Story/Novel about Pedophilia?

Hey all. So lately I've been writing some fiction — partially as a way of coming to terms with my own possible pedophilia or at least POCD, and partially because I love to write, despite currently being very "scattered," disorganized, etc., when it comes to both style/diction and plot.

The pipe dream is to be published. Obviously publishing fiction about pedophilia, as long as it's non-acting, would be super easy on both a personal and a business level, right?

I'd been thinking about trying to write about this kind of thing long before I read Lolita (in fact, reading it was a kinda demoralizing, "Oh, so a literary giant already said all this stuff better than I could've in a million years," experience.), but reading it finally got me to start.

Instead, though, the MC is someone who (like ourselves) would never offend. His only crime is getting too close, in a kind of queerplatonic way, to a young girl.

Enough so that she'd look back on it when she was older and be negatively affected by the kind of freakiness of it all. But at the same time, nothing bad would "happen." It would be a kind of anti-Lolita almost, more about the darkly humorous and awkward, almost sitcom-y, foibles of this guy who's so pathetic he makes the reader sympathetic — although he is still obviously in the wrong. (He never confesses his feelings to her but it's the strength of the relationship — it's the sheer volume of time spent together, where the relationship assumes a kind of quality comparable to "emotional incest" between parents and children.)

Not really sure where to take it plot-wise. Since I'm going for dark humor in places (and would probably clarify at the beginning that nothing physical happened between the two, to make the dark humor angle less ###$ up), could have it be about other characters/both their families. With him being a total paranoiac, worried about being suspected, which in itself makes things worse because she picks up on his guilty behavior, confirming her own distant notions that their friendship is inappropriate. (Maybe people try to coax answers out of her. "He spends a lot of time with you, it's starting to not be right? We're going to have to tell him that. You understand, don't you? Are you sure there's anything you're not telling us?" And she knows they're right, on some nagging level, even though she's also really really indignant about what she perceives as their intolerance and agenda to not let her have any fun.)

Whereas in Lolita, Humbert is obviously uncaring and cruel and self-deceives until he believes he cares about Lolita, here it would be more about how both parties and the characters who know them are stuck hem-hawing in a liminal space of "so what the hell is going on here, exactly..."

These outside characters and their suspicion would be a mounting factor (and that's a good thing, I'm not trying to say it's not. ), as opposed to a Charlotte Haze figure who is quickly taken out of the picture. Perhaps sprinkle in some stock characters — the well-meaning grandmother who would never in a million years suspect a thing ("He's almost like a brother to the little neighbor girl, isn't that nice?"); the wary friend or parent who does suspect. The way I'd want to write it, it would be less about plot and more about description and trying to get a vacant, plaintive kind of writing style, where the MC is just so pathetic, and so's the world.

Not everything has to end badly, and he doesn't have to be the bad guy, despite or perhaps because of his own fragility and effeteness and childishness. (Doesn't help that he once played with dolls with her. Or consider the psychosexual mumbo-jumbo implied if he were chemically castrated.)

...Please excuse me for mucking around like this, as if each one of my hundred thoughts so far are gonna be super interesting to everyone. xD

Anyway, overall it'd be about the "white and grey morality" (a trope from TV Tropes) of being dealt one of the cruelest hands you can get. The "oops, I got some wires crossed mentally and now I'm attracted to kids [but would never act on it]" hand. (Also when I said the MC is pathetic, I mean the word more as a way of conveying this awkward pathetic position (he should've never put himself in), and also to mark a contrast with Humbert and his ego and [self-described] masculinity, where the MC reflects the qualities of those he's attracted to — childlike, nymphlike, unable to see the damage he's causing.)

I've probably blathered on and on enough, and I also know what I just wrote is kinda pretentious because it sounds in places like a book review of a book that will probably never be written. x) I'd share some of what I wrote so far but it's not on that level quite yet...Sooo I guess I'm just really curious about other people's opinions about this idea, and what ideas you have, and also about the subject of "when and why does a platonic relationship between an adult and a child (if not related) get weird." Is it really that squicky or are we just conditioned to think that friendly co-equal adult-child relationships are weird/creepy/unnecessary?

So yeah! Say things, please! Even if that thing is "this is a dumb idea" or "all these ideas have already been done by so-and-so." And thanks so much for reading all this. I just wanted to share even though I'm at the very start of the process!

Good . I have just sent you a PM with my story... not sure if to share it here, as it may result in a big disaster (as how this has been turning on lately :V). Not sure if it's going really too far :O

RainbowKid wrote:Good . I have just sent you a PM with my story... not sure if to share it here, as it may result in a big disaster (as how this has been turning on lately :V). Not sure if it's going really too far :O

You could post it to a specific section on nifty or asstr or some other erotic story site probably.

