content I create, should it be believable and seem sufficiently safe, will be enacted by readers as a result of learning about it."
The "readers should understand it is fiction and not enact the fantasy" excuse doesn't fly in my mind. Many readers will not understand that clearly, regardless of even being told to keep this in mind, and will still enact the fiction.
It's also not a belief. The science has put it clearly that such people exist. Saying otherwise is to deny the science. Not only can the science measure someone's response to material, but even their neuronal response to it. It _is_ a spectrum, so there are types who aren't that bad off, and perhaps, even ones who are lightly touched by it. But, the idea that it is purely a form of deviance and twisting is flawed.
There are pieces of anecdotal science (studies on small samples of people who report it helping them not have to commit crime), a country level study on crime in the Czech Republic, and expert opinions from half a dozen experts which would suggest that at worst it is neutral and at best it reduces crime.
Most importantly, there has never been evidence that it causes crime. This property has largely been assumed, and has never been tested in such a fashion, despite a lot of people assuming it has been tested and produced such results. There is an exception where prisoners wanting to get early parole / better conditions play along with flawed studies.
According to Dr. Seto, those who commit crimes are largely antisocial individuals who were leaning and moving in that direction to begin with. And that they ultimately would have reached that conclusion.
At most, I might advise putting a content warning on a site or a piece that explains that it is a piece of fiction, and that it should be not be enacted. But, I've never seen actual evidence, only conjecture, that that it could be a problem. It's just not listed in actual psych profiles.
And while I will condemn someone acting out the crimes, condemning someone for consuming / producing a piece of media is going to feel like an adversarial attack on them (which fuels in-group bias, meeting up with like-minded people, distancing, and conspiracy theories), and it ultimately just deprives them of pleasure, without any real gain (and that is in the best case).
If someone does feel it is making them really likely to do something that they shouldn't, I would strongly advise that they don't read it, and I don't feel that a level-headed individual would just run all the way to doing a crime.
As for those reviews, I would have to know what they actually say. But, people say all sorts of things when they're "horny". And critics will critic.
That is, arguably, the system working. Unfortunately, when things go to court, the system working often involves people getting hurt.
The other case is also going up for appeal, from what I've read, although I don't know how the higher court will respond to it.
Vouch gets rids of it if other people find it unnecessary.
This does not allow you to do whatever you want.
In germany for example it is written like this: "These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to personal honour."
And its not different in the USA, you have limitations as well as the general good is more important than your personal.
"The world is all too fond of sexuality, and especially with controversial sexuality." And what distrubs me the most on your comment: Just because their are pedophiles, doesn't make pedophiles okay. Yes i used here the extrem form of 'controversial sexuality' but to be clear: you should know your boundaries in comparison to the normal society. Just because you are part of that sub group of people, in my circles 'controversial sexuality' is not typical at all.
You have a responsibility and just because you can and some other are having the same moral compass as you have, doesn't make your niche okay on a moral/society point of view.
And it could be that your 'controversial sexuality' is actually okay but how you express yourself, it feels already that you crossed a line i wouldn't.
You seem to imply that controversial written erotica shouldn’t be covered by freedom of speech protections, as it would be in the name of protecting children. Do you think censoring it would reduce the incidence of child abuse? If so, would banning videogames like GTA reduce the incidence of shootings or traffic rule violations?
> in my circles 'controversial sexuality' is not typical at all
It seems like the author of the comment you’re replying to might be in a unique position to gauge what controversial sexuality might be of interest to your circles even if yourself aren’t privy to it due to its controversial nature.
Like laws going in direction of 'proection of minors'.
I'm not sure if you are allowed to just put a website online which is advocating for pedophility (lets keep the extreme to simplify). But here is where youth laws require you to make sure kids can't access it.
Same goes for GTA, you also have youth laws protecting them.
The author is probably part of a subcultural group of people in their own bubble. I highly doubt that his experience is in any way ever statistically relevant enough and reaches any majority at all.
And just to clarify one thing: i don't care about known fetishes or weird erotica. Let people read and write what they want but its easy to cross lines in fiction you wouldn't dare in real life but starting to getting used to the thoughts, images and ideas.
How do you think would freely advocate that kids should express their sexuality as it is just 'normal'? Kids which are just playing and learning and perhaps lern to touch themselves as a normal growing up process or adults sexualising those kids? No kid needs an adult supporter to learn how to masturbate and there are 1000x more important things for people to learn like taxes before they should learn how to have a very diverse sex live in their adult life.
Don't get me wrong, we do put a lot of stigma on it as a society but its probably better to advocate to the adults and not to minors at all.
Clear line.
