as small as a world and as large as alone

8:40pm August 18, 2013

warlocksexalways:

josiahd:

deducecanoe:

todayinhistory:

August 18th 1958: Lolita published

On this day in 1958 the novel ‘Lolita’ by Vladimir Nabokov was published in the United States. The novel was very controversial at the time due to its subject matter. The protagonist is a middle aged man called Humbert Humbert who has a sexual relationship with a 12 year old girl whom he nicknames ‘Lolita’. However, it is considered one of the greatest novels of all time.

WHY is it considered one of the greatest novels of all time? I have never understood this. Can someone actually explain this to me?? I mean for real??? Make an actual case for this book? I was freaked out and disturbed when I read this book in my early 20s. 

It’s also not even written well or interesting. The disturbing stuff is literally the only thing about it.

I know some feminist women who like it because it’s supposed to be a study in unreliable narrators and how rapists’ minds work, I think… but… I think for the most part we already know how rapists’ minds work, because we’re constantly being told stories from the perspective of men who hurt women, and having that hurt disguised as romance or love. What about a story from the girl’s perspective?

I was molested at the age of 11-14. One of my abusers told me, in therapy at the age of seventeen when we were reunited (he was family, and both of us wanted that), how much he did without my knowledge. I believed my not noticing meant no harm done. He believed that meant even more harm done.

But I didn’t understand until I read the first part of Lolita exactly how covert and sneaky child molesters can get. And how far the rationalization can go.

But then there’s a lot of things I have to be told explicitly about the world. And even now I’m not likely to be interested in finding out directly from him, what exactly precisely he was thinking and doing. He confessed enough of that to my parents, more than I was ever aware of, or in some cases was aware of but didn’t fully understand. I would rather find out from a book than have the most awkward and charged conversation I could possibly have with the man who molested me. We have a somewhat distant but non-hostile relationship and I am not interested in making it that awkward or volatile.

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