Nabokov’s son sues over parody of his father’s classic novel

NEW YORK – Sequels to „Gone With the Wind” and „Casablanca” have come off without a catch – but a retold „Lolita” is fanning a hot legal affair.

The son of novelist Vladimir Nabokov has sued an Italian woman for parodying the story of a professor sexually obsessed with a 12-year-old girl – from the child’s point of view.

„Lo’s Diary” by Pia Pera, according to a lawsuit seeking to ban its U.S. publication, is „a ripoff.”

Not quite, says attorney Leon Friedman, who represents New York publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux. „It’s funny, it’s a parody. It adds something new, with different characters,” he said Saturday.

The original narrator, Professor Humbert Humbert, becomes Humbert Guibert and he doesn’t kill Clare, the evil playwright who lures away Lolita; and Clare, a man in the original, returns as Filthy Sue.

Dolores Haze, aka Lolita, is now Dolores Maze. And she’s a blatant little seductress with come-hither techniques: „Swing a foot back and forth, flutter your eyelids, fan yourself, snap your fingers to the music, blow a bubble then suck the gum slowly back into your mouth.”

Unlike Nabokov’s 1955 book, the professor and „Lo” don’t die. „They all stick around, and she gets married and has a child and she’s happy,” Friedman said.

The lawsuit accusing Ms. Pera and her publisher of copyright and trademark infringement was filed Thursday in federal court in New York by Nabokov’s estate, represented by his son, Dmitri Nabokov, a race car driver who lives in Florida. The lawsuit also names Italian and British publishers of the book, published in Italy in 1995.

The book is „inferior and amateurish merchandise” that tarnishes the reputation of a work that has sold about 50 million copies in more than 20 languages, according to court documents.

„They are trading on the celebrity of Nabokov’s Lolita. It is confusing the public about what this book is about,” said attorney Peter Skolnik, who represents the younger Nabokov.

But Friedman maintains the 310-page English language manuscript falls within „fair use” standards set by the U.S. Supreme Court to protect intellectual property through copyright; the French copyright on „Lolita” runs out in 2030.

„We don’t take any language from `Lolita,’ and we transformed the story,” said Friedman.

Besides, the 42-year-old author said in a statement from her home in the Tuscan hills, it was Nabokov himself who inspired her to probe the provocative nymphet’s mind for her first novel.

In „Lolita,” the Russian-born novelist who died in 1977 had his narrator, Humbert Humbert, admit: „I simply did not know a thing about my darling’s mind.” And, he wished, „Oh, that I were a lady writer who could have her pose naked in a naked light.”

Enter an Italian lady who shed her own light on Lolita. „All I did,” she said, „was to accept Nabokov’s challenge, his implied invitation to a literary tennis match.”

By Verena Dobnik, Associated Press, 10/10/98