/lit/ - Literature

Personally, I usually read forwards after I've read the book. They sometimes have spoilers and the writers usually suck at making it interesting before you're already really interested in the piece. I like to read the text, interpret it for myself, and then see what someone else has to say.

No right way to read it. I always read Pynchon by my computer with Pynchonwiki, ordinary wiki and a dictionary up; and Nabokov himself apparently used to teach Ulysses with a finger on a map of Dublin.

But I have somewhere read that you're apparently meant to read the poem several times, you know -- get to know it yourself, before you try reading it with commentaries.

Good luck!

Yeah I had this same problem a few weeks ago, OP. The part where he said I should get two copies and be flicking back and forth and rereading and all that really put me off. I just put it down and read something else, I'd be interested to know the answer to your question, too, though.

I think I may just read the poem first, then the commentary, then the poem and the commentary at the same time. I just don't know exactly what the commentary contains, and if I should put more weight in the (fictional) commentator's recommendation to read it commentary, poem and commentary, then commentary again.

I did not know that starting to read this book would be so difficult.

You guys are putting too much time into it. Just read it.

It's a difficult book, but well worth it if you put in the effort. OP, sounds like your plan should work. I read the poem, then the commentary while referencing the poem.

If you try reading the poem then flip back and forth to the commentary, at what point do you realize that the commentator is, in fact, absolutely insane?

In part suggestions like "buy two copies of this book" are intended to be hints.

But that's kind of the point of the book.

You should read John Shade's poem by itself and make up your own mind about it. Just imagine it's written by a Robert Frost type American poet in the 1950s, who teaches at a nice bucolic American college.

Then read the commentary.

I just read the poem first, and went back to the verse that was discussed in the commentary if it was important.

I kind of want to read this now. Will /lit/ soon shit it's pants over this like it always does Lolita?

Read first canto, then the commentaries that go with it. Read second canto, etc.

I read it in chronological order

I only found one real puzzle of note in the book that required going back or forth.

but yes, it's on purpose discursively structured. you can go back and forth; poem, notes; commentary, poem; index, commentary, etc, etc, read it over and over again -- it's all just for lulz in the end

I about halfway through OP. I read the poem first and then flipped back and forth reading the commentary. So far its pretty good, but its pretty obvious that Kinbote is straight up crazy.

>>1227597
I honestly think it was Nabokov just trolling when he make Kinbote say to get two books.