The Real Lolita

[ismnotwasm]

(Very long article, but an interesting one)

Sally Horner walked into the Woolworth’s on Broadway and Federal to steal a five-cent notebook. She had to, if the girls’ club she desperately wanted to join were to accept her into its ranks. She’d never stolen anything in her life; usually she went to that particular five-and-dime for school supplies and her favorite candy. But with days to go before the end of fifth grade, Sally was looking for a ticket to the ruling class, far removed from the babies below her at Northeast School in Camden, New Jersey.

It would be easy, the girls told her. Nobody would suspect a girl like Sally as a thief. Despite her mounting dread at breaking the law, she believed them. On the afternoon of June 13, 1948, she had no idea a simple act of shoplifting would destroy her life.

Once inside, she reached for the first notebook she could find on the gleaming white nickel counter. She stuffed it into her bag and sprinted away, careful to look straight ahead to the exit door. Then, right before the getaway, came a hard tug on her arm.

Sally looked up. A slender, hawk-faced man loomed above her, iron-gray hair peeking out from underneath a wide-brimmed fedora. His eyes, set directly upon Sally’s, blazed a mix of steel blue and gray. A scar sliced across his cheek by the right side of his nose, while his shirt collar shrouded another mark on his throat. The hand gripping Sally’s arm bore the traces of an even older, half-moon stamp forged by fire. Any adult would have sized him up as well past 50, but he looked positively ancient to Sally, who had turned 11 just two months before. Sally’s initial nerves dissipated, replaced by the terror of being caught.

http://penguinrandomhouse.ca/hazlitt/longreads/real-lolita

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Posting to for later

Can't wait to read this in full - thanks Ism. :fistubmp:

[chervilant]

2. I have never understood

how anyone considers Lolita, paean to pedophilia, 'great literature.'

[ismnotwasm]

3. I think the prose and the times and the author

It was reinforcing and validating heterosexist pediphillic urges, by taking the protagonist POV, not sure that was the overt intent--but it's resonated all these years, and we still see it. The book, inadvertently exposed sexual privledge, but didn't condemn it. Placed the blame on the victim. And for all the fuss and bother about publishing and banning, it's became a meme before there was such a word.

Lolita. A byword for a seductive girl-child. A justification for victim blaming. A book to hide behind.


It's been a long time since I've read it, I remember the prose carrying you through to the end, even as your stomach rolled at the content.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

4. A great find. Thanks for posting it ... and in regards to the conversation ...

I remember the prose carrying you through to the end, even as your stomach rolled at the content.

this defines great/classic Literature.

the subject matter notwithstanding - it is the prose that carries us to places and brings us out the other side in a way that makes us think Why.

[nomorenomore08]

14. Absolutely. And it's also important not to take the protagonist as a literal reflection

of the author. That goes for literature in general, not just Nabokov.

[cemaphonic]

13. How is Lolita a "paen to pedophilia"?

It's one of the textbook examples of the unreliable narrator device in literature. You're not supposed to take Humbert's cloud of self-rationalizing bullshit (or his characterization of Lolita) at face value. He's the villain of the book, to the point that even he understands this by the end of the novel.

[TeeYiYi]

5. Another source...

...that I found interesting; reprinted from an an article originally published in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS), September 9, 2005, pp. 11-12. http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/dolilol.htm

TYY

[ismnotwasm]

6. That is very interesting

Especially the word play comparisons

Neither article IMO, gets across the horror of the situation, which I find sadly interesting

[TeeYiYi]

7. I thought the one you posted...

...conveyed the horror more than the one I found. It seems to be a more thorough (albeit somewhat plagiarized) examination of the complete story which includes a reference to the article from 2005 by *Alexander Dolinin.

I got the impression that Alexander Dolinin credited Nabokov with shining a light on the case of Sally Horner by hiding references and paying homage to her throughout his book. He seems to imply that without Lolita, the world may never have known Sally's tragic story. I might be inclined to agree with that assessment, though I wouldn't go so far as to suggest that it was Nabokov's original intent.

*Alexander Dolinin holds a PhD from Leningrad State University (1977) and is Professor of Slavic Languages at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he specializes in 19th and 20th century Russian literature. He is the author of many articles in both Russian and English on Nabokov. His contributions to Zembla are an article on Otchayanie (Despair) and Dostoevsky, an earlier version of which was read at the International Nabokov Conference in Nice in 1995, an article on "Signs and Symbols", an article on a real-life source for Lolita, and a chapter from his book Istinnaia zhizn' pisatelia Sirina: Raboty o Nabokove (St. Petersburg: Akademicheskii Proekt, 2004) on Pushkinian subtexts in Invitation to a Beheading.

