dare we mention Lolita & Vladimir Nabokov? That debate ain't dead yet!

Lolita was mentioned somewhere above there and sensibly ignored. But seeing you mentioned it again, here's a few words extracted from something I wrote elsewhere in relation to the present issue...

The kind of complex literary fiction that Nabokov was dealing with in Lolita (the story of two paedophiles destroying each other over their respective psychotic obsessions with an underage nymphet) is of a very different order to the entirely un-contextualised misogynistic first-hand reportage of an erotic relationship with a child in the idiom of MOR folk song that Roy Harper gives us in Forbidden Fruit.

Unlike Harper's song, Lolita is NOT a pamphlet to the cause of paedophilia - it is an account in the name of Art that does more to raise the awareness of such issues than it does to give pleasure to perverts. Its outcomes & tensions are very clear - something which Humbert's harrowing inner dialogue makes abundantly clear throughout, contrasting with Quilty's unrepentant amorality for which he ultimately welcomes Humbert as his executioner. This is not to forgive Humbert - his inner dialogue is unambiguously psychotic - something he is all too aware of. His fate is that of a criminal writing his 'goodnight ballad', perhaps accepting that his real crimes are going unpunished.

Forbidden Fruit is pure pornography - it is born from misogynistic objectification of a young girl by an adult male who sees her purely as a means for a sexual gratification which to him is a short lived pleasure, but to the victim will be a trauma from which she'll never recover (something she has in common with Lolita). That it glorifies that much in the sleeve-note makes both it and its author all the more noxious. In Harper's own words:

'And then there's Forbidden Fruit the thirteen-year-old-girl thing. I'm a Lewis Carroll freak, basically I love to watch things like Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. I'm into the beauty of the young female, and the older I get, the more fascinated I become. That's probably true of most men, but I'm totally honest about it. That song's an absolute admission if you like. I mean I'm a great man for women, full stop, but let's not get hung up here. Let's just say that Forbidden Fruit is way way over the top of Mrs Mary Whitehouse.'

(Roy Harper interview in Melody Maker, 1974)