You couldn't have a better title to a memoir in these times. You can read about Humbert Humbert, and other male narratives, but the female narrative of the statutory rape is fulfilled by this book. I feel slightly ill while reading this book. What she goes through is off, and it's hard to put a finger on it besides Hebephilia. All the collaborating details from her mother, to her doctors, to her father.
Vanessa Springora will be remembered for other things, she is a director and a publisher. I'm not sure if Gabriel Matzneff will be remembered for other things. At least not on this side of the pond. I do have a kind of jealousy for the appreciation of the intellectual life in France.
Matzneff cites Lewis Carroll, and others as having the appreciation for youth. I read his Wikipedia page. That led to other questions about photographers who take pictures of their children. That led me down a creepy path. As much as Springora tries to not make it sexy, I wonder how many people read her memoir for the wrong reason. It's like that movie where people get other people's mental experience, and some guy gets off on raping women, and feeling what they feel being raped by him. The movie was Existenz.
My feeling ill at reading this memoir is proof enough for me that I'm not getting off on the details. I don't know if the project of reading suffering memoirs to increase one's compassion is sustainable, but I do think it has increased my compassion.
The Buddhist root to our suffering is overidentifying with form, feeling sensations, perception, mental volition and consciousness. We overimagine the permanence, and don't see the changes and passing away of all these things. We form a kind of intentional vector that can only fail. The real purpose of our hopes and dreams are to get us out of bed, and doing things, so we have the opportunity of awakening.
The hope is that society will have a few safeguards, but also that we won't have a encumbering rule bound society that legislates everything. I think women are women before 16-18, depending on the state, but it's better to err on the side of older than younger like France (15) and Germany (14) have. Plus people don't follow the rules even if you make them well known. Enforcement is an issue. You can find people getting away with every kind of crime. Who wants to go around catching people doing wrong? It seems increasingly racist people who like to murder people of color. Not everyone. The hope of education seems to have waned in America, but maybe it will make a comeback. Angola and Philippines have the lowest age of consent at age 12. This whole topic feels skeezy. The book leads to many interesting thoughts and contemplations, hopefully useful. But the story of recovery and fighting back against the dark undertow of the experience is worth it.
Meanwhile it's come out that the biographer of the new Philip Roth biography met a girl when she was 12. Read all about it. And here's another damning article.
Links:
NY Times review "After the publication of “Consent,” prosecutors opened a case against Matzneff. He was dropped by his three publishers and stripped of a lifetime stipend. This week the government announced it would instate 15 as the age of consent. By every conceivable metric, her book is a triumph."
Germany investigates 30,000 suspects over paedophile network
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