Hello and welcome, Hecaebe. I'm a literary theorist by background, as well as having dabbled extensively in rhetoric and philosophy. I also write. I wanted to ask some questions, because I sense that you're serious and you want to produce something of good quality. I wondered where you're going with your ideas, or rather, what makes them coherent? I see you have some ideas which, as I interpret them, are plot-centric. But what is the underlying substance?

Take Lolita. Is it just the story of a man who becomes obsessed with a child and abuses her? No, it's much more than that. Nabokov condemns HH not merely as a man but as an artist. He fails to transcend his solipsistic and aestheticizing tendencies, and relishes his confession in a manner akin to that described by Paul de Man. David Andrews highlighted that Lolita is a work that ostensibly fits in the tradition of Aestheticism, but shows how the novel challenges the fundamental, partisan premise of Aestheticism, namely that the realms of art and morality could be considered discrete (a bastardization of Kantian philosophy which suited the political milieu at the time). Nabokov's own aestheticism postulates that art - good art - is incomplete without the moral dimension. Lolita poses as a text within the tradition of Aestheticism (indeed, Nabokov himself poses as an aesthete), but it subverts that tradition. Consider the lines of the 'old poet' (whom Richard Rorty incorrectly assumed to be Nabokov himself): De Vries noted that these were derived from, or a paraphrastic summary of, Poe's Poetic Principle. Actually they add a whole new twist to Poe's artistic philosophy, but that's another story. My point is that in Lolita, Nabokov presents us with his own vision of art and what it is to be an artist (and what it is to be a reader, incidentally). Good literature is about more than just stories.

That's just one novel (and I choose it because you make continuous reference to it), but there are many others I could have picked. I think that would be a good starting point. Have a think about some good novels, and ask yourself what they're saying and doing, showing and telling, and how they're doing that. Then ask yourself what you want your work to achieve. Being published is not really an aim in itself, and neither is writing a story, in my personal opinion. As you describe it so far, we have dreary-man-has-dreary-life, a reality kept in bas-relief by the fact that he's surrounded by stock characters. I'm not suggesting you go all Dickens and breathe life into the work by introducing myriad unique characters, but there needs to be something that sparkles. Remember the maxim of Horace (one of the great Roman poets): the aim of the poet is to delight and instruct. Nabokov insisted that his only aim was to delight, but he was being deceptive. Good art instructs without being overtly didactic, as Lolita surely does.

So what are you trying to convey in your work?

Another good starting point would be to get hold of a copy of David Lodge's The Art of Fiction. It's an accessible, highly enjoyable introduction to various aspects of writing fiction. I've found it indispensable.

If I were to look to a book as a model for writing my own positive book about pedophilic attraction, I certainly wouldn't look to Lolita. I have never read it, but from all I have read about it, I see it as a book that reaffirms all the reasons that adults see such relationships as evil and do not understand/respect child sexuality. The world that Humbert and Lolita get into is one that involves all the "ugly" and degrading things that one could associate with sexuality (substance abuse, people being treated as commodities, seedy establishments, etc.).

However, one day I was in a bookstore and came across the book Lamb by Bonnie Nadzam. By simply skimming a few of the chapters, I could tell that it was a book about the beautiful aspects of a sexual relationship involving a young person. Essentially, it is about an adult who is very dissatisfied with the shallowness, mundaneness, and lack of idealism in the adult world, and recaptures a purer world full of imagination and potential through romantic involvement with an 11-year-old. The ending seemed to leave open the question of whether they ever engaged in any sexual activity, an inference that is supported by the reviews I have read of the book.

I identify with the male character in Lamb (who, in fact, is named Lamb) much more than I can with Humbert. It seems many reviewers find the book highly disturbing, and find the main character to have evil intent, in fact some are more bothered by it than Lolita. Of course it is expected that any book with this subject matter will provoke this reaction in many, and I take the hatred of Lamb the character as sort of a perverse admission of how solid and in fact relatable his character is (people find themselves shocked that someone seduced by such apparently innocent motives could do something so wrong).

I will put the caveat here that not only haven't I read either book cover to cover, I don't think I am a pedophile (though I do want a childlike romance with another adult). Maybe actual pedophiles actually relate to Humbert--although from what I've heard about "virtuous" pedophiles I don't think so. Basically, I see Lamb as almost like Peter Pan set in the real world, with all the awful clashes the characters have with reality becoming all too obvious rather than being waved away by some fairy dust, whereas Lolita is like a set of compiled notes from a therapist in Hollywood.

@RainbowKid - I really like the summary you sent me and will respond properly to the PM just after this post is done, haha! Your approach is intriguing and some of your ideas are similar to ones I'd also been turning over in my head. And "going too far" -- that's always the trouble, isn't it? But with subject matter like this, I guess you can feel weirdly relieved of that concern, just because it's already crossed most everyone's line. But clarifying the lack of sexual contact in the plot/project, or at least lack of a glorified portrayal, seems a good starting place, especially if abuse survivors might be among the audience.

