Men Explain Lolita To Me

[Matthew Taylor]

As far as I'm aware, the only background for this piece was a short section
of Solnit's previous LitHub essay, "80 Books No Woman Should Read," which
was written in response to an *Esquire *list. Here's the link
<http://lithub.com/80-books-no-woman-should-read/>, but I'll excerpt the
most relevant passage here:

*"Speaking of instructions on women as nonpersons, when I first read On the
Road (which isn’t on this list, though The Dharma Bums is), I realized that
the book assumed you identified with the protagonist who is so convinced
he’s sensitive and deep even as he leaves the young Latina farmworker he
got involved with to whatever trouble he’s created. It assumes that you do
not identify with the woman herself, who is not on the road and not treated
very much like anything other than a discardable depository. Of course I
identified with her, as I did with Lolita (and Lolita, that masterpiece of
Humbert Humbert’s failure of empathy, is on the Esquire list with a coy
description). I forgave Kerouac eventually, just as I forgave Jim Harrison
his lecherousness on the page, because they have redeeming qualities. And
there’s a wholesome midwesterness about his lechery, unlike Charles
Bukowski and Henry Miller’s."*

I'm guessing her impetus for the Lolita piece was some sort of backlash to
this? It's been all over my Twitter and Facebook today, with vehement
people on all sides of the argument. I generally admire and respect Solnit,
but I do find this piece "curiously uneven," as Mark put it, even if I
don't fully side with the folks lambasting her over it either.

On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 3:35 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> yeah, Nabokov greatly dissed 'morality' in fiction all his non-fic life...
> but he did believe in themes and human goodness and badness..
>
> some take Nabokov's constant dissing of 'morality' as part-act (against
> lousy, sentimental poshlost fiction) and part unreliable narrator...
>
> Anyway, he recognized love and death and themes related to and life
> and sense perceptions and
> so much more in his own
> and in others' fictions.
>
> On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 5:50 PM, Ray Easton
> <raymond.lee.easton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Morality -- Nabakov does not care a fig about morality.  And  the novel
> is
> > designed to force us to identity not with Lokita, but with HH.
> >
> > Ray
> >
> >
> > On December 17, 2015 4:40:02 PM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> >>
> >>
> >> we have to identify with Lolita because common human morality....to
> >> read it right....
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Sent with AquaMail for Android
> > http://www.aqua-mail.com
> >
> >
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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