I am happy to see "Lolita" is back in the spotlight with this anniversary edition and people are discussing it again. I, unlike the author, waited until college to read it and was absolutely astounded by how different it was from anything that I had ever read before that time. I did not however drop every other author that didn't fit in with the Nabokov ideal. I think that you miss out on so much by doing that. I think the author presumes to know more about what Nabokov would have thought than he actually could have ascertained from Nabokov's interviews and works. How does Barra know that Nabokov would have been disappointed with the interpretations of Nafisi? I think he liked the controversy and different conclusions that his work evoked. I have never read "Reading Lolita in Tehran" but I am now intrigued in seeing what connections she actually made. From another person who read "Lolita" in Alabama, be a little more open minded.

I was surprised that no one else brought up what seemed to me a faulty turn of logic Mr. Barra makes in regard to Ms. Nafisi, the memoirist of "Reading Lolita in Tehran."

He accuses her of seeing social and political truths in Lolita and then mistakenly attributing them to Nabakov. I believe Mr. Barra is making the mistaken attribution and confusing intent with content.

Authorial intent, which countless author interviews prove is slippery at best, is one thing. What readers find in the content of the text is something else entirely. And readers being a generally contrarian lot, I don't think Ms. Nafisi or most of us care what Nabakov would make of our readings. He gave up his absolute control of the work the moment he published it, whether he liked it or not.

well, like it or not, all of Jesusland is Iran-like to us left coasties who dont accept the teachings of the Ayatollah Bush and his republican christian fundamentalist Mullahs. --sorry.

i rather like Barra's honesty about the his sense of secrecy over Nabokov and being able to find friends sharing a secret gnosis in a repressive society and time. for me it was the discovery at my pubescence of Lawrence of Arabia's army memoirs and their homosexual expose. i still remember the disapproving looks as i stayed in the back of the store reading this little gem; i certainly didnt dare buy it. moreover, this was in Manhattan Beach, right on the left coast strand, hardly a repressive town especially by late 50's standards.

the discovery of sexuality, especailly nonstandard sexual fantasies is a difficulty anew for each generation. --and may remain a life-long difficulty in each generation. talking about this book is a perfect example.

what i also see is a certain gen-Xer lack of perspective. those who came upon this gem as pubescents and teen-agers in the 50's & 60's had many of Barra's issues only even more difficult. the relationship between Justine, Stroy of O and Lolita as a cultural filiation excapes him, even tho other secret cultural riddles he finds pleasing. it also seem to escape most.

i am not pleased to see him dump Camus and others just because they try to express ideas artistically. just plain wrong.

for me, what i remember most about Lolita is the fact that he's dumped for someone younger in the end. Giraudoux [or was it Anouilh?] wrote about the same theme his Song of Solomon--which i also read at about the same time. being now at the age to have been dumped enough times for a younger male by a younger female--i can appreciate this bitter-sweet universal truth of human male sexual mortality in a higher artistic sense. one had better, or one just becomes a ridiculous old fool--another lesson of Lolita.

another thing i find about talking this book and many works of great art that are sexual is the public pudicity concering the fact that it might actually be a turn-on. everyone pretends that no, they dont have a sexual arousal and always denigrate such in almost vicotrian terms and using artsy-fartsy terminology to hide that truth, pretending that its only the higher cultural values that they're interested in. back then as teenager, i also remember reading Nietzsche, who castigated this sort of pretence before works of sexual art in [i believe it was] The Geneology of Morals.

in the same vein, Lolita can be described as simply "romping good fun" as well as all the other things that everyone says about it. that is what i believe makes a Great Work {capital G, capital W...}: everyone sees in it and draws from it what they need, and that happens anew everytime it is contemplated anew.

Salon's Left Coast indictment of the South (Alabama in specific) as cultural and social backwaters is getting a little old and for anyone that's willing to think, it's mostly untrue.

I know you guys thought it was cute but c'mon, just quit being so...gay (see how that stereotype thing works?).

L.L., perhaps I should turn to the words of Butler (Rhett) and say, “what a woman.”

While I understand and appreciate the thoughts expressed in your letter, I must tell you that your merciless attack on our cherished, “Rockwellian” image of the spinsterish, bun-haired librarian has left me at loose ends and unable to focus.

I enjoyed Allen’s article and had been prepared to compose a responsive letter, the text of which would have been littered with literary allusion, infused with irony, and peppered with parody. Unfortunately, I missed my “train of thought” while lingering with the image of a legion of lovely, leggy, lipsticked librarians. Even now, I see them with their cascading hair defiantly un-bunned as they continue to stride suggestively in high-heeled boots through a dusty, dewey-decimalized landscape.

With librarians like this roaming the recesses of my mind, I’m afraid I’ll never get any work done. I hope someone can assure me that the warm, comfortable world of Allen’s bun-haired, spinster librarians remains alive and well.