Do you think Nabokov's novel Lolita could have got published today?

I can’t imagine it happening. I also can’t imagine Blazing Saddles getting greenlit today.

Other books with sexual activity between adults and underage persons have been published and even made into movies.I always thought that we made exceptions for art, but with current fascist attitudes I’m not so sure anymore.

Also, we forget that not all countries have the same age of consent.

It’s interesting that we’ve sort of gone in a circle. There was a time when that book couldn’t have been published, then a time when it could, and now we’re back to it not being allowed again. The people doing the censoring are different people doing it for different reasons, but the end result is the same. I think mid-century was the best time for creative freedom.

If it had been submitted in 2018, the publisher would’ve #metoo’d the life out of it.

I don’t think there’s any question that the book would be published to the same accolades today. Like Peyton Place, the purient subject matter guaranteed the book millions in sales. And more people probably picked the book up initially looking for the juicy bits in the stifling 50s. Unlike Peyton place however, Lolita is one of the genuine masterpieces of fiction.

It had trouble being published in the 1950’s it would never be published today.

Shouldn’t it be easier to publish the book today when things are less prudish?

The stuff that is being published today is far more extreme and salacious than “Lolita” could have ever dreamed to be while on drugs.

Not published in the mainstream like it was. It’s pretty depressing that it was so widely accepted by society.
But today you could find that, and much worse, on the black market.

@Demosthenes I grew up in the 60’s. Child sexual molestation was utterly ignored or, in this case, approved of. I remember seeing a “cartoon” in a Playboy in the 70s of a little girl walking away after sitting on Santa’s lap. His glove was stuck in her crack. Isn’t that hilarious?
Pedophilia is not ignored any more, and I can’t imagine going back to to a time when it will be ignored once again.

@ragingloli I’m not so sure about that; the most disturbing novel I’ve ever heard of has to be “Crash” by J. G. Ballard. A novel of “immeasurable perversity”, according to Martin Amis. And it’s from 1973. Sometimes I think the older stuff went further.

@Dutchess_III I don’t agree that Lolita and its publication represents an approval of pedophilia. No one has to like the book, and I understand why it’s disturbing to some, but approval of or indifference to pedophilia was not Nabokov’s aim.

Doesn’t matter whether that was his “aim” or not. The fact remains that that is exactly what it was. The fact that people bought it is disturbing to me, as a former 9 to 12 year old girl. I’m sure the people who bought the book didn’t consider themselves pedophiles, either. But that’s what they are.
I just looked it up on Wikie. The main character finds “he has a fixation with certain girls ages 9 to 14.” How is being sexually fixated on 9 year olds not pedophilia?

I own Lolita. Guess I’m one too. That’s like suggesting everyone who owns Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a backwater, mass-murdering psychopath. Such black and white thinking.

Maybe it just goes back to how I felt getting hit on at the age of 11 and 12 by men my father’s age. It was a horrible feeling and it left me shaken and confused….but the men were so sure it’s actually what I wanted. To see it somehow justified in any way shape or form just sickens me. But it’s what some men want, obviously or there wouldn’t be a market for it.