Sarah Weinman - The Real Lolita - The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World

Minton enjoyed being part of the cultural conversation, especially when there was a chance that the conversation would offend people. In hindsight, it made sense he ended up publishing Lolita . The delicious thing is that he learned of the novel from an unlikely source: his then-mistress Rosemary Ridgewell, a showgirl at a Midtown Manhattan nightclub called the Latin Quarter. Ridgewell had read excerpts of Lolita in the Anchor Review . “I thought Nabokov had a very interesting way of writing, very, you know—crystalline?” said Ridgewell in 1958.

Minton, in turn, discovered the pages at her Upper East Side apartment. “I woke in the middle of the night and there was this story on the table. I started reading,” he recalled in early 2018, sixty years later. “By morning, I knew I had to publish it.” (Ridgewell was in line for a tidy payday for her literary scouting efforts, per a standing Putnam policy: the equivalent of 10 percent of an author’s royalties for the first year, plus 10 percent of the publisher’s share of subsidiary rights for two years.)

When Nabokov received Minton’s letter, he had all but given up on Lolita ’s publishing prospects in America. For more than three years, multiple publishers had expressed interest, only to back off. Now it irked him that Girodias might be in line for a significant payout when he had been so slow with the initial Lolita royalties, and then did not bother to pay further monies Nabokov was owed. In the two years since Lolita first appeared in book form, he was desperate to reap the financial rewards—as well as to get the critical attention he deserved.

Lolita had been banned in France, excerpted in the Anchor Review, praised by the novelist Graham Greene, excoriated by the literary editor and critic John Gordon, and bought in droves by those willing to smuggle copies back into America. All manner of people benefited from Lolita, whether to praise or denounce it, but Vladimir Nabokov had hardly earned a dime for his years of creative labor.

Minton’s letter augured a change in fortune. Nabokov wrote back on September 7 to say Minton was free to negotiate with Olympia Press, though “I would have to give my approval to the final arrangements.” Nabokov added a warning: “Mr. Girodias, the owner of Olympia, is a rather difficult person. I shall be delighted if you come to terms with him.” Minton did not seem fazed by Girodias’s unsavory reputation. Nor was the Putnam publisher perturbed by the prospect of defending Lolita all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary, though he cautioned Nabokov that he could not make such a “blanket guarantee”—rather, he wrote that it was more prudent to “present the book in such a way as to minimize its chance of prosecution.”

Minton also wondered whether Lolita could, in fact, fall into the public domain. He said as much when he met the author in Ithaca, braving a snowstorm to do so. Nabokov told Minton that he knew “at least three or four thousand copies” of the Olympia Press edition of Lolita had been sold in the United States. Minton explained, “I said to him, ‘Don’t ever open your mouth about that to anybody because if it ever became established your copyright wouldn’t be worth beans .”

Nabokov kept his mouth shut about these extra sales. He took more time to swallow his pride with respect to Girodias. Much as he wanted to be financially free of his former publisher—going so far as to declare the original contract null and void in light of Girodias’s inability to abide by the terms—he agreed, grudgingly, with Minton that it was better to allow Girodias a stake in Lolita ’s American publication so they could be sure to get the book out as soon as possible.

As Minton explained to him over the winter of 1958, publishing Lolita when interest was high would make it more likely that the courts would rule in Nabokov’s favor: the many articles, vociferous discussion, and chatter would demonstrate this was a book of high literary merit, not low smut. Should Nabokov delay in publishing Lolita in America to resolve his dispute with Girodias, the favorable publicity could evaporate—and so would the potential for a great financial windfall, whatever a court of law might decide.

Nabokov saw Minton’s logic. He wrote the publisher back in early February 1958 to agree to terms (including the 50/50 royalty split with Girodias, with each receiving 7.5 percent of the hardcover proceeds). Minton cabled Girodias on February 11 and received Nabokov’s signed contract on March 1.

By the time of the novel’s American publication date on August 18, 1958, it was clear to all, but most especially to Nabokov, that he was about to be vaulted from literary obscurity, and that Lolita was about to arrive with hurricane-level force.

VLADIMIR AND VÉRA NABOKOV left Ithaca on another road trip in the summer of 1958. Whether to fend off nerves or steel themselves for what was to come, the couple traveled more than eight thousand miles in search of butterflies. Nabokov had also decided to take a leave of absence from Cornell beginning in the fall because of all of the prepublication demands for Lolita . They returned to New York in early August, in time for a press reception at the Harvard Club. Véra recorded her impressions of the evening, and of her husband, in their shared Page-a-Day diary: “Vladimir was a tremendous success… amusing, brilliant, and—thank God—did not say what he thinks of some famous contemporaries.”

On publication day, Minton sent the following telegram to the Nabokovs: “EVERYBODY TALKING OF LOLITA ON PUBLICATION DAY YESTERDAYS REVIEWS MAGNIFICENT AND NEW YORK TIMES BLAST THIS MORNING PROVIDED NECESSARY FUEL TO FLAME 3OO REORDERS THIS MORNING AND BOOK STORES REPORT EXCELLENT DEMAND CONGRATULATIONS.”

Minton was referring to Elizabeth Janeway’s rave review, which ran on Sunday, August 17, in the New York Times Book Review . She described the novel as “one of the funniest and one of the saddest books of the year” and declared that it was anything but pornographic: “I can think of few volumes more likely to quench the flames of lust than this exact and immediate description of its consequences.” Janeway’s positive reaction, plus the increased demand, would compensate for Orville Prescott’s pan in the daily paper on publication day proper, August 18.

The reorder number from retailers zoomed up to 6,777 in the first four days after its publication. By the end of September, Lolita was atop the New York Times bestseller list, having sold more than eighty thousand copies. It remained at number one for the next seven weeks. Six months after ensuring Lolita would be published in America without legal hassle or copyright consequence, Nabokov and Minton’s mutual investment was paying clear and major dividends. There were more riches in store for the Nabokovs. On Minton’s recommendation, they retained Irving “Swifty” Lazar to sell film rights to Lolita to Stanley Kubrick for $150,000.

Véra was the one who kept track of it all, recording every bit of Lolita -related news in the months immediately preceding and following the novel’s publication in the Page-a-Day diary. Nabokov, on the other hand, seemed “supremely indifferent—occupied with a new story” and with cataloging his summertime butterfly-hunting bounty. Or at least that was the guise he adopted, as described by his wife. As the deluge of letters, interview requests, and subsidiary rights inquiries streamed in, Nabokov wrote his sister: “[All this] ought to have happened thirty years ago…. I don’t think I shall need to teach any more.”