Watching denizens of the #MeToo movement squint so suspiciously at a book I have found so beautiful in so many ways, I can’t help but feel that we are depriving ourselves to no end. We, the survivors of male abusers and the victims of workplace harassment, are supposed to become gluttons for the additional punishment of excommunicating artworks bearing the slightest tint of taint. But what good is this festival of renunciation? It only broadens the scope of our already substantial losses.

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This reading around, Lolita seemed to me to enact a fantasy of impossibly perfect curation, like Ingmar Bergman movies in which every scene is composed as exactly as a painting. Life could never look so good, which is why we need the movies. The point of erotica, at least to some extent, is that it is so radically unlike fumbling tongues in middle school or struggles with stubborn zippers. Books like Lolita and Story of O are fairy tales. In them, desire does not undo itself. Pain does not hurt. Youth does not age.