THE FUSS ABOUT `LOLITA'
SIR,—The Spectator rightly from time to time casti- gates those journals and writers whose output might be termed pornographic. During the past few weeks many of your readers have been surprised by the amount of space you arc giving to the questions of prostitution and homosexuality, which are subjects more readily dealt with by psychotherapists than by a weekly review. The readers of the Spectator are. I think, people with a refigious code of ethics and morals by which they are accustomed to judge the world, and do not close their eyes to its evils, but they do not want an interminable discussion on them.
In your current issue Mr. Levin is given four columns to show why we should read a book con- cerned with the disgusting vie amoureuse of a middle- aged man and a girl of twelve. Our natural feeling of revulsion, claims Mr. Levin. will be entirely sublim- ised by :
(I) The pace at which the story is told, and (2) The fact that the man is deceived as to the purity of the girl when he at last achieves her.
Supporting this extraordinary claim are such words and phrases as 'Style so brilliant and clear,' vivid clarity,' 'Sheer literary magnificence.' He writes that 'the more elaborate and insatiable the sexual appe- tite becomes, the more innocent lie is made tO appear' ! Whatever sort of world does Mr. Levin live in? He also speaks of a pistol as a piece of elementary sexual symbolism. Phallic, no doubt. In a sane and decent world, such stories end amid general reprobar tion in a police court, with a sentence of seven year.
Now why should the Spectator give Mr. Levin four columns lo persuade us to read such a book?
Why also another correspondence column on the Wolfenden Report?
There is little good to be said for a censorship of literature, but one does not expect the Spectator to Push this heap of garbage under our nose, however much a work of art it may appear to be to a literary critic. Censorship should come from a journal with the Spectator's standards. Both literature and the stage could do with it.—Yours faithfully, A. E. MOORE Lo en House, 26 Manor Park, Histon. Combs [Bernard Levin writes: 'I did not push a heap of anything under anybody's nose. All I said was that the book should be published. The readers of the Spectator, and others, could then make up their own minds as to whether they agree with my estimate of it or not. And Dr. Moore could even find out what is in the book, instead of condemning it unread.'— EditOr„Spectator.]
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