In a message dated 25/04/2005 13:03:08 GMT Standard Time, chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu writes:

Pedophilia is the more common word for H.H.'s malaise.

Speaking of HH's "malaise", is it not odd that neither film of "Lolita" mentions HH's spells in sanatoria? In the novel, he clearly has some kind of psychiatric history. Is this censored out of the films to make him appear more "normal", more someone the viewer can accept and identify with, and his perversion (unequivocally described as such by Nabokov in "On a book entitled 'Lolita'") not quite so perverse?

(I am not suggesting that HH should be treated as a "mental patient". He himself sees through all that quite well. Jail seems quite appropriate even if, as VN suggests in the Preface to "Despair", he should, unlike Hermann, be paroled once a year.)

Anthony Stadlen