Celebrating "Lolita"

Today we celebrate the American publishing on this day in 1958 of the novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. G.P. Putnam's Sons braved fierce criticism from the ruling conservative elite for publishing the tale of European intellectual Humbert Humbert's affair with his teenage step-daughter, Dolores, almost three years after the book was originally published in Paris.

The public outrage was heightened by the fact that Nabokov was himself a European intellectual — from Russia, no less, at the height of the Cold War. American anti-intellectualism and provincialism was as strong then as it is today, and so the publication of Lolita in this country was a victory of enlightenment over the forces of ignorance.

Another remarkable thing about Nabokov was that, while not a native speaker, he still writes flawlessly in English. Hungarian-Jewish playwright George Tabori once remarked, "You don't write in clichés [when you write in your second language] because you don't know them." Nabokov certainly proved this, both in his writing style and in his choice of subject matter.