Humbert's Humbert

Wow, Amanda Marcotte eviscerates The Crack House's...er... The Corner's John Derbyshire after reading his confession...er...review of Lolita. Reading it, you'll be alternately choking with laughter and shuddering over "The Derb's" creepiness. For an example of the latter...

Some of the most vituperative emails I have ever got came in after I made an offhand remark, in one of my monthly NRO diaries, to the effect that very few of us are physically appealing after our salad days, which in the case of women I pegged at ages 15-20. While the storm was raging, biologist Razib Khan over at Gene Expression (forget philosophers, theologians, and even novelists: the only people with interesting things to say about human nature nowadays are the scientists) decided to look up some actual numbers. Reasoning that a rapist is inspired to his passion mainly by the physical attractiveness of his victim, Razib went for rape statistics.


[...]

He found a 1992 report (Rape in America: A Report to the Nation) from the National Victim Center showing the age distribution of female rape victims. Sixty percent of the women who reported having been raped were aged 17 or less, divided about equally between women aged 11 to 17 (32 percent) and those under eleven (29 percent). Only six percent were older than 29. When a woman gets past her mid twenties, in fact, her probability of being raped drops off like a continental shelf. If you histogram the figures, you get a peak around ages 12-14... which is precisely the age Lolita was at the time of her affair with Humbert Humbert. As Razib noted, my own "15-20" estimate was slightly off. An upper limit of 24 would be more reasonable. The lower limit really doesn't bear thinking about.

Fascinating, really. My guess is that he's going to get considerably more "vituperative" mail after that little passage. My second guess is that men who think a rapist is "inspired to his passion" by the attractiveness of the victim are men who spend a great deal of time fantasizing about raping attractive -- and very young -- women. My third guess is that men who think that determining the appropriate age for young women to have "sexual affairs" with older men is through rape statistics are, well, fucked up.

And, by the way, despite being of "The Left," Lolita is my favorite novel as well. And it isn't because Nabakov "brought me round to Humbert's side."