The Whale Within

the worst thing i have ever read is 120 days of sodom by marquis de sade

of-praxis:

i felt so disturbed that people take him seriously as a literary anything

Really? Hmm. I was just talking about him with my mother today but I’ve never actually read his work. This is how I felt about Lolita TBH. I was just like “e__e what”

“I found Lolita upsetting. This was the first time that literature felt like a betrayal. I had asked the librarian - usually reliable - and she said that she disliked Nabokov too, and that many women felt that way but it was better not to say so in mixed company.

Men will call you provincial, she said, and I asked what that meant, and she explained that it meant someone who came from the provinces. I asked her if Accrington was the provinces, but she said it was beyond the provinces.

So I decided to ask my teachers.

I had two English teachers. The main one was a sexy wildman who eventually married one of our classmates when she managed to turn eighteen. He said that Nabokov was truly great and that one day I would understand that. ‘He hates women,’ I said, not realising that this was the beginning of my feminism.

‘He hates what women become,’ said the wildman. ‘That’s different. He loves women until they become what they become.’”

- Jeanette Winterson, Why be happy when you could be normal?, page 122.

(Source: le-kif-kif)