I’m not usually one to knock people’s tastes in problematic art. Chinatown is my all-time favorite movie and I’d be hard pressed to never watch it again. So it’s tough for me to judge.
Which doesn’t mean that automatically immunizes me from criticism. I may be a “You do you” person but I also believe we should be critiquing our tastes at all time and remember that many of them come at a cost.
I read Lolita when I was an 18-year old college freshman. I’d like to say that I was turned off by the book because of its content, and that was part of it, but really, it was Nabakov’s prose, which was too purply for me at the time. I haven’t revisited it in large part due to the content.
So this book didn’t initially interest me when it was published because discussing any aspect of Lolita doesn’t interest me. However, I love Sarah Weinman’s work for the New York Times and the reviews I read of this made it sound like it was more of a study of this famous case and how said case inspired the book. So I decided to grab it and I’m so glad I did.
Weinman is an excellent writer but what I loved about this book was the focus on Sally Horner’s plight, culminating with the end of her tragic life and how it impacted all around her. There are several interspersed chapters that cover Nabokov’s journey to writing Lolita and how certain events coincided with developments in his process. But this is really Sally’s story and Weinman doesn’t lose sight of that, nor does she lose sight of the fact that the book itself, while taking place from the POV of a pedophile, should be centering the young girl who is a survivor.
It’s a tough read, a gut wrenching one but it’s blessedly short so I’d encourage you to pick it up if so curious. I’m not sure if Lolita fans will appreciate it or not but, at the risk of guilting them, I think it’s still important to know this story.
