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 Ruining "Lolita": Trigger Warnings and the Novelist’s Mind

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Ruining "Lolita": Trigger Warnings and the Novelist’s Mind Vide
PostSubject: Ruining "Lolita": Trigger Warnings and the Novelist’s Mind   Ruining "Lolita": Trigger Warnings and the Novelist’s Mind Icon_minitimeSat May 24, 2014 11:01 pm
During a graduate-school lecture on “Lolita,” my professor stood up in front of a crowded classroom and said something I have never been able to shake: “When you read ‘Lolita,’ keep in mind that what you’re reading about is the systematic rape of a young girl.”

Ruining "Lolita": Trigger Warnings and the Novelist’s Mind Trigger-warnings-580

I had read “Lolita” in high school and then again in college, when it became my personal literary liquor store—whenever I got stuck in a scene, or whenever my prose felt flat or typical, I’d open “Lolita” to a random page and steal something. My professor’s pronouncement felt too didactic, too political, and, although I tried to put it out of my mind and enjoy “Lolita” ’s cunning, surprising games with language, I could no longer pick up the book without feeling the weight of his judgment. The professor wasn’t wrong to point out the obvious about Humbert and Dolores Haze, and I don’t believe—at least not completely—that literature should only be examined as an object unto itself, detached from time and history, but I haven’t read “Lolita” since.

I thought of that professor and his unwelcome intrusion when I read a page-one story in last week’s Times about how several colleges across the country have considered placing “trigger warnings” in front of works of art and literature that may cause a student to relive a traumatic experience. For example, a student might be forewarned that J. M. Coetzee’s “Disgrace” details colonial violence, racism, and rape with a note on the class syllabus that would read something like “Trigger Warning: This book contains scenes of colonialism, racism, and rape, which may be upsetting to students who have experienced colonialism, racism, or rape.”

The story’s headline, “WARNING: THE LITERARY CANON COULD MAKE STUDENTS SQUIRM,” and the inclusion of some seemingly innocuous titles, like “The Great Gatsby,” as candidates for such warnings, dredged up all my distaste for my professor’s prescriptive reading of “Lolita.” If he could produce such a chilling effect, what harm could a swarm of trigger warnings—each one reducing a work of literature to its ugliest plot points—inflict on the literary canon? What would “Trigger Warning: This novel contains racism” do to a reading of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”? What would “Trigger Warning: Rape, racism, and sexual assault” do to a reading of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”?

More:  http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/05/trigger-warnings-and-the-novelists-mind.html?mbid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true
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