The Real Lolita

by Sarah Weinman

  The Lolita Complex was a crude cash-in, written by a veteran writer from the paperback porn mills who began his career while in prison for check fraud. Trainer’s book did enough business for him to write a 1969 sequel, The Male Lolita, in which the faux–case history format shifted focus to young boys in power-imbalanced relationships with women. And Trainer’s literary contributions might have stayed forgotten save for an improbable twist: in its Japanese translation, The Lolita Complex became a foundational text for the development of manga and anime, particularly the “lolicon” subgenre where little girls with big doe eyes are depicted as objects of desire and in explicit sexual situations. (“Lolicon” is a portmanteau of “Lolita Complex.”)

  Thirty years after The Lolita Complex, another unauthorized sequel took a different approach, retelling Lolita from Dolores Haze’s perspective. Lo’s Diary, by the Italian journalist Pia Pera, proved to be a missed opportunity. Instead of getting at the truth of Dolores Haze’s dark plight, of showing her the way even Nabokov hinted at—as a clear victim, struggling to survive and maintain some sort of agency when she could never have enough power—Pera’s version of Lolita depicted her as a brazen seductress, her behavior more reminiscent of Veda, the young (but not underage) daughter in James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce. Lo’s Diary also suffered from years of litigation with the Nabokov estate, which blocked its publication in English until 1999.

  Two years earlier, Adrian Lyne’s film remake of Lolita arrived out of its own legal quagmire, having faced almost as many censorship issues as did Stanley Kubrick’s. Lyne’s film, scripted by Stephen Schiff, is quite faithful to Nabokov’s novel. Jeremy Irons is almost too perfectly cast as Humbert Humbert (he later lent his voice to the audiobook edition of the novel issued on Lolita’s fiftieth anniversary). Dominique Swain is starkly believable as Dolores, holding her own against Irons’s all-encompassing talent, and Frank Langella shines as Clare Quilty.

  The cultural climate had shifted back and forth between liberal progressiveness and conservative backlash in the intervening thirty-five years, but in 1997 the appetite for a new film version was particularly low. Lyne had tried and failed to make the film for years. Once he had finally finished shooting, he faced fresh legal issues, after the passage of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, which made illegal any visual depictions of children having sex with adults—whether or not a child was involved.

  Lyne battled lawyers seeking significant cuts to the film and struggled to find a distributor, which delayed Lolita’s opening in North American theaters by more than a year. The theatrical run was tiny (to qualify for the Academy Awards) and a prelude to an airing on the cable television network Showtime. This Lolita, as a result, did even poorer box office business than its predecessor. Once more, the general public did not have much appetite for seeing Lolita on-screen, as opposed to imagining her within the covers of a book.

  More than sixty years on, the appetite for adapting Lolita or reviving earlier adaptations has likely subsided for good. It is difficult to see how it could be done, especially given the growing polarization of the political climate. The dark heart of Lolita, and the tragedy of Dolores Haze, may now be too much to transform into entertainment. It’s wiser, and saner, to remember the little girl at the center of the novel, and all of the real girls, like Sally Horner, who suffered and survived.

  Epilogue

  On Two Girls Named Lolita and Sally

  Both times I met with Sally Horner’s niece, Diana Chiemingo, she picked me up at the Burlington Towne Center light rail station in New Jersey and drove us a mile down the road to Amy’s Omelette House, which does, in fact, specialize in omelets. Diana turned seventy in August 2018. Her figure is slight and her voice does not carry, but both convey a steely toughness. She gets to a point quickly and is not prone to running on. Silences often stretched between us as she considered how to phrase her answers in just the right way.

  Sally is never far from her niece’s thoughts. It was particularly apparent in our first face-to-face meeting in the summer of 2016. Each of us arrived at the diner with photos to show the other. Diana brought a stack of black-and-white images of Sally, Susan, Al, Ella, and others—her best friend, Carol, Sally’s unidentified date for the evening social, probable classmates at Burrough Junior High, possible acquaintances from her last summer. Both Diana and I marveled at what a fully grown, vibrant girl Sally appeared to be. A vibrancy that had so little time to assert itself.

