"Some spines are better turned inward. A pederast might hide away Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, in which a middle-aged German author ogles a lithe young Polish boy. A hyper-literate rapist should camouflage his copy of A Clockwork Orange with a more consensual dust jacket. It is therefore curious that the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein-who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking minors-flaunted his supposed love of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita."
"The Epstein files released by Congress yesterday include photos of a young woman or girl, with Lolita's horny opening lines clumsily inscribed on her skin in fine black ink. Lolita crops up here and there in the documents released in November, too. The journalist Michael Wolff, who was working on a profile of Epstein, wrote that he kept a copy of Lolita, and no other book, on his bedside table."
Books on a shelf can reveal sexual predilections, and some readers conceal or camouflage compromising titles. Jeffrey Epstein, a financier and convicted sex offender who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking minors, flaunted a supposed affection for Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Congressional files include photos showing a young woman or girl with Lolita's opening lines inscribed on her skin. Michael Wolff reported that Epstein kept only Lolita on his bedside table and ordered The Annotated Lolita for his Kindle forty-three days before arrest.
Read at The Atlantic
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