/lit/ - Literature

>>22255389
Symbolic interpretations of the Metamorphosis are superfluous for Nabokov's purposes. You can say that Gregor's transformation into a beetle is leprosy or whatever, but all the experiences are still there if you don't do that. Gregor feels no less shame and betrayal due to his bugness than he would due to some realistic condition.
Nabokov said he "always preferred the literal meaning of a description to the symbol behind it". He was intensely concerned with the faithful capturing of experience. If you interpret the Metamorphosis fully literally (as he did) then it's still chock-full of that.
It also helps that there's a bug in it. He liked insects.
He wrote a long lecture about the story if you're interested: http://www.kafka.org/index.php?id=191,209,0,0,1,0

>>22255395
He had a very particular taste that Dostoevsky doesn't fit at all. There's nothing more to it than that. You don't need to defend Dostoevsky's honor, he just had different priorities.
Nabokov explains it at length here if you're really interested: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/23/magazine/nabokov-on-dostoyevsky.html
He praises the tension in his plots but says that he doesn't really care about tension himself since he wants to reread everything a dozen times and chew it to pieces. He complains about the lack of sensory detail because to him this is one of the most important things in literature, never mind that to most people it's optional. Dostoevsky prioritizes things Nabokov doesn't care for and leaves out things Nabokov hunkers for. Nobody is at fault.