Fictional stories and images on the internet have no relationship with reality. There are no victims, there is no one harmed. You don't have to like the content, that is fine, but there is no good argument about bad morals or government intervention unless you're proving actual harm.
It's an unpleasant form of collective punishment. And it means that all of them have to suffer for something which has nothing to do with them.
Rapefantasies written as books are also okay?
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 subtlety of the story and all of the brilliant writing went right over my head.
Then I happened to pick up The Fued, about the friendship and subsequent falling out between Nabakov and Edmund Wilson. It mentioned several times that Lolita was a runaway success, and it made Nabakov famous.
I thought there must be something more to Lolita than I remembered, so I picked up a copy at the library. It was a whole different book. This time, I found the story both riveting and disturbing. On the first read, I knew that what he was doing would be called abuse, but I didn't really understand how he took advantage of her trust and naivety and adolescent rebelliousness. Or how awful it is to dehumanize pre teen girls and characterize them as sexual objects called nymphets.
HH claims to know that he took something irreplaceable from her and ruined her childhood. But - and I think this is why they say he is an unreliable narrator - it's not clear if he really believes what he's saying, or if it's a calculated ploy to garner sympathy.
The writing is incredible. The story is troubling and fascinating, and stayed in my mind a long time after. RIP Delores Schiller.
all my favorite films and books had me thinking about them months after the fact. even if it was just one part.
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 their teen years), but because there are so many levels you'd miss.
Truly a masterpiece, in spite of the icky subject matter, some parts are really dark in retrospect, but it's handled with such a light touch it's hard to look away.
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.
This is an interesting situation, because it creates a reading list that is a "projected aspiration". We hope, I guess, that kids will read precociously. Education is, after all, the teaching of civilization's most important messages compressed into a fixed, very short time-span. School gets kids "caught up" on the civilizational conversations about things. But so much of the art and literature of humanity is like Lolita, in that it requires lots of actual living to appreciate (unlike algebra), so its position is...odd.
I wonder if, by being exposed to these things at a young age, we give kids a "shared coordinate system" to interpret and express their world, and so shape their choices in it.
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 appealed to me at the time. I can't tell if I'm here because, despite, or totally disconnected from my education.
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.
Certain things like Shakespeare I'd contend will appeal at least on a surface level to children too. Something like Lolita not so much.
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.
Every reader has their own interpretation of a text and the author's intent. Personally, looking back on Lolita I can say I'm a little uncomfortable with the level of empathy and identification the writer shows with Humbert Humbert, but I know the intention is to discomfit the reader by making them identify with a horrible character, so...
That's not the intent of the author. Nabokov has absolutely no moral or social points to make.
I didn't realize this until I read Eugene Onegin, which I take as the genesis of Nabokov's general perspective. Onegin is funny and ironic while still being emotionally affecting. Nabokov is much more in the "art for art's sake" camp than most people today are comfortable with.
But, you're citing a book by Pushkin (or the anti-hero within?) as illustrative of Nabokov's worldview? While he affected amused disdain I think Nabokov did care about the world. Doesn't Onegin too?
I think it's hard to square writing a book about a manipulative child abuser with being utterly disinterested in moral or social issues, because the book probes deeply into both (even if it is a little fantastical and hyper-real). I agree Nabokov has a very dry, aristocratic and distant style, but he wouldn't write about such things if he didn't want to provoke debate. Art has meaning and his has a lot more depth than surface. His position is of course very ambiguous but there is a lot of empathy for Humbert in Lolita, which is partly why it is so entrancing and discomfiting.
> But, you're citing a book by Pushkin (or the anti-hero within?) as illustrative of Nabokov's worldview? While he affected amused disdain I think Nabokov did care about the world. Doesn't Onegin too?
That's my view, yeah. The figure here is the disaffected noble (or intellectual) who disdains society, creates his own values, and eventually tragically fails partly because he can't totally leave society behind. I think Nabokov loves those characters. I don't think he's criticizing them.
I am of course not saying you have to agree with Nabokov.
Yes I agree he probably would have loved a character like that, though I think part of the attraction is the recognition of their inevitable tragic end (with the implicit recognition that they are mistaken about the world).
Humbert of course is not in that mould (or not entirely), and I'm not saying Nabokov would be so crass as to write himself into Humbert, but he shows a lot of sly sympathy for him in Lolita, and his other books also show a preoccupation with transgressive sexuality in children (Ada), it's a weird obsession.
English Versions of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin: https://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/pml1/onegin/
It's hard to tell which one is the best, because I do not like the original ... too boring.
I've tried it again today and it's boring again but today I have found that a few primitive tricks were used many times when rythm doesn't work.
