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'Lo's Diary' forces the reader back to 'Lolita' ...
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Subject: 'Lo's Diary' forces the reader back to 'Lolita' ...
Date: Sat, 08 Jun 2002 15:14:47 -0400
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: SPKlein52@HotMail.com
To: chtodel@gte.net
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[seattletimes.com] 'Lo's Diary' forces the reader back to 'Lolita'
by Mark Lindquist
Special to The Seattle Times The legal issues raised by the retelling of
Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" from the pubescent child's point of view
are, unfortunately, more interesting than this first novel by Italian
journalist and short-story writer Pia Pera.
Dmitri Nabokov, son of Vladimir and executor of his literary estate,
chose not to sue when "Lo's Diary" was first published in Italy in 1995.
However, when Farrar, Straus & Giroux was preparing to publish the book
in English, Dmitri Nabokov asserted copyright infringement.
The law was not - and still is not - clear. Parody does not require
permission, while sequels or prequels do if there is an existing
copyright. Once the copyright expires and the work passes into public
domain, it can be legally ripped off. Consider "West Side Story," "My
Fair Lady," "Clueless" and, most recently, "Ahab's Wife." "Lolita,"
however, is still under copyright protection, and "Lo's Diary" is
neither parody, sequel or prequel. So the legal question becomes whether
"Lo's Diary" is "derivative" and, therefore, requires permission, or
"transformative" and, therefore, a new and independent property.
A court decision would have set a precedent, and could have opened the
door to endless literary thievery.
Imagine the possibilities: "The Great Gatsby" from Daisy's point of
view, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" from Nurse Ratched's, "The Old
Man and the Sea" from the marlin's, and so on.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux dropped out of the budding legal battle. Barney
Rossett, the former publisher of Grove Press, stepped in with Fox Rock
Books, his new enterprise. Rather than gamble with the court, a
compromise agreement was reached, whereby royalties were divided and
both sides won something: The Nabokov estate protected its copyright,
and Pia Pera's book was published here. Also, Dimitri Nabokov was
allowed to write a preface to the novel, the main purpose of which seems
to be to portray Pia Pera as a "would-be plagiarist."
Plagiarism "Lo's Diary" may be, but it is not particularly artful
plagiarism. Pera inexplicably decided to portray the 11-year-old
"nymphet" as bitter and manipulative, almost sociopathic, and highly
sexualized before meeting pedophile Humbert Humbert.
The rivalry between mother and daughter, clear enough in the original,
is expanded upon at length by Pera: "Mom may be pretty, but I'm
prettier." "True beauty vanishes by the time a woman gets to be her
age." "The only way for an older woman to get herself married is to get
the absent-minded man to fall in love with the child first."
Lolita sets out to seduce Humbert shortly after he enters the story on
page 71. "Hummie is practically mine. I really know what it takes with
men." Lolita's calculations offer an interesting counterpoint to
Humbert's delirious and unreliable recounting of their interactions.
"Lo's Diary" is most interesting when Pera mirrors Nabokov's passages,
such as the red apple encounter. In the original, Humbert grabs an apple
from the 12-year-old and exploits the resulting wrestling match to work
himself into a verbal and sexual frenzy. Humbert appears to believe that
he has gotten away with "the longest ecstasy man or monster had ever
known." Nabokov ends the chapter with "Blessed be the Lord, she had
noticed nothing."
In Pera's telling, Lolita knows exactly what Humbert is up to, even
leads him there, and afterward thinks, "He looks around confused and
satisfied, maybe he hasn't yet realized what happened to him: that I
seduced him. That now he's mine."
Later, during the road trip across America, when Lolita has tired of the
game, when the seduction is over and the raping has begun, Pera
effectively captures some of Lo's trauma and helplessness. "A minor is a
person the law doesn't protect."
The moments that work in "Lo's Diary" directly riff on the original,
while the freshly imagined scenes - such as a clumsy and gratuitous
scene where Lolita tortures a hamster - mostly fail, particularly when
contrasted with Nabokov's artistry.
The best thing about "Lo's Diary" is that it begs the reader back to
"Lolita," one of the benchmark masterpieces of this last century.
Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company
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