  Then it was my turn. My photos—grainy images scanned from the Courier-Post coverage of Sally’s rescue—were nowhere near in as good condition as Diana’s trove. But I knew she needed to see the one of her, not quite two, sitting with her parents as Susan speaks to Sally on the telephone, hours after her younger sister’s rescue in San Jose. Diana was startled by the photograph—she had never seen it before. Seeing her and her family all together, so long ago, made Sally’s story feel fresher, more vivid. The tragic parts, but also the happier parts. Sally had come home and was part of their family again, even if it wasn’t for very long.

  Diana spoke of her parents, of her grandmother Ella, of her own life. The family tried to hold Sally’s abrupt loss at bay with mixed results. She became, and remained, the family phantom. For a long time, Diana had no inkling of the Lolita connection. She’d never read the novel, so of course she would not have seen the reference to her aunt in the text. She learned of the connection when her brother, Brian, a police department evidence technician in Florence, searched online and discovered Sally’s sparse Wikipedia entry as well as the essay by Alexander Dolinin.

  “He was shocked,” Diana told me. “I was, too. I don’t know how to explain it. To think that someone is writing about your family? I was so young when everything happened, and for people to be writing about Sally—that’s a really big thing.”

  By our second face-to-face meeting, nearly a year later, Diana had had more time to sit with the idea that Sally’s story was part of a larger mosaic of girls and women who had been cruelly wronged and abused by men. Stigmas take a long time to fade. But the more Diana talked about her aunt, the more the relief, and even the joy, showed through to compensate for what she, her family, and Sally had lost.

  LOLITA’S POST-PUBLICATION afterlife meant that years later, Vladimir Nabokov was still being asked about the novel, again and again, in interviews. He did not like this. The irritation is evident, leading to contradictory responses about what influenced him. He denied Humbert Humbert had a real-life basis, despite his repeated chess matches with Henry Lanz at Stanford, or his reading of Havelock Ellis: “He’s a man I devised, a man with an obsession, and I think many of my characters have sudden obsessions, different kinds of obsessions; but he never existed.” He denied Lolita was based upon a real girl, despite the parenthetical mention of Sally Horner. He denied any moral agenda, telling the Paris Review: “it is not my sense of the immorality of the . . . relationship that is strong; it is Humbert’s sense. He cares, I do not. I do not give a damn for public morals, in America or elsewhere.”

  To admit he pilfered from a true story would be, in Nabokov’s mind, to take away from the power of his narrative. To diminish the authority of his own art. The controlled nature of these interactions, with questions submitted in advance and responses edited after the fact, still left room for surprises— all the more because, as was customary with Nabokov, of what he chose not to say, as well as his exact phrasing of things he did say.

  After one stern denial in a 1962 interview, Nabokov changed his tune a little in the near-next breath, saying that Humbert did exist, but only after he had written Lolita. “While I was writing the book, here and there in a newspaper I would read all sorts of accounts about elderly gentlemen who pursued little girls: a kind of interesting coincidence but that’s about all.”

  This is a close-to-tacit admission by Nabokov that he knew of actual cases that bore some resemblance to his fictional world. Cases like Sally Horner’s kidnapping at the hands of Frank La
Salle. Nabokov references them in the text of Lolita, but to do so in an interview was anathema, lest listeners or readers connect the dots.

  But there is no getting around the fact that Nabokov kept returning to this taboo relationship between a young girl and an older man throughout his career. That compulsion had real-life basis not only in other people’s lives, but also in his own. A clue to that compulsion emerges when Humbert Humbert describes his “rather repulsive” uncle, Gustave Trapp. He thinks of Trapp again while tracking Ivor Quilty, Clare’s dentist uncle, and again during his first encounter with Clare at the Enchanted Hunters hotel. (Quilty also punches through the proverbial fourth wall by signing his name as “G. Trapp” in the hotel’s guestbook entry. As the German scholar Michael Maar points out, “Quilty cannot know the name.”)

  That uncles figure so much in Lolita recalls a revelation in Speak, Memory: that Vladimir’s uncle Ruka took his then-nine-year-old nephew onto his knee and fondled him repeatedly “with crooning sounds and fancy endearments” until the boy’s father called for him from the veranda. The real-life scene seems to foreshadow the famous fictional one of Humbert achieving orgasm with Dolores on his lap. Humbert, of course, believes his emission to be furtive—that the girl doesn’t know. But Nabokov, in his description, leaves it up to the reader to decide what Lolita knew.

