(And, of course, a review)

Affect handbook, taken by me.

Visiting my Amazon Author page, I noticed that The Palgrave Handbook of Affect Studies and Textual Criticism had been boosted up in the lineup of works I have authored or contributed to. I have an essay on Lolita in the Handbook, which I discussed here. Curious, I clicked on the image of the work, and was happy to discover that it is now available on Kindle and in paperback!

This is very nice news. Although it is expensive, even in paperback, it is quite reasonable on Kindle and may therefore be more often assigned in courses. Neuroscience and affect studies are hot topics, and I hope many people will find the essays in the volume useful and interesting.

I do hope more people will read my contribution. Current woke attitudes about sexual abuse seem to me (this is based only on some conversations I have had) to cause people to suspect that Nabokov's interest in the topic of sex with pubescent children derives from his harboring pedophilic tendencies himself. These people condemn and eschew the novel. But while there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Nabokov was himself sexually abused by a male relative as a child, his affairs were, as far as I know, with college-age women, so I am inclined to see Lolita more as the work of a survivor trying to sort out his own experience as a victim than as that of a perpetrator reliving his secret desires. N.B.: This is in now way a repudiation of woke attitudes toward violating sexual behavior in general!

Anyway, there are a lot of other great essays in the Handbook. If you are interested in affect theory and neuroscience as they apply to aesthetic experiences, you can now check out all the essays for under $20 on Kindle. As always, please let me know what you think.

And now, A Review:

 This free site is ad-supported. Learn more
​