@ctithe - Although I knew you can never take Nabokov and his interview answers at face value, I think I did with the aestheticism thing...Especially with his talk about producing the "sob in the spine" as opposed to affecting hearts or minds (which I'm sure he did mean to some extent, but). I was all, "Exactly! Can't believe those people who think Lolita is supposed to represent America and Humbert is supposed to represent Europe, stop shoehorning in your symbolism, this is a novel of 'pure aesthetic bliss'!" And in the process turned out to be another reader Nabokov would've rolled his eyes at. x) Doesn't help that I do mouth the words when I read sometimes -- he mocked those readers but hey, it helps with comprehension!

In terms of narrowing this story down to a few motifs and injecting some life into it, one of the main things I wanted to write about is the parallel between children's games and role play; the continuation of these kinds of games into adulthood (RPG, LARPing); and sexual role play. And kind of how the mutual inroads here all add up to the same thing: a kind of wistfulness, if not dissatisfaction, with reality, and a need to imagine, dream, and fantasize.

The idea of simulations and simulacra (which Lolita also talks about some), like playing with a dollhouse, is really interesting to me because calling it fake and opposing it to the real world is a very "adult" designation, and possibly a false one. So that's what I'd like to bring out in this story, if possible -- the slippage between reality and fantasy, and life being just a dollhouse, and the child-mind having access to a kind of intense play and fluidity that the adult mind doesn't; in a way, that's all the MC wants, is to reach back to that place in his own head. William Wordsworth's "Intimations on Immortality" touches on this, the idea that the child has a bit of lingering "heaven" or a pre-birth "connection to the universe" in their head, that fades as they get older:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting/The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star..Heaven lies about us in our infancy!/Shades of the prison-house begin to close/Upon the growing Boy/But he beholds the light, and whence it flows/He sees it in his joy...At length the Man perceives it die away/And fade into the light of common day.

(w00t Wordsworth is the best!)

I thought making the main character work in video game design, working on a simulation game, might be interesting in that way too, since simulation games are kind of like adult dollhouses. Plus, making the MC technology-savvy might be a common factor between the MC and the child, however corny and phony that might be -- they relate to each other because they're both familiar with Generation Y and the modern. Haven't really developed it past that point, though.

I think your observations here are spot-on, and your own obvious writing strength and talent make me really want to seek your further advice in the future when I actually have something to show, if that works for you!

@Explorer3 - I hadn't heard of this book! (And wasn't sure how many books at all were in this kind of "canon," if you can call it that.) This passage here (excerpted from an article) is overwhelmingly good IMO: "The dear girl. How could she not carry Lamb with her, all the grassy fields he painted hanging between her little face and the world, bright screens printed with the images he made for her: flashes of green and silver; huge birds circling in the wind; the wet brown eye of a horse; bright yellow eggs on a breakfast dish; the curve of their backs atop a weathered rail fence on a cool blue morning."

Both Lamb and Lolita are about a kind of unprecedented, rare freedom in an adult/child relationship, a freedom that actually ends up being appalling because we don't really know (in either book, it seems) how badly affected the child is in all of this, and how much agency he or she actually lacks. (Lamb says he lets Tommie make decisions as an equal partner in the relationship, and never forced anything on her, but of course it's from his perspective.) I'm not saying this as a criticism of the book, or especially of your recommending it, because the author wants it to be ambiguous (I'm guessing) -- the argument that Lamb never does anything illicit to Tommie, lets her make decisions, etc., can still be made, and can still trouble the reader's preconceived "pet theories" about what's damaging and what isn't.

I'll definitely have to check out the book! There was a free sample on Scribd and it's got a jumpy, fast-paced quality that I like. Part of the trouble with my story so far is that I don't want one of those "go west" "wacky kidnapper" stories, all about an adult/child relationship outside of the normal constraints and bounds (although those can obviously be done very well). Instead, I want to write within those bounds, where there are vigilant watchdogs monitoring the characters, without making the story get all claustrophobic or less interesting. Ergh, it's difficult. But thank you (and everyone else!) for all the helpful advice! I've definitely got more of a sense of what pitfalls to avoid, at least!

Personally, I've found it rewarding to write about characters in a universe with different taboos than ours. I can use the taboos in the fictional universe, and the reactions of the characters to make the allegory clear, and I can present a positive sexual relationship between an adult and a child in an environment where such may not be considered normal, but where the knee-jerk condemnation and hatrid is focused elsewhere.

I don't know if I can imagine a world without that knee-jerk condemnation and hatrid existing, which is somewhat sad, I think.