  IN READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN, Azar Nafisi makes the excellent point that Dolores Haze is a double victim, because not only her life is taken from her, but also her life story: “The desperate truth of Lolita’s story is not the rape of a twelve-year-old by a dirty old man but the confiscation of one individual’s life by another.” Without realizing it, Nafisi has made the exact parallel between Dolores Haze and Sally Horner. For Sally’s life, too, was forever marked by the twenty-one months she spent as Frank La Salle’s captive, his false daughter, his own realized fantasy. After she was rescued, she attempted to resume the life snatched away from her. And it seemed she did, on the surface.

  But how could she, when her story had been front-page news all across the country, and when those in Camden knew exactly what had happened to her and judged her—blamed her—for it? Whether she’d lived two years or many decades, whether she might have had time to move forward, even if she could not move on, Sally Horner was forever marked.

  Lolita’s end, dying in childbirth, is a tragedy. But Sally Horner’s demise by car accident is the bigger tragedy, because it was real, and robbed her of the chance to grow up and at least attempt to move forward. In fact, Sally Horner is a triple victim: snatched from her ordinary life by Frank La Salle, only for her life to be cut short by car accident, and then strip-mined to produce the bones of Lolita, the only acknowledgment a parenthetical reference hidden in plain sight, hardly noticed by many millions of readers.

  Over the course of researching this book these last few years, I would ask faithful fans of Lolita if they’d caught the parenthetical reference to Sally Horner’s kidnapping. The unanimous answer was “no.” This was no real surprise. If no one caught the reference, how could they be expected to see how much of the novel’s structure rides on what happened to Sally in real life? But once seen, it is impossible to unsee.

  There is no simple lock-and-key metaphor to equate the tragic story of Dolores Haze to the tragic story of Sally Horner. Vladimir Nabokov was too shrewd to create a life-meets-art dynamic. But Sally’s story is certainly one of those important keys that, once employed, unlocks a critical inspiration. There is no question Lolita would have existed without Sally Horner because Nabokov spent over twenty years dwelling on the theme, working it out in bits and pieces as he moved around Europe and America. But the narrative was also strengthened and sharpened by the inclusion of her story.

  Sally Horner can’t be cast aside so easily. She must be remembered as more than a young girl forever changed by a middle-aged man’s crime of monstrous perversion. A girl who survived adversity, manipulation, and cross-country horror, only to be denied the chance to grow up. A girl immortalized, and forever trapped, in the pages of a classic novel of satire and sadness, like a butterfly with wings damaged before ever having the chance to fly.

  Sally Horner, age fifteen, summer of 1952.

  Acknowledgments

  The Real Lolita has a single author—me—but could not have been written or published without the input, advice, support, and sounding board of many people, in ways large and small. This odyssey began when Jordan Ginsberg, editor-in-chief at Hazlitt, replied to my March 2014 article pitch about Sally Horner’s kidnapping: “Just brought this up in our editorial meeting, and it got one of the fastest and most enthusiastic ‘yes’ votes I’ve heard in a while.” Eight months later, in great part to Jordan’s editorial vision, the piece was published and changed the course of my professional life. Much has transpired in the intervening four years, and I remain thrilled that it all began at Hazlitt. Additional thanks to senior editor Haley Cullingham, whom I have loved working with and hope to do so again soon.

  Transforming Sally Horner’s story from a magazine piece to a book was equal parts challenging, exhilarating, exhausting, and rewarding. Shana Cohen offered invaluable feedback on the first rounds of book proposal drafts. My agent, David Patterson, has been a brilliant advocate and champion of this project, as has the entire team at the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency, particularly Aemilia Phillips, Hannah Schwartz, Ross Harris, and Stuart Krichevsky. Thanks also to my UK agent, Jane Finigan at Lutyens & Rubinstein.

  My wonderful editors, Zack Wagman at Ecco and Anne Collins at Knopf Canada, pushed me to meet my ambitions for The Real Lolita and then exceed them. I am fortunate to have had such incisive and thoughtful editorial guidance from two of the very best in the business. And to Holly Harley, my editor at Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK, thank you for your continued support and never wavering in your enthusiasm for the project.

