Well readhead: the most arrogant interview ever

Nathan says:

06:32am | 19/11/10

Nabokov would have been writing “Ada, or Ardor” around this time, so you can understand his arrogance.

Zeta says:

09:20am | 19/11/10

I collect Obelisk / Olympia Press editions, and Lolita really sticks out amongst them as the one book that doesn’t belong in that back catalogue. On the one hand, you have this ribald filth written under pseudonyms like ‘Count Palmiro Vicarion’, through to William S. Burroughs, the Story of O, Finegan’s Wake, Anais Nin - and what’s weird is that Nabakov’s stark, kitchen table realism is more disturbing than Burrough’s transgressive, heroin fueled pedophillia fantasies.

And when you look at the history of all those books, what’s stranger still is the reaction to Lolita in the United States. Olympia Press printed Lolita because no one else would - and the British had it banned. But it arrived in the US with barely a whisper of outrage, and contrary to popular belief, was not the immediate subject of an obscenity charge.

It seems incongruous that 1950s America wouldn’t find Lolita as distasteful as the fever dream fantasies of the Beats, or the rest of the avant garde erotica being translated from French.

You read and re-read Lolita and there is this quality about it that seperates it from the canon of transgressive literature. It’s hard to put your finger on it. Burgess, Joyce, Miller, Kerouac - all managed to make the transgressive literary, but Nabakov goes one step further, he manages to make his character’s transgression have mainstream appeal.

Other writers of the time wrote about disturbed people doing disturbing things, but even in the morally ambiguous Beat movement - there is still black and white, even when it’s bleak. Nabakov’s question - is Humbert corrupting an innocent child? Or is a corrupt child corrupting an innocent man - twists the reader around in ways even the blackest moments of 1950s literature fail too.

I just never warmed to it. And that’s coming from a guy who’ll read any banned book once. You can glean some enjoyment out of transgressive literature because it’s fantastic - even Hubert Selby Jnr has that quality. You know Last Exist to Brooklyn ‘might’ have happened, but it’s too distant from the reader to really resonate.

In Lolita, you’re presented with a situation that’s all too real - not just because it does happen, but because it could happen to anyone. You’re forced to pick back through yourself and find the moment where your own sexuality could have become stunted the way the protagonist’s did. I’m not sure if that’s my idea of fun.

I’ve often wondered if the experience of reading it is different for women.

PK says:

10:24am | 19/11/10

Well good luck to you by all means. But I doubt any one else wishing to be taken seriously would nominate one of their own works at number two on a “to read” list.

Ziggy says:

10:57am | 19/11/10

Oe or two excellent pieces of narcissism as practised by ‘intellctuals’ - got to love it.

stephen says:

01:28pm | 19/11/10

When I grow up I am going to marry Leigh Sales:)

stephen says:

09:53am | 20/11/10

Yeah well i’m full growed - had no complaints - ‘n i didn’t write dat.

Sam A says:

01:17pm | 13/06/12

I too want to marry Leigh Sales, however she is taken and there is a queue waiting. LS is definitely the thinking man’s sex symbol, and I miss her on Lateline

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