TYY

[ismnotwasm]

8. Yes.

It's hard to recognize intent when something is converyed as desperate eroticism of a protagonist who deserves no sympathy. The early publishing shunning of the book recognized this according to the sexual mores of the time-- yet those same mores drove the popularity of the book. Those mores still exist today, in slightly different forms. He may have told the story, yet he did create a trope, a meme.

The excellent writing tricks the mind, I think-- you're actually reading a horror story, not an erotic one. You're reading about the rape of a little girl, not the seduction of a grown man. How one perceives it depends on personal reaction.

[TeeYiYi]

9. The news stories at the time of her rescue...

...seem to allude to 11-year-old Sally Horner being somehow complicit in her own kidnapping and repeated rape. They refer to her being chubby and looking older than her age... and call the rape of this child, "sexual relations." Gawd! Like she was on some darling, serendipitous adventure...and who could blame the guy for succumbing to the seductive advances of such a plump, dare I say chubby and mature looking young temptress. Fuck...

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 22 (AP)—A hawk-faced New Jersey sex criminal was held for the FBI today, accused of forcing a 13-year-old schoolgirl to flee from her family, having sexual relations with him and travel across the country with him.

The girl—missing for nearly two years—said she did all these things because she feared the 52-year-old man would expose her theft of a five cent notebook. <…>

The girl was chubby brown haired Florence Sally Horner of Camden.

Sheriff Howard Hornbuckle said the girl told him La Salle compelled her to leave Camden on June 15, 1948.

The first week they were together, the sheriff said he was told, La Salle and the girl had sexual relations, that these relations continued until three weeks ago when a school chum in Dallas, Texas told Sally that what she was doing was wrong.
___

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 22—(AP)—A plump little girl of 13 told police today she accompanied a 52-year old man on a two-year tour of the country, in fear he would expose her as a shop-lifter.

The girl, Florence Sally Horner of Camden, N.J., was found here last night after she appealed to Eastern relatives “send the FBI for me, please?”

Her companion, Frank La Salle, an unemployed mechanic, was said by County Prosecutor Michael H. Cohen in Camden to be under indictment for her abduction.

Officers said the girl told them La Salle had forced her to submit to sexual relations.

The nice looking youngster, with light brown hair and blue-green eyes, attributed her troubles to a Club she joined in a Camden school. One of the requirements, she said, was that each member steal something from a ten-cent store.

She stole an article, she related, and La Salle happened to be watching her. She said he told her he was an FBI Agent; that “We have a place for girls like you.”

Sally said she went away with him, under his threat that unless she did, he would have her placed in a reform school.
___

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — A 13 year-old girl’s telephoned plea “send the FBI for me, please!” has ended her 21-month trans-continental travels with a 52-year old man.

Sheriff’s deputies placed Florence (Sally) Horner in a juvenile detention home last night, after finding her in an auto court. They were awaiting word from her mother Mrs. Ella Horner of Camden, N.J. about sending Sally home.

And they jailed Frank La Salle, 52, an unemployed mechanic, pending word from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
___

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 23—(INS)—A 52-year-old mechanic with a long record of morals offenses faced a multiplicity of charges today for making a common law “child bride” of the bobby-soxer he is accused of abducting.

Frank La Salle was arraigned before U.S. Commissioner Marshall Hall yesterday on a Mann act charge of transporting a girl across state lines for immoral purposes. Bail was fixed at $10,000.

La Salle is accused of kidnapping 12-year-old Florence Horner from her Camden, N.J., home two years ago and forcing her to submit to sexual relations while traveling the continent. He allegedly bound the girl to him with threats to “turn her in” for a five-cent theft.

The chubby, mature looking teen-ager caused his arrest when she managed to telephone a sister that she wanted to go home so “please send the FBI.”

San Jose police, alerted by Camden authorities, found the girl in an auto court Tuesday night and a few hours later arrested La Salle when he returned to the trailer in which the two had been living.

La Salle protested he was Florence’s father but New Jersey authorities said the girl’s father had been dead for seven years. <…>
___

TYY

[ismnotwasm]

10. Oh puke

So disgusting

[nomorenomore08]

16. Yeah, that is gross - talking about her almost like she was a willing participant in her abduction.

And really, a "bobby-soxer"? At 12?

[mehdialgerian]

11. wanna understand somthing

there is a big diffrence between the story in the book and this real story

[ismnotwasm]

12. Well, yes there is

What do you want to understand?

[nomorenomore08]

15. Um, no shit...