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Pedophilia is a curious phenomenon of twentieth-century fiction. 1 Why sho novelists of the stature of Thomas Mann and Vladimir Nabokov write about and why do readers with presumably minimal interest in the actuality cont to praise and analyze Death in Venice and Lolita-without considering w role this subject matter plays in the narratives? 2 The most powerful explanat (leaving aside writers' strategies for distracting attention from the peri subject, and readers' willingness to be distracted) is also the one with m reverberations for related texts. Writers use the subject as an indirect b powerful way of dealing with anxieties about the life course. Pedophilia repr sents in an extreme form a normal problem of human development, the tra tion from latency to accepting adult sexuality and therefore aging." Beh every story of pedophilia is a drama of normal human regret at growing ol in the body, distorted by the protagonist …