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Before we forget about the Nic Kelman novel “Girls”, I want to get one more little section on Nabokov’s “Lolita”. He riffs on the idea that, although Lolita was a terribly young lass, she still was coming fast into her teenage years, and therefore she was not exactly wildly outside the normal spectrum of heterosexual male desire, teasing that Nabokov was playing on at least a hint of prurient interest.
It reminds me of a note that Nabokov made in the afterword of at least one of his editions of “Lolita”, that a publisher told him that he could publish the novel if he changed Lolita into a boy character, because otherwise the book can come off as being a little too pornographic, and of the worst sort, with this teenish girl, at least as far as the overwhelming heterosexual male population goes. Fortunately, for the world of literature, Nabokov did not heed that suggestion.
Remember that Kelman’s book is a fictional novel, and that he is assuming the voice of one of those ultra-alpha-male assholes. The writing here is sexually raw and crude. I think of it as the male id unleashed.
_ _ _
Ah, Nabokov, you sly old dog, you cunt, you. Even though you call Humbert a pedophile, you chose a girl just after puberty, not just before. Why would that be do you think? could it be that you knew even your staunchest supporters would desert you if she had been younger? Could it be that you knew because she was postpubescent there would be plenty of people that would understand but that if she were prepubescent you wouldn’t have found a single sympathizer? That if she were prepubescent you might as well have written a book asking its reader to pity a genocide? Could it be that all, yes all, the men you knew too, when the doors were closed, when the room was empty but for them, would look at each other and smirk and say, “Humbert was one lucky bastard, wasn’t he?” Could it be that for all your respectable scholarly exterior, you had more than one male friend who knew you well enough to say with a grin, “I can’t believe you got away with that!” Could it be that you knew damn well there are plenty of people who, underneath it all, believe the saying "Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed.”
-- “Girls” by Nic Kelman
It reminds me of a note that Nabokov made in the afterword of at least one of his editions of “Lolita”, that a publisher told him that he could publish the novel if he changed Lolita into a boy character, because otherwise the book can come off as being a little too pornographic, and of the worst sort, with this teenish girl, at least as far as the overwhelming heterosexual male population goes. Fortunately, for the world of literature, Nabokov did not heed that suggestion.
Remember that Kelman’s book is a fictional novel, and that he is assuming the voice of one of those ultra-alpha-male assholes. The writing here is sexually raw and crude. I think of it as the male id unleashed.
_ _ _
Ah, Nabokov, you sly old dog, you cunt, you. Even though you call Humbert a pedophile, you chose a girl just after puberty, not just before. Why would that be do you think? could it be that you knew even your staunchest supporters would desert you if she had been younger? Could it be that you knew because she was postpubescent there would be plenty of people that would understand but that if she were prepubescent you wouldn’t have found a single sympathizer? That if she were prepubescent you might as well have written a book asking its reader to pity a genocide? Could it be that all, yes all, the men you knew too, when the doors were closed, when the room was empty but for them, would look at each other and smirk and say, “Humbert was one lucky bastard, wasn’t he?” Could it be that for all your respectable scholarly exterior, you had more than one male friend who knew you well enough to say with a grin, “I can’t believe you got away with that!” Could it be that you knew damn well there are plenty of people who, underneath it all, believe the saying "Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed.”
-- “Girls” by Nic Kelman
