Subject
Re: Nabokov and Pedophelia (fwd)
From
Date
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** "Abused" is probably too strong a word but his maternal uncle Ruka
apparently used to put the boy on his lap and fondle him. VN mentions
that in SPEAK, MEMORY (Chapter Three) and Brian Boyd briefly discusses it
in RUSSIAN YEARS, p. 73. This experience is often used to explain VN's
discomfort with homosexuality. GD**
From: Rodney Welch <RWelch@scjob.sces.org>
I agree with Jay Livingston that the Times Forum post (which I made
available to NABOKV-L) is totally absurd and largely beneath discussion.
But what most interested me about it was this idea, quite new to me,
that Nabokov had been abused as a child. Is this a fact? Where did
Centerwall get his information? I sure don't recall Brian Boyd saying
anything about it, and that seems like something I would have remembered.
Rodney Welch
Columbia, SC
Galya Diment wrote:> From: Jay Livingston
<LIVINGSTON@saturn.montclair.edu>
>
> Someone quoted from the Times Web Forum wrote: "I ran across an
> article in a psychoanalytic journal called "Vladimir Nabakov, A Case Study in
> Pedophilia".(The author is Brandon S. Centerwall and the journal Psychoanalysis
> and Contemporary Thought vol 15, 1992."
>
> Around the same time, Centerwall published an article in "The Public
> Interest" (a neo-conservative quarterly) arguing that television was an
> important cause of crime.
>
> It's tempting to dismiss the psychoanalytic viewpoint as being so
> simpleminded that it cannot distinguish between the world of imagination and
> the world of actual behavior. More insultingly, it also attributes this
> inability to other people. So if an author makes up a story about incest and
> pedophelia--not once but twice!--then pedophelia and incest must be real events
> in his own life. And if children see violent stories on television, they will
> be unable to understand the difference between that and real violence, and they
> will go out and wreak mayhem. And if people see a film about a charming
> pedophile, a tide of child-rape will inundate the nation.
>
> More charitably, we could say that psychoanalysis--especially at its
> less dogmatic--is doing what we all do: speculating about the interplay
> between reality and imagination.
>
> Jay Livingston
apparently used to put the boy on his lap and fondle him. VN mentions
that in SPEAK, MEMORY (Chapter Three) and Brian Boyd briefly discusses it
in RUSSIAN YEARS, p. 73. This experience is often used to explain VN's
discomfort with homosexuality. GD**
From: Rodney Welch <RWelch@scjob.sces.org>
I agree with Jay Livingston that the Times Forum post (which I made
available to NABOKV-L) is totally absurd and largely beneath discussion.
But what most interested me about it was this idea, quite new to me,
that Nabokov had been abused as a child. Is this a fact? Where did
Centerwall get his information? I sure don't recall Brian Boyd saying
anything about it, and that seems like something I would have remembered.
Rodney Welch
Columbia, SC
Galya Diment wrote:> From: Jay Livingston
<LIVINGSTON@saturn.montclair.edu>
>
> Someone quoted from the Times Web Forum wrote: "I ran across an
> article in a psychoanalytic journal called "Vladimir Nabakov, A Case Study in
> Pedophilia".(The author is Brandon S. Centerwall and the journal Psychoanalysis
> and Contemporary Thought vol 15, 1992."
>
> Around the same time, Centerwall published an article in "The Public
> Interest" (a neo-conservative quarterly) arguing that television was an
> important cause of crime.
>
> It's tempting to dismiss the psychoanalytic viewpoint as being so
> simpleminded that it cannot distinguish between the world of imagination and
> the world of actual behavior. More insultingly, it also attributes this
> inability to other people. So if an author makes up a story about incest and
> pedophelia--not once but twice!--then pedophelia and incest must be real events
> in his own life. And if children see violent stories on television, they will
> be unable to understand the difference between that and real violence, and they
> will go out and wreak mayhem. And if people see a film about a charming
> pedophile, a tide of child-rape will inundate the nation.
>
> More charitably, we could say that psychoanalysis--especially at its
> less dogmatic--is doing what we all do: speculating about the interplay
> between reality and imagination.
>
> Jay Livingston