- Feb 5, 2002
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The publication of a book advocating sympathetic treatment of people with pedophile impulses is an ominous sign.
I sometimes quietly thank my lucky stars that I am not growing up today. It all seems very complicated. The main thing is that boys are expected to be dexterous at video games and I am all thumbs. The last time I played “Resident Evil”, for instance, hardly had I entered the first portal before I was knocked off by squadrons of flesh-eating zombies. I certainly would have developed a devastating sense of inferiority.
Another technological hazard is the morally devastating rubbish dished up to high school kids on mobile phones and the internet.
Not that things were all that innocent in my day, mind you. The dirty book du jour was Lolita, a 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. It is still kicking around. A memoir of Iranian repression called Reading Lolita in Teheran even spent 100 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.
Looking back, the popularity of Lolita was and is shocking. For it is a novel about paedophilia in which a middle-aged literature professor strikes up a relationship with a 12-year-old girl. Stanley Kubrick turned it into a prize-winning film.
With all the fully justifiable outrage over sex abuse by scout masters and priests and swimming coaches, how was it possible for Time magazine to praise it not long ago as a “tragic, twisted epic”? The subsequent success of Reading Lolita in Teheran suggests that Lolita has become a symbol of intellectual freedom in some quarters.
Continued below.
Pedophilia takes a cautious step forward toward respectability » MercatorNet
I sometimes quietly thank my lucky stars that I am not growing up today. It all seems very complicated. The main thing is that boys are expected to be dexterous at video games and I am all thumbs. The last time I played “Resident Evil”, for instance, hardly had I entered the first portal before I was knocked off by squadrons of flesh-eating zombies. I certainly would have developed a devastating sense of inferiority.
Another technological hazard is the morally devastating rubbish dished up to high school kids on mobile phones and the internet.
Not that things were all that innocent in my day, mind you. The dirty book du jour was Lolita, a 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. It is still kicking around. A memoir of Iranian repression called Reading Lolita in Teheran even spent 100 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list.
Looking back, the popularity of Lolita was and is shocking. For it is a novel about paedophilia in which a middle-aged literature professor strikes up a relationship with a 12-year-old girl. Stanley Kubrick turned it into a prize-winning film.
With all the fully justifiable outrage over sex abuse by scout masters and priests and swimming coaches, how was it possible for Time magazine to praise it not long ago as a “tragic, twisted epic”? The subsequent success of Reading Lolita in Teheran suggests that Lolita has become a symbol of intellectual freedom in some quarters.
Continued below.
Pedophilia takes a cautious step forward toward respectability » MercatorNet
