<\/a><\/p>\n<\/I><\/p>\n
Nabokov, Dmitri. “Foreword”. En Lo’s Diary<\/i>. Pia Pera. Trans. Ann Goldstein. NY: Foxrock, 1999. vii-x.<\/p>\n
Lolita<\/I> is not in the public domain, and won’t be until well into the next millenium when copyright expires–notwihtstanding which [ix] the Washington Post<\/i> advanced the view that I should lighten up: Lolita<\/i>, their editors urged, should be fair game in the fields of copyright because it has “come inescapably into common consciousness”.<\/p>\n
I thought then, and think now, that this is silly. Is Lolita<\/I> to pay this price because it is too good, too famous? Are writers to strive for mediocrity lest their works similarly enter the “common consciousness”? Are icons of popular culture–Star Wars<\/i> perhaps–to be made subject to plundering by free riders because they have entered the common consciousness? The Post<\/i> urged me to “rethink” my stance, asking whether books like Madam Pera’s “can truly do the original anything but homage?” By ignoring the fact that homage to Lolita<\/i> can be and has been paid with bona fide licenses, the question seems na<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nabokov, Dmitri. “Foreword”. En Lo’s Diary. Pia Pera. Trans. Ann Goldstein. NY: Foxrock, 1999. vii-x. Lolita is not in the public domain, and won’t be until well into the next millenium when copyright expires–notwihtstanding which [ix] the Washington Post advanced the view that I should lighten up: Lolita, their editors urged, should be fair game […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1458],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ionstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/240"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ionblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}