/lit/ - Literature

Could you not have summed up that sentiment in a shorter paragraph? No? Congrats you're the Nabokov of internet whinging.

you are a raging homosexual and despite this, I can relate as I too experience this in my readings.
What I often do when I realize my interest dwindles is, immediately drop the book and do something else, then return to it with a fresher mind.
Good luck.

I know what you mean. Over-explaining is, in my opinion, one of the most annoying things you can do, flowery language or no.

Nice blogpost.
Stick to YA until you grow up to try to read another one of babby's first grown up novels.

it doesn't make you grounded or rational, but luckily for you there are writers who feel the same way, and write very directly and plainly

>>12254042
I love Lolita but I share this opinion. I only want to read this kind of book a few times in my life and having to use a dictionary four times a page is not my idea of enjoyment. I'd rather read nonfiction if I'm trying to learn something.

>>12254060
Despite my enjoyment of the minimalist example, why would I care for a sentence written by a woman.

>>12254069

I didn't HATE Lolita. I enjoyed it a ton until they got in their roadtrip and then it felt kind of boring until the end. The very last sentence is also very good.

>>12254042
Based ADHD

>>12254082
That was my exact thought as I was posting it, but it's the only example I had on hand. I apologize.

>>12254060

Weirdly enough I don't hate exposition, for instance before Lolita I read Jane Eyre which I absolutely adored and this book is definitely full of descriptions. And it does have its fair share of monologues too, but I dunno, they feel easier to stomach to me, more.. real? Natural? At times Lolita just read like Nabokov was just sitting there thinking for long minutes about a fancy way to say something, which I am pretty sure is what happened.

It's hard to explain honestly.

Reading several pages of characters "dwelling" on shit is much more enjoyable than simply reading "I am sad" and moving on but I do enjoy the more straight-forward writing styles.

>>12254042
what the fuck I don't consider myself to be particularly well-read but this was not a hard book to get through

>>12254060
Where can I get more of this?

>>12254042
Read Faulkner, he's the antithesis to Nabokov.

>>12254050
Great response.

> I do not see as others do, but perhaps it's my brain that is more realistic than others

>>12254042
you write the way you hate to read

>>12254301

I never said it was hard, just tedious because I didn't care.

Another book I read recently that did it for me was Frankenstein.

The Creature's parts were amazing, loved reading those, its narration was great. The Frankenstein parts though? Fucking awful

The prose is only there to mechanically make the reader think and feel, saying you don't like what's commonly considered considered good "prose", "word-play" doesn't mean anything unless you look at how you respond to the work. One part of Lolita is that it is written really well, and there are chunks of it that are rather boring--listing off destinations in a roadtrip and commenting on middle America for instance. However this is intentional, reading between the lines (Nabokov used brackets to highlight what is actually going on) the quite nice (yet mundane) writing hides the abuse of Lolita. Remember Lolita is written as a confession with the narrator trying to downplay the abuse (there's a good bit where Lolita cries in bed thinking the narrator is asleep).

>>12254060
Minimalism is good for some things, and it should be used more in genre fiction and non-fiction. But flowery prose is usually the point of literature, in a sense.

>>12254042
>all I was thinking is "get to the point"
This is something you should avoid thinking. Remind yourself that the story is not about the destination, but the journey. If you're reading a James Patterson book or some other standard genre fiction, there is zero slack in the prose and everything has a purpose and it's entirely plot and action-driven. Literature is not, because it, like plenty of poetry, usually attempts to indirectly evoke emotions and thought-processes, instead of telling them directly.

>I legitimately do not enjoy what is considered good "prose", "word-play"
Then stick to works that are straight-forward and direct. Chances are, if you read for many years, you'll naturally gravitate towards things that have more purple prose anyway. Read whatever you enjoy and don't listen to people who say things are objectively good or bad. If something bores you, drop it for something that doesn't.

>>12254042
Symptoms of the modern era. We want our shit in less than 200 characters.

