From nerve.com, Steve Almond on why the fifty-year-old Lolita endures:
There was one in particular, a women I’ll call Rita, who, as it happened, had more than a hint of the nymphet in her. She wasn’t exactly “four-foot-ten in one sock.” More like five-one in black stockings. But she was small and pale and occasionally dressed like a schoolgirl, and this made us all the more leery about directly endorsing Lolita. So we sat around parsing Nabokov’s intricate wordplay and sipping our beers until, toward the end of the night, emboldened by a shot of George Dickel, Rita stood up and addressed us in an imploring tone: “But you guys, don’t you get it — he loves her!”
myfanwy collins 