LONDON LETTER
289
morality and by the usual letter-writing cranks in
The Times, The Ob–
server, The New Statesman, The Spectator
and, for all I know,
in every other paper. Of all the journals I read, the only one so far
not to mention
Lolita
is
Motor Sport.
Even the gutter press has been
on to it; one of them ran a front-page article on the theme:
"It
could
happen to
your
daughter. But, mothers, you may be to blame." When
the thing is finally published in the spring-if despite all the goings on,
the indignation and the threatened legal procedures, it
is
published–
it will almost certainly be an anti-climax. It would take a work a good
deal more substantial than poor
Lolita
to stand the strain. But it is
just possible that the fuss may be a bit too late. The youth of England
may already be corrupted. My evidence is not the Notting Hill race
riots, nor the gang wars of the Seven Sisters Road, which have made
West Side Story
a sell-out. It is based, instead, on a conversation I
overheard the other day in a seedy little local newsagent. A nymphet,
aged about ten, leaned confidentially towards the proprietor and piped:
"Have you got my copy of
The Girls' Book of Queers?"
And they have
banned Nabokov! "0 Lola! 0 my Lolita!" as he would say.
A.
Alvarez
THE PETER PAUPER PRESS
MOUNT VERNON, NEW YORK
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