>>12254042
>not sure if that makes me a plebeian or it merely means that I have a brain that is very grounded and rational
>Thinking these two things are different from each other

>>12255013
BASED

>>12254042
Well, I can't say I fully empathize with the feeling of "get to the point", I think reading and literature is about the journey, unlike say, science or economics. However, I do empathize with the feeling of "tell me something interesting, not just describe the background and hoe pretty the flowers are." Lolita's second part drags on a lot. Nabokov's America is not as interesting as he thought. Like, we get it, he spent time in hotels and went to an American bus tour or whatever. Who cares. Tell me anecdotes, tell me what the character is feeling or thinking, not about the fucking kandscape and pretty descriptions of meaningless shit.

>>12254042

maybe this is more ur style bro

>>12254819

Yeah I'm just not good at all at "feeling" emotions reading a book. I understand them but do not feel them so it makes no difference to me if it's told plainly or not. Well I should rather say, I don't feel negative emotions reading a book, joy, laughter, etc, I get those, but sadness? Anger? Never.

nabby's detail resolution is fine. less and you'd lose information, more and it'd become ornamental.

you may just be bad at comprehending / verbally processing complex ideas, so reading ten pages of a nabakov novel really is a waste of your time since you fail to register 90% of what's there

>"My soul is crushed by regret" works as well as a pages long monologue about the character's regrets about something
even at first glance those are two different things:
> my soul is crushed by regret:
I regret (generally?) and am sad to the core about it.
> monologue about the character's regrets about something:
I regret something specific in more than one way (and how i feel about it is left open at this point).

>I legitimately do not enjoy what is considered good "prose", "word-play" and whatever you can think of.
those are two very different things.

>>12256548
You didn't go "ahhh, SHIT" on the rat scene in 1984? When he says do it to Julia

>>12256635

It's been 10 years since I read that, I can't remember that scene at all.

>>12256548
I think you need to learn how to read more complex works and stop reading them like they're your average book. If you read a few pages and aren't feeling anything, or aren't interested, it's probably worth stopping and re-reading, and also thinking about why someone would have chosen to spend so much time writing what they did, and why their editors would have read it and decided it was necessary to keep it in. But like the other anon said, if you aren't reading to feel anything and learn about yourself, you're probably better off reading more on-the-nose works.

>>12254042
I actually wrote a term paper about this phenomenon, or rather the phenomenon you're complaining about. Lolita has a lot more to offer than, "good prose and wordplay." One of the most fascinating parts about the modernist era of literature, to me, is the way it relays its information, because, in many cases, the vectors it uses are essential to the conceit of the novel. I think what you're feeling is partially intentional, specifically in the case of Lolita. HH is not a good fella, and the flowery, bordering-purple, prose is rather distracting and it forces potentially humanizing spaces between events of veritable agony.


>“In other words,” writes English illustrator Peter Childs, “Modernist writing ‘plunges’ the reader into a confusing and difficult mental landscape, which cannot be immediately understood but which must be moved through and mapped by the reader in order to understand its limits and meanings."

I could go on and on forever about metaphysics in modernist lit tbqh

>>12256926

>I could go on and on forever about metaphysics in modernist lit tbqh

Please do, expand on your post because it's intriguing.

>>12256883

I like reading books for their ideas and the curiosity it awakens in me. Reading Lolita caused me to spend lots of time looking up research on attractiveness and links between neoteny and attractiveness. And Crime and P made me read about utilitarianism and all that. So i guess books are to me a tool to awaken curiosity towards the ideas they talk about.

>>12256975
D-daddy? I think it’s time to make THE thread

>>12254050
Absolutely based
>>12254042
Takes a sentiment that could be summed up in a sentence and writes a sprawling paragraph that goes nowhere. Maybe take your own advice.

>>12254082
>>12254145
unironically correct

>>12254042
Oh no, it's retarded.

>>12254050
I laughed