/lit/ - Literature

>reading for "the point"
ngmi

>>21843047
it's all style, no substance

>>21843083
this but in a good way

Imagine thinking 20th century novels have "points"

I was filtered by Spring Snow by Yukio Mushima

>>21843047
Nabokov isn't worth reading except for the prose, and even then he wears thin really quickly. He is, as Banville has said, tone-deaf, and as he himself admitted, lacking in a "natural vocabulary". Read Crowley, Carson, Carroll, Gass, Grahame. If you want something like Nabokov, read Hawkes or Salinger.

>>21843215
>Banville
The opinions of a feminist vegan atheist are irrelevant to me.

>>21843230
Why's that?

>>21843238
I can't take someone's opinions seriously unless I respect them. All the things I mentioned are choices he made.

>>21843238
Because he's a feminist vegan atheist.

>>21843047
it's a story about a pedo, what sort of deeper meaning are you trying to find there? there doesn't have to be one, you are allowed to read just for fun

>>21843251
Nabokov would say that the "author's biography" --that being his history, values, and beliefs -- are irrelevant to the quality of the work. He loathed people reading a work or an author's writing through the lens of their personality or life story. And you gave Nabokov a shot, so maybe give Banville one, too.

>>21843268
>Nabokov would say that the "author's biography" --that being his history, values, and beliefs -- are irrelevant to the quality of the work.
Don't care. Still not reading a feminist vegan atheist.

>>21843276
He's not vegan. He never said so. He advocated against vivisection, and said he did not eat meat, but never that he didn't eat cheese, or milk, or honey, or eggs, or whatever else. You should do some research beyond wikipedia.

>>21843268
>>21843268
Thoughts on the Alexander Cleave trilogy? It's the only thing I know by that faggot.

>>21843281
Never read it, sad to say. Is that the one with Ancient Light and Shroud in it? I've got those on my shelf here, and have heard that Shroud is great. Bloom considered it Banville's best work up to that point.

>>21843268
No because all those things that anon mention will show up in the authors writing, like enjoying a good meal and suddenly biting into a piece of glass, they simply can’t help themselves, and he is right to skip it

>>21843286
>Is that the one with Ancient Light and Shroud in it?
Yea. Ancient Light, Eclipse, and Shroud.
>Bloom considered it Banville's best work up to that point.
Nice. I bought the set some years ago and forgot about him until you mentioned his name today.

>>21843292
I wouldn't call Banville a feminist writer at all. His characters are often vicious, homicidal, or cruel, and won't discriminate when it comes to killing women or men, and his atheism seems irrelevant too. Critics still debate whether Shakespeare was agnostic, Catholic, Protestant, or atheist. Many lean towards atheism because of the general tone of the tragic works and the overall pessimism of his writing. Is reading Shakespeare like biting into broken glass? When Hamlet monologues about the emptiness of life, or Prospero bemoans his hollow magical tricks, or Macbeth dips into pure nihilism; are these pieces of glass?

>>21843295
I didn't know they sold a set of the Cleave novels. His new novel just came out, the sequel to the Singularities. Heard it's amazing, and look forward to reading it.

>>21843332
Sorry, minor correction: the sequel to the INFINITIES. Mixed them up.

>>21843317
The key phrase in your sentence is that they DEBATE where he leaned because nobody knows for sure, because he proclaim his beliefs, because they didn’t matter

Now a self proclaimed feminist, vegan, athiest? I can guarantee would obnoxiously poison his own works

>>21843504
But the whole point is the work. If a letter written by Shakespeare in which he proclaims his fervent atheism were discovered tomorrow, would that mean you could no longer read his writing, because the letter retroactively taints it?

Yale did a free course online called the American novel 1945 onwards.

Theres a few lectures dedicated to Lolita, really worth listening to as you clean or whatever.

It goes over a lot of the things that are easily missed on first read that really pulls everything together.

They're old fashion talk lectures so you can put speed to 1.5x amd not look at the vid playing.

>>21843047
The point is the separation between what Humbert is tell you vs the reality of the situation. He's retelling the events of him kidnapping and molesting a young girl in a romanticised way, it's just kind of interesting to see how the narrator can paint over the objective reality.

A teacher at my friend's school had 4 copies of this book on his shelf (different editions) and ended up getting fired for flirting with the students. It's an interesting read but the only people who are really intensely into it are pedos, "daddy issue" type girls, and people who are just really into anything russian.

>>21843653
>Theres a few lectures dedicated to Lolita, really worth listening to as you clean or whatever.
I clean with a vacuum, so you're saying I should TURN THE VOLUME UP REALLY LOUD when they're talking about Lolita?

>>21843686
>accidentally unplug vacuum cleaner
>"LITERARY PEDOPHILIA" blares all over your neighborhood

>>21843047
>was there supposed to be a point?
no

>>21843670
>the only people who are really intensely into it

Wrong. This is one of the classics of Western literature. If you are too stupid to see that, you probably should stick to JK Rowling.

>>21843818
It's beyond overrated, in my opinion. Aestheticism provides only a shallow pleasure anyways if its not supported by genuine storytelling and feeling. Nabokov is probably the smuggest, most emotionally dead writer since, well, since ever. His whole corpus is lifeless, like his pinned butterflies. He has nothing to say about life, has no wisdom, no intense emotions at all. Nabokov liked to play games, and games are, in the end, for kids, at least the way he played them. And despite his protestations to the contrary, great literature is primarily concerned with serious considerations of meaning or serious expressions of feeling.

>>21843670
>A teacher at my friend's school had 4 copies of this book on his shelf (different editions) and ended up getting fired for flirting with the students
lmao

>>21843855
>all these hackneyed secondhand takes
Artlets aren't sending their best.

>>21843882
Is there any criticism of Nabokov you would accept as not hackneyed?

>>21843670

Jesus, guy sounds like a pedagouge.

>>21843855
he just wrote a pov pedo book because no one else had balls to do it, get over it

>>21843818
It's a classic but it's just interesting, not incredible or even an especially good story. I'm talking about people who have this as their favorite book. The book is mid

>>21843918
I am over it, never was under it, actually. And Nabokov was likely a pedo. The number of references in his work to, or overt plot elements involving, underage girls hilariously large, and they're spread across pretty much all of his middle to late works. Ada, TT, Lolita, etc etc. And his dislike of Freud was a kneejerk reaction to his realisation that readers might see in his writing's obsessive nymphomania an unintended expression of himself. He was a genius, but an open book.

>>21843585
yes

>>21843855
I don't think it's overrated, not every book has to be crime and punishment, he contributed the world literature in a significant way even without having anything to tell about life or sharing any wisdom, art needs the shock value here and there

>>21843955
Fair, I guess.

>>21843931
>>21843957

Embarrassing.

Not a single sentence is wasted in that book and you see plot and shock.

>>21844098
They see a novel and want self help. Nothing to be done, I'm afraid.

>>21843950
He was the victim of a pedo, that alone would fuel some discussion of the subject. Can't imagine why someone in that position would be annoyed by a trend insisting that his purgation of trauma in fragments is hard evidence of his pedophilia. He might have been one, but we have no evidence beyond a fixation on a sort of character dynamic.

>>21844098
get a load of this pseud