Lionel Trilling  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Today is the 50th birthday of the first American over-the-counter publication of Nabokov's Lolita. When Nabokov’s “dirty book” hit the streets of the USA., it sold 100,000 copies in three weeks, an immediate success that would allow the 60-year-old scholar and novelist the freedom to resign from teaching.

Pretty much everything about that book has been said, but I think many of you have not seen this interview conducted by Pierre Berton and Lionel Trilling for CBC now at YouTube[1][2]

Pierre Berton:

"Let´s get out the more specific point: Why did you choose this rather odd, and, something that has never been done before, this curious and debased love?"

Nabokov:

"Well, on the whole, it flooded me all kinds of interesting possibilities I am not so much interested in the philosophy of the book, as I am in weaving the thing in a certain way, in those intergradation and interweavings of certain themes and subthemes, for instance the systematic line of Mr. Quilty, whom Humbert will kill, does kill ..."

The Lolita or nymphet trope remains of course immensely popular. Some recent findings are those photographs by Turkish artist Nazif Topcuoglu http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/2008/03/the_lure_of_lolita.php Nazif Topcuoglu[3]

Aged 91, American music journalist turned music producer Jerry Wexler died last Friday. While at Billboard magazine in 1947 Wexler coined the term "Rhythm and Blues" to replace the tainted term "race music." He is one of the major record industry players to have marketed 1960s soul music to a white audience.

He produced such hits as "Respect"[4] and "Son of a Preacher Man"[5], which are WMC #65 and 66.