![]() The cynic may say that commercial pornography makes the same claim the learned may counter by asserting that “H.H.”’s impassioned confession is a tempest in a test tube that at least 12% of American adult males-a “conservative” estimate according to Dr. Woolsey in regard to another, considerably more outspoken, book), one would have to forego the publication of “Lolita” altogether, since those very scenes that one might ineptly accuse of a sensuous existence of their own, are the most strictly functional ones in the development of a tragic tale tending unswervingly to nothing less than a moral apotheosis. If, however, for this paradoxical prude’s comfort, an editor attempted to dilute or omit scenes that a certain type of mind might call “aphrodisiac” (see in this respect the monumental decision rendered December 6, 1933, by Hon. True, not a single obscene term is to be found in the whole work indeed, the robust philistine who is conditioned by modern conventions into accepting without qualms a lavish array of four-letter words in a banal novel, will be quite shocked by their absence here. Viewed simply as a novel, “Lolita” deals with situations and emotions that would remain exasperatingly vague to the reader had their expression been etiolated by means of platitudinous evasions. The caretakers of the various cemeteries involved report that no ghosts walk. “Vivian Darkbloom” has written a biography, “My Cue,” to be published shortly, and critics who have perused the manuscript call it her best book. Schiller” died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Grey Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. “Rita” has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. His daughter, “Louise,” is by now a college sophomore. “Windmuller,” of “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadows of this sorry and sordid business” should not reach the community to which he is proud to belong. For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. References to "H.H."'s crime may be looked up by the inquisitive in the daily papers for September–October 1952 its cause and purpose would have continued to remain a complete mystery, had not this memoir been permitted to come under my reading lamp. ![]() While "Haze" only rhymes with the heroine's real surname, her first name is too closely interwound with the inmost fiber of the book to allow one to alter it nor (as the reader will perceive for himself) is there any practical necessity to do so. ![]() Its author's bizarre cognomen is his own invention and, of course, this mask-through which two hypnotic eyes seem to glow-had to remain unlifted in accordance with its wearer's wish. Save for the correction of obvious solecisms and a careful suppression of a few tenacious details that despite "H.H."'s own efforts still subsisted in his text as signposts and tombstones (indicative of places or persons that taste would conceal and compassion spare), this remarkable memoir is presented intact. My task proved simpler than either of us had anticipated. Clark's decision may have been influenced by the fact that the editor of his choice had just been awarding the Poling Prize for a modest work ("Do the Senses make Sense?") wherein certain morbid states and perversions had been discussed. ![]() His lawyer, my good friend and relation, Clarence Choate Clark, Esq., now of the District of Columbia bar, in asking me to edit the manuscript, based his request on a clause in his client's will which empowered my eminent cousin to use his discretion in all matters pertaining to the preparation of "Lolita" for print. ![]() "Humbert Humbert," their author, had died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952, a few days before his trial was scheduled to start. Foreword "Lolita, or the Confession of a White Widowed Male," such were the two titles under which the writer of the present note received the strange pages it preambulates. ![]()
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