Have you read all that has been written on the book since its publication?
Not all, not every one of the countless banal comments that bear witness to the writer’s incomprehension. You know as well as I that all serious critics have praised my book. I’m delighted to say that the most sensitive and subtle, most imaginative and substantive reviews have appeared in Germany.
Could Lolita be a dangerous, seductive influence on young readers? Does it destroy a taboo?
These are questions I don’t like to answer, since basically they’re no concern of mine. If my book, which of course is not written for children, nevertheless falls into their hands, they will surely soon set it down, bored. And any grown men who for one reason or another are attracted to adolescents will be influenced by Lolita neither for good nor for evil. Every day things turn up in the press reporting dreadful sexual crimes against the young. In detail and vividly expressed. Children and adults read it. That was so before Lolita and will be no different in future.
Even answering such questions, which have nothing to do with my book, is offensive. I am no moralist, and I hate any kind of literature that wants to announce a message and makes ideological gestures….Besides, isn’t it foolish to keep identifying an author with the creatures of his imagination?
What will become of the film? Do you have influence over the filming, can you prevent commercial film interests from producing an insipid, slippery imitation that has nothing to do with your screenplay except the title?
I have confidence in Mr. Kubrick, to whom I recently sold the rights after I had a good and thorough talk with him. Kubrick is a serious person, and intelligent and artistically sensitive to boot. He called my screenplay, which makes no concessions of any kind to mass taste, one of the best ever written. He would be a stupid fool if he robbed himself, through concessions and crude simplifications, of the opportunity to make a great, artistically valuable film.
* “In London vor der Kamera: ‘Das “anstößigste” Roman-Kind dieses Jahrhunderts’ ” (“Before the Camera in London: ‘The “Most Offensive” Child-Novel of the Century’ ”), Neue Illustrierte, Jan. 24, 1961, 11–12. Unsigned. Early publicity for the Kubrick film of Lolita, with photographs of James Mason and Sue Lyon. Karolus interviewed VN in Nice on Jan. 14, 1961.