Petronius Redivivus

On that particularly sultry evening the twin purple-white searchlight beams scampered across the low-ceilinged sky like a pair of wanton legs. Their jointure, drawing the crowds like moths, was Boston’s New Capri Theater, opening for the first time with this celestial display for its showing of Lolita. “The Picture They Said Couldn’t Be Made!” read the elongated sign on the searchlight platform. And the queues stretched for blocks and blocks from the box office along Huntington Avenue in both directions, east almost to the Public Library, west into the shadow of the Christian Science Mother Church.

Professor Harry Levin has seen the fictional Lolita as a reverse Daisy Miller, while as astute a critic as Cyril Connolly—whose Rock Pool is itself a minor classic of degeneracy— called the book the most tender love story of our time. Perhaps indeed it does compound our time-spirit, this porno-picaresque account of a middle-aged satyr in his pursuit and conquest of a mindless twelve-year-old nymphet. Perhaps the normal pull of the man toward the woman fails to carry interest any more. In so many ways the parallel between our age and our country, and the later Roman Empire, becomes apparent.

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Francis Russell

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On that particularly sultry evening the twin purple-white searchlight beams scampered across the low-ceilinged sky like a pair of wanton legs. Their jointure, drawing the crowds like moths, was Boston’s New Capri Theater, opening for the first time with this celestial display for its showing of Lolita. “The Picture They Said Couldn’t Be Made!” read the elongated sign on the searchlight platform. And the queues stretched for blocks and blocks from the box office along Huntington Avenue in both directions, east almost to the Public Library, west into the shadow of the Christian Science Mother Church.

Professor Harry Levin has seen the fictional Lolita as a reverse Daisy Miller, while as astute a critic as Cyril Connolly—whose Rock Pool is itself a minor classic of degeneracy— called the book the most tender love story of our time. Perhaps indeed it does compound our time-spirit, this porno-picaresque account of a middle-aged satyr in his pursuit and conquest of a mindless twelve-year-old nymphet. Perhaps the normal pull of the man toward the woman fails to carry interest any more. In so many ways the parallel between our age and our country, and the later Roman Empire, becomes apparent.