Letters

Fifty years after the publication of "Lolita," the fact that people still argue over its literary viability is itself proof of the genius of its author (The Way We Live Now, Christopher Caldwell, May 23). Chaucer derived "The Canterbury Tales" from the "Fabliaux" and many other sources.

If Vladimir Nabokov derived his Lolita from a German short story, he was working in the tradition of his art. If that was his source, as Caldwell reports, what he did with it is what truly makes us fascinated by it, and that is what makes "Lolita" survive as fiction of the highest order.
Sander Zulauf
Andover, N.J.

So Nabokov may have cribbed the plot of "Lolita" from Heinz von Lichberg. What's the big deal? Shakespeare cribbed his plots from Holinshed, Plutarch and a handful of his own contemporaries. It's what these authors made out of them that counts. Piri Halasz
New York