The glass motel: personal reflections on the fortieth anniversary of 'Lolita'

Literary Review, Fall, 1997 by Thomas E. Kennedy

But these violence porn films had nothing to redeem them. On the contrary. They were acts of agression against the very concept of humanity. They were technically so exact in their depiction of the wounds inflicted that I even wondered from the few minutes I had seen whether they were staged at all, whether they were like the infamous snuff films one heard were circulating in the sixties, films of actual sadistic murders of abducted persons conducted to titillate viewers willing to pay large sums to feed their sick hunger.

But one thing I knew. Viewing just the few scenes shown -- perhaps a total of five minutes of film -- had done some damage to my soul which, to this moment, twelve or thirteen years later, still exists. Those scenes had created in me a place of ugliness beyond hope, a kind of wound that will always be there and begins to bleed again whenever their reflections find their way back into my consciousness.

That is how I felt reading the excerpts from the novel which this fellow had sent me. I knew in every nerve of my body that this was nothing for me, knew that it was necessary for me to honor that self-knowledge, even despite the fact that I had been an avid supporter of free speech all the way back to the Berkeley "Fuck, verb" movement in 1963, had done what I could in print and deed to contribute to crumbling the walls of censorship in the sixties -- a time when it was illegal to publish a picture of a human being who was "frontally nude" or to print certain words unless one could prove in court that it was for a purpose of "socially redeeming value."

How mad that seems today in retrospect, to fear words, be ashamed of our bodies. Yet what a fight it took to free the mind to the point of recognizing that there is nothing shameful about the human body and nothing to fear in a word. Indeed, the very fear of the word "fuck" was what gave it such force. As with so many things, lifting the ban deflated the power. As for the human body, I can recall the hopeless yearning I experienced at the age of eleven or twelve passing the little local movie house that showed European films in Jackson Heights where I grew up; I saw the poster for Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night, an image of a man and woman embracing in the sea, naked. I knew it was beautiful, but had already come to recognize at that tender age that such beauty was forbidden and sinful rather than a joyous part of life which would one day be mine. Then, in the sixties, there was a sexual revolution; we rose up and said not No, but Yes! in all the joyous spirit of Molly Bloom.

It is, I knew and know, imperative that the mind be free to consider and express its thoughts, to roam freely among the beasts of its forest. I myself have, in all good faith, written things that some people have found fiercely objectionable and have felt the sting of censorship myself: A woman once came to me after a reading to tell me with cool disdain she hated the thought of the story I had just read existing in the same world as her children (it was a satire in which a soft-bellied liberal is skewered on the blithe cynicism of his brother, the object being to poke fun at hypocrisy). I was requested not to read any more of "that sort" of story at my university. I have witnessed the discomfort on the face of a loved and respected poet colleague at a southern university where he had invited me to read when I told him I wanted to dedicate my reading to Jesse Helms (who would clearly not be pleased by it). "That's pretty funny," he said, "but you've got to be careful around here." At a university! At a creative writing department! From a poet!