Lolita should be withdrawn from publication because some people misread it? How about the Bible? How about the Koran? Those books have caused far more harm than anything Nabokov wrote.

Anyone who reads Lolita as anything other than a horror story has missed the point completely. That’s exactly why the writing is so beautiful: to show how easily we let the inexcusable slide if the person doing it is charming and charismatic. Lolita is no more an argument for pedophilia than Crime and Punishment is an argument for murder.

And Lolita would not have worked at all if Dolores was old enough to consent. The fact that Humbert is a monster is the point. He’s an evil man who destroys an innocent girl’s life, and that is made perfectly clear in the novel.

Lots of people find Lolita hard to read. It’s supposed to be. And those who can’t handle it can choose not to read it. But to suggest it should be withdrawn from publication because of that is asinine.