I think the common view about beauty of the poem is greatly exaggerated.
Art (big A) is designed to make you feel and think. It is an experience.
What a particular work communicates is hard to pin down, and of course open to interpretation which changes over time (for example views of Alice in Wonderland have shifted due to revelations about the character of the author and his relation with his Alice), but it's certainly not possible to discuss whether a book sympathises with the central character if you don't engage with what the book says and instead talk in generalities.
I think of Lolita as a puzzle of a story. There are quite a few clues that lead to a metaphor that make since of HH’s proclamations at the end. I think Nabokov was satirizing himself as an artist through HH’s character. This view makes Delores the incarnation of “art” and HH the artist. The artist “loves” art as it affirms his whole life and reason for being. He seeks to control art, own it, and manipulate it for his own purposes. HH does not realize till the end that art/Delores lives and breaths on its/her own and that this autonomy outside of his control is truly what makes her her and art beautiful. Her struggle becomes real to him in the end, even if only a glimpse he does to me seem to actually recognize her as something separate not something he owns. He sees that seeking to calcify art only kills what was special about it in the first place; something like worshiping a corpse.
It reminded me of a statement David foster Wallace said once. (I’m paraphrasing heavily here) when I’m done with a book I’m dead and the book lives on through the readers. I think he was trying to say that he does not control the ultimate meaning of his own work and if he did it would be the other way around his book/art would be dead.
Amy Hungerford has 3 lectures on Lolita this is the 2nd one given by a guest speaker. I suggest all of them (Hungerford is a great literary analyst) but this one is a compelling argument for the above. https://youtu.be/QPnxLNFzA8s
How Would the Publishing World Respond to Lolita Today?
"Thank Heaven For Little Girls: [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigi_%28musical%29
[2] https://youtu.be/2TqSyvdqn9c
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/theater/vanessa-hudgens-i...
Why this comment? If you don't know, please check out the fantastic Conversations with Tyler podcast. And if you are looking for a very diverse, entertaining and informative podcast, try it.
Also the "Complete Review". Wow what a website! Proper 90s feel and still delivering value. If you think Lolita is one of the best books to read, you are probably having a similar taste and the reviews might work for you.
[1] https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/nabokovv/lolita1.htm [2] https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/
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.
1. Cut out things, overstepping and taking some of the best that humanity has to offer. 2. Avoid cutting out things, leaving many people offended for a wide variety of possible reasons.
The reason I believe Lolita is being questioned is because the pendulum has swung too far toward Type 1. The entire idea of a free society, though, is predicated on lots more Type 2.
Thus, I believe Western society is unsustainable as it stands. We'll either see much more censorship in the coming years, or a company/government will face such a huge public backlash on their censoring that the trend reverses course.
I remember it as a lesson on self-control, child mindset (they are in a phase where they can manipulate dishonestly but also quickly move on like nothing has consequences), a road trip of the US, a lesson on obsessive passion, on one-sided escalation of obsession.
I read it on the advice of my dad around 16, and I had to admit this was absolute beauty, the main character being French like me helped also. There is nothing to censor, there is nothing to discuss: it can be read by children as a warning, it can be read by teenagers as a disturbing challenge, it can be read by adults as entertainment.
Only in the US do people discuss these things like it's a big deal, it's just the story of a lost man who got manipulated by a airhead child and fell in a criminal trap of his own making to end up with absolutely nothing to show for.
BTW western society doesn't exist. Americans should stop using this word to describe their own ways. We don't, everywhere west of China, agree on the definition of what is proper, what is censorship, what is society and how being west of China should impact how we group with others. So American society is unsustainable, but I'd like to argue that French society has an opinion on the balance of such things that works for us. It involves teaching limits openly and early, embrace free expression is a fantasy and explain why, and not shy away from re-discussing each instance of each issue together and publicly.
To the end of that, I believe almost everything in your last paragraph, with some clarifications as an American:
- Americans are highly ethnocentric relative to the rest of the world. It's because this country is the size of Europe, and its relative newness has made very little variance between, say, Kansas and Wyoming as opposed to, say, France and Germany. Thousands of years of horse-drawn travel have crafted your country's culture, while most of this country has had steam power, especially when you head westward. - The actual meaning of "Western Society", at least as I defaulted to using it, is to draw a political dichotomy to "Other Societies". Frankly, I think elements of all cultures are useful, but this two-party system over here removes any sense of subtlety to the dialogue. - I believe that protecting innocence is a losing bet, so I personally give my kids all the information as much as possible. To most Americans, that's offensive because they believe I'm somehow scarring them.
[1]https://gainedin.site/culture