  At Ecco, thanks to Miriam Parker, Sonya Cheuse, Meghan Deans, Megan Lynch, Denise Oswald, Dan Halpern, James Faccinto, Ashley Garland, Martin Wilson, Sara Wood (for the heart-stopping cover design), Allison Saltzman, Lisa Silverman, Andrea Molitor, and especially to Emma Janaskie. At Penguin Random House Canada, thanks to Sarah Jackson, Pamela Murray, Max Arambulo, Marion Garner, Matthew Sibiga, Sarah Smith-Eivemark, Liz Lee, Jared Bland, Robert Wheaton, and Kristin Cochrane.

  Special thanks to the MacDowell Colony, for the gift of time and space to finish the first draft of the book; to Karen Riedenburg and David Dean, for invaluable research assistance; to all the archivists and institutions I visited for my research, and the sources who were generous with their time and interviews (more on them in the Notes section); and to Diana Chiemingo, who gave me her trust, faith, and belief that I could do full justice to the brief life of her aunt Sally.

  Thank you to friends, family, and colleagues, a list that is by no means comprehensive: Megan Abbott, Jami Attenberg, Alice and Julian AvRutick, Louis AvRutick, Dov Berger, Liza Birkenmeier, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Michael Cader, Steph Cha, Pamela Colloff, Julia Dahl, Hilary Davidson, Michelle Dean, Robin Dellabough, Nina Elkin, Lyndsay Faye, Dedi Felman, Charles Finch, Jordan Foster, Emily Giglierano, Juliet Grames, David Grann, Peggy Hageman, Reyhan Harmanci, Lauren Milne Henderson, Ella Hickson, Cara Hoffman, Elizabeth Howard, Janet Hutchings, Hillel Italie, Ethan Iverson, Maureen Johnson, Rokhl Kafrissen, Stephen Karam, Leslie Kauffman, Bob Kolker, Scaachi Koul, Sara Kramer, Maris Kreizman, Clair Lamb, Michelle Legro, Katia Lief, Laura Lippman, Mimi Lipson, Lisa Lutz, Michael Macrone, Jeffrey Marks, Laura Marsh, Kyla Marshell, Chantelle Osman, Helen Oyeyemi, Bud Parr, Andrea Pitzer, Bryon Quertermous, Naben Ruthnum, Alex Segura, Deb Shoval, Kathy Smith, Erin Somers, Daniel Stashower, Adam Sternbergh, Sara Stopek, Caryn Sweeney, Vu Tran, Sharon AvRutick Wallace, Joe Wallace, Robin Wasserman, Deborah Wassertzug, Dave White, Alina Wickham, and Jennifer Young.

  Lastly, thank you to my brother, Jaime; the memory of my father, Jack, who I know would have been prouder than anyone that I published this book. And to my mother, Judith, forever my hero
.

  Bibliography

  SELECTED WORKS BY VLADIMIR NABOKOV

  Laughter in the Dark (1932; first published in English as Camera Obscura, 1936; second, revised English-language edition published in 1938; third edition published in 1963).

  Despair (1934; translated into English in 1937; second English-language edition published in 1965).

  The Gift (1938–1952, translated into English and published in 1963).

  The Enchanter (written in 1939, published posthumously, translated and with a preface by Dmitri Nabokov, 1986).

  Nikolai Gogol (1944).

  Speak, Memory (1951, as Conclusive Evidence; revised edition published in 1966).

  Lolita (1955).

  Pnin (1957).

  Pale Fire (1962).

  The Annotated Lolita (edited with preface, introduction, and notes by Alfred Appel, Jr., 1970; revised and updated, 1991).

  Strong Opinions (1973).

  Lolita: A Screenplay (1973).

  Lectures on Literature (edited by Fredson Bowers, introduction by John Updike, 1980).

  Lectures on Russian Literature (edited and with an introduction by Fredson Bowers, 1981).

  Vladimir Nabokov: Selected Letters, 1940–1977 (edited by Dmitri Nabokov and Matthew J. Bruccoli, 1989).

  Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 1940–1971 (edited by Simon Karlinsky, 1979; reprinted 2001).