[9thLife]

“We find ourselves the more shocked when we realize that, in the course of reading the novel, we have come virtually to condone the violation it presents… We have been seduced into conniving in the violation, because we have permitted our fantasies to accept what we know to be revolting.”

And this is praiseworthy?

[Borges]

Art is supposed to challenge. Not tell you what you already know about yourself or the world.

[GeronL]

definitely not praiseworthy IMO

[discostu]

Yeah, if it’s done right. You accept it, then you’re repelled by it, but you get repelled by yourself because you accepted it. This kind of art points a mirror at a part of yourself you usually think (hope) doesn’t exist, and it forces you to say “yes, I see I have the ability to be evil”, and reminds you how successful you are at not. To draw a comparison that I’m sure will make some roll their eyes it’s the reason why Alice Cooper is the king of shock rock, many can write shocking lyrics, but only Alice makes you stop and think “I’m singing along with a song about cannibalism, that’s just wrong”. You don’t really know how good a person you are until you come to grips with how bad a person you’re not.

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

Art can be used in many ways. It can inspire, for certain, and I always love for art to inspire me, but it can also caution us.

1984 and Brave New World, for example, caution us against too much reliance upon government to do what is best for us.

Lolita, likewise, cautions us not to be so sympathetic and understanding of a person that we end up condoning what they do without judgment.

I think in 10 to 15 years, Lolita will be banned on college campuses again. This time not because it describes the mind set and behaviors of a predator, but because it contains the condemnation of the reader in finding sympathy for the predator.

You are supposed to be disgusted by Humbert, and should be. And yet his arguments for how he abuses Lolita, that he truly loves her and it is just the way he is, are the arguments that modern liberals use to excuse all of their depravity.

When you catch yourself smiling at descriptions or clever passages written by this man (the novel is in first person), you suddenly remember that he is an awful and miserably immoral monster.

That is the cautionary tale of Lolita. Very charming, smart, caring people can be absolute demons in human form. And we need to remember that.