Last month, the literary world was rocked by the release of Alissa Nutting’s debut novel Tampa. Labelled the year’s most controversial book, Tampa describes the predatory activities of 26-year-old teacher Celeste Price as she indulges her sexual obsession with young, male students. The novel has been decried for its sexually explicit and morally misguided content, but Nutting maintains that she wrote the book as a challenge to social presumptions of submissive female sexuality. This reasoning has failed to impress determined critics and Tampa has now been banned in several bookshops.
The popular response to Nutting’s debut work struck a particular chord with me. I believe that literature should exist to push boundaries. This is, I think, the principle that lies at the heart of all remarkable works of fiction. Yet ground-breaking novels can be plagued with a controversy that detracts from acknowledgement of their brilliance. From Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary to D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, controversy can both drive readership through curiosity and diminish it through discomfort. As a self-proclaimed bibliophile, I try to ensure that my reading choices are not guided by presumption or prejudice. But when it comes to controversy, even the most diligent reader can find herself manipulated by popular opinion. Since starting The Book Habit, I have pushed myself to acknowledge and reject those book-specific prejudices that I have been carrying. Confronting controversy is a necessary step in developing as both a reader and reviewer. My first challenge: Vladimir Nabokov’s masterpiece, Lolita.
Lolita is the categorical case of a novel defined by its controversy. Depicting the obsession of a middle-aged European academic, Humbert Humbert, with the 12-year-old daughter of his landlady, Lolita demolishes social and ethical expectations. It is, then, hardly a surprise that efforts to supress the novel have abounded. The manuscript was rejected by six renowned publishers and, following its eventual release by Olympia Press, Lolita was banned in Britain. Only after two years was the ban lifted. To this day, the novel remains one of the most controversial ever produced. Yet to reject Lolita is to reject the most fundamental objective of revolutionary literature – the desire to challenge convention. Nabokov wrote Lolita with the purpose of pushing his readers to the edge of acceptability, presenting Humbert Humbert in a manner that demands empathy and understanding. That this makes the reading experience uncomfortable is precisely the point.
Oscar Wilde once observed, “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” True of both its time and today, Wilde’s words provide a keen insight into the rationale behind popular opposition to works such as Lolita and Tampa. Those novels deemed controversial and subject to the scrutiny of the censor contravene social norms and subvert moral expectations. Yet they demand, as all novels do, that the reader exert empathy – that the reader see the world through the eyes of the adulterous Emma Bovary or the paedophilic Humbert Humbert. Therein lies the rub. As diligent readers, we must open ourselves up to the controversial. That is not to say that we must be willing to read anything, disregarding personal taste and authorial merit. But controversy should not be permitted to dictate our reading choices. I steered away from Lolita for years on the assumption that its content would be too troubling or distasteful. In electing to embrace Nabokov, I have opened myself up to a masterpiece. I have explored the darker aspects of human nature and been forced to question moral assumptions. Most importantly, however, I have acknowledged that the controversial novel is often the most representative of literature’s central goals: to force confrontation with normative presumptions, challenge boundaries and hold a mirror up to the world.
Laura Clarke is a full-time PhD student and part-time writer living in London. Although she is studying human rights, Laura finds plenty of time to indulge in her love of all things literary. She is known to travel the length and breadth of the UK in search of bibliophilic hotspots and headlines. You can catch more of her literary adventures at The Book Habit.
