7 ms·
The Real Lolita
- tomrod 10y agoWow! Truth stranger than, or inspiring, fiction is always a good read. Where I live, the state is doing a lot to fight sexual trafficking (I'd put this in the same category). http://humantrafficking.ohio.gov http://humantrafficking.ohio.gov
- seashuttle 10y agoThis was an incredible read. I would never have suspected that the book had roots in reality.
- RRRA 10y agoIs someone trying to figure out Mr robot's final episode? ;)
- bryanlarsen 10y agoThe most interesting aspect to me was that the story didn't make the New York Times. Today the story would be international news and would probably take up 48-72 hours of continuous coverage on CNN.
- ddeck 10y agoThat's not all that's changed. Today he likely wouldn't even have had the opportunity as he would have been in prison already: On September 4, 1942, Frank La Salle was indicted in Camden County Criminal Court for the statutory rape of five girls between the ages of 12 and 14. He wasn’t arrested until February 2, 1943, though, and pleaded not guilty to the charges in court the following week. A little over a month later, on March 22, La Salle changed his plea to “non vult,” or no contest, and received a sentence of two and a half to five years in Trenton State Prison. Fourteen months later, on June 18, 1944, La Salle was paroled. 14 months in prison for the statutory rape of 5 12-14 year old girls by a 45-year old man. It's truly unbelievable how such an offence could be treated so lightly at the time.
- userbinator 10y agoI'm not surprised, morality changes. Go back in time far enough, and it might not even be considered rape.
- Radim 10y agoNo need to travel back in time; still acceptable in many places and cultures around the world TODAY.
- glogla 10y agoOr in the US if he was rich swimmer.
- cm2012 10y agoWhich swimmer is this?
- forlulz 10y agohttp://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/07/us/outrage-in-stanford-rape-case-over-dueling-statements-of-victim-and-attackers-father.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/07/us/outrage-in-stanford-rap... This douche (plus his dad, and the judge)
- oldmanjay 10y agoI know this is the popular case to flog your morals over right now but the relationship to this story seems pretty threadbare. What connection do you see outside of the sex crime angle?
- unclenoriega 10y agoWhile that case is terrible, I think most people will find a difference between one incident of rape between two people in their 20s and the statutory rape of 5 adolescent girls by a 45-year-old man. To me at least, there seems to be very little comparison.
- sandworm101 10y agoI'm not sure that it would. At least, this story is not unusual. It's horrific, but not unusual to anyone working in social work or health care. This girl was certainly very young, younger than the norm, but girls of 13-14 marrying older men happened more often in the 50s than we like to admit. The lines between 'running off' and 'abduction' aren't clear today and certainly were not clear then. States like New Mexico still allow marriages at such ages in cases of pregnancy ... a shocking twist in the law. Marilyn Monroe famously married at 15 in 1944. That wasn't considered odd. Had this man been single and convinced the girl to go through with a marriage ceremony prior to her escape, or had they not crossed state lines, the entire case might have never have risen to any public attention. The girl would have been returned, the marriage annulled, and the entire affair quieted. Note how she was rescued. Her rescuer did not go immediately to the police but instead contrived a scheme to move the pair out of their local support network. The rescuer wasn't taken aback in horror by the situation. She recognized what was happening and knew to take certain steps. Her getting them to cross state lines is either lucky coincidence or legal genius as she did not know of the pair's travel history. She was not surprised to the point of immediately marching down to the police station. She was aware of the difficulties because this was not something totally new in her experience.
- dschiptsov 10y agoLolita, the book, is not about kidnapping of a girl or any kind of perversity. It is about futility and pains of worshipping a fleeting beauty, which is a temporary state of approaching perfection (beauty is youth + health. Proximity of a local optimum). If there is something to worship at all, it is beauty, not idols. The book is about ugliness and mediocrity of so called modern society with its rigid set of dogmas and set in stone prejudices. It is about suffering. About inability in principle to catch that fleeting beauty, a spark of perfection. The moment you approach it you have already ruined it. Observer ruins the observation, or rather realizes the painful dissonance between his assumptions and actuality, but continued his futile attempts to catch it, because everything else is not worth of even a second look. Dear gentlewomen of the jury. Do not attempt to judge things you probably never even understood.
- jkern 10y agoI feel much better now that I know the real meaning. Thanks
- runjake 10y agoThe thinking behind this very statement is what the story rails against.
- michaelchisari 10y agoMy guess (hope?) is that jkem was being sarcastic.
- ucaetano 10y agoThis reminds me of the rampant abuse of minors by the pot-modernist philosophers in France, who openly practised and defended pedophily.
- rhizome 10y agoSuch as who?
- danharaj 10y agoThey are probably thinking of Beauvoir and Sartre in particular. Good luck finding a scholarly source on the issue though, unless you're quite happy with citing A Voice For Men or random angry blogs.
- dmitrij 10y agoNeither Sartre nor de Beauvoir where postmodernists (or "pot-modernists"). Poster maybe means some radical left anarchists – also not postmodernists – from the late 70s/early 80s, who had some outlandish (and completely self-serving) ideas about child sexuality.
- Veen 10y agoBeauvoir and Sartre had reputation for seducing their students, but not when they were underage (for France's laws of the time).
- 10y ago
- malloryerik 10y agoI've always chosen to think of Lolita in terms of allegory -- old Europe's perverse fascination with pubescent America -- so I was surprised to read that Nabokov had make a first stab at it as a story set in Europe. I still think the allegory holds true and might be why Lolita finally worked with a U.S. setting. In any case can you really imagine Humbert Humbert as an erudite American? So much would be lost.