"In any case, it
is a matter of indifference to me whether VN (or anyone else, for that
matter) fantasizes about sex with underage girls, so long as he stops
short of putting his fantasies into action..."--Jim Twiggs
JT
seems to make some contradictory statements in his comments on the
MacLean article. The statement quoted above is easy enough to agree
with; indeed, the act of writing a novel such as Lolita requires
imagining such fantasies. However, he goes on to almost endorse
MacLean's assumptions about VN's supposed "unseemly urges" in comments
such as "...passion for sex, much of it with underage girls, runs
throughout VN's work," and this I don't agree with. JT cites the poem Lilith (originally written by VN in Russian in 1928) as support for his statements, even though VN himself, in the author's notes to Poems and Problems, offers that "Intelligent readers will abstain from examining this impersonal
fantasy for any links with my later fiction," and that the poem was
written "...to amuse a friend." There is a huge
difference between artistic fantasy on the one hand, and assuming a
likelihood that someone capable of a Lolita is somehow in the same league
as an incurable pedophile who must use "stuffed-shirtedness" as a
"firewall" against unseemly urges! Again, such
statements put MacLean on the same intellectual level as H. S. Thompson
and P. J. O'Rourke, who found it logical that since VN wrote about
sordid subjects, he must have engaged in sordid behavior (using a supposed Sun Valley sighting of VN with an 11-year-old girl as "evidence"). I disagree with any such suppositions about VN's urges and passions.
--
Norky
All private editorial communications are
read by both co-editors.