/lit/ - Literature

>While a few pertinent points have to be marked, the general impression I desire to convey is of a side door crashing open in life’s full flight, and a rush of roaring black time drowning with its whipping wind the cry of lone disaster.
…Anything else?

holy shit thats some god tier prose

>>22316035
>>22316086
Tumblr-tier estrogenic trite

>>22316288
you know that trite is not a noun, right?

>>22316035
The prose drops right the fuck off after the first page. I was hoping it was gonna ride high but nah he went off talking about dumb shit in the most uninteresting way possible.

>>22316035
What's wrong with that paragraph? it's really good

>>22316293

>>22316344
He probably meant "tripe" and is backtracking

>>22316035
Nabokov is really just a 2nd rate Proust when it comes to style. His pompous narration ruins it.

>>22316403
>Certainly I was now well awake; my body had veered round for the last time and the good angel of certainty had made all the surrounding objects stand still, had set me down under my bedclothes, in my bedroom, and had fixed, approximately in their right places in the uncertain light, my chest of drawers, my writing-table, my fireplace, the window overlooking the street, and both the doors. But for all that I now knew that I was not in any of the houses of which the ignorance of the waking moment had, in a flash, if not presented me with a distinct picture, at least persuaded me of the possible presence, my memory had been set in motion; as a rule I did not attempt to go to sleep again at once, but used to spend the greater part of the night recalling our life in the old days at Combray.

>Someone had indeed had the happy idea of giving me, to distract me on evenings when I seemed abnormally wretched, a magic lantern, which used to be set on top of my lamp while we waited for dinner-time to come; and, after the fashion of the master-builders and glass-painters of Gothic days, it substituted for the opaqueness of my walls an impalpable iridescence, supernatural phenomena of many colours, in which legends were depicted as on a shifting and transitory window. But my sorrows were only increased thereby, because this mere change of lighting was enough to destroy the familiar impression I had of my room, thanks to which, save for the torture of going to bed, it had become quite endurable. Now I no longer recognised it, and felt uneasy in it, as in a room in some hotel or chalet, in a place where I had just arrived by train for the first time.

>Riding at a jerky trot, Golo, filled with an infamous design, issued from the little triangular forest which softened with dark green the slope of a hill, and advanced fitfully towards the castle of poor Geneviève de Brabant. This castle was cut off short by a curved line which was in fact the circumference of one of the transparent ovals in the slides which were pushed into position through a slot in the lantern. It was only the wing of a castle, and in front of it stretched a moor on which Geneviève stood dreaming, wearing a blue girdle. The castle and the moor were yellow, but I could tell their colour without waiting to see them, for before the slides made their appearance the old-gold sonorous name of Brabant had given me an unmistakable clue. Golo stopped for a moment and listened sadly to the accompanying patter read aloud by my great-aunt, which he seemed perfectly to understand, for he modified his attitude with a docility not devoid of a degree of majesty, so as to conform to the indications given in the text; then he rode away at the same jerky trot. And nothing could arrest his slow progress. If the lantern were moved I could still distinguish Golo’s horse advancing across the window-curtains, swelling out with their curves and diving into their folds.

>>22316332
Ah it is dostoyevskys the idiot you seek, avseys translation of course

saw a qt coffee shop barista reading it on her break yesterday. what do you guys think?

>>22316403
Being a 2nd rate Proust is still pretty damned good.

It's nice when shit doesn't run out...

>>22316344
am I fully retarded or are those 'noun' examples all still effectively adjectives

>>22316344
>trite. Noun: a thing that is trite.

>>22316344
did you just discover bard you faggot, stop asking AI bullshit

>>22316866
No you're not retarded. In "the politician's speech was full of trite platitudes", trite is being used as an adjective to describe the platitudes.

>>22316035
I'm currently halfway through Pale Fire. It could be a decent read, but his pseudo-intellectual, liberal-arts-educated way of writing ruins it for me. Nabokov seems to be a writer for the sake of being a writer, when he really has nothing to say.

>>22316814
Right. Lolita is one of my favorite books specifically because of it's writing style. Then again, I love other terrible books like Catcher in the Rye and Infinite Jest. I am a pretty picky reader, but idk what this board wants out of book. A new rendition of the Bible I guess.

>>22317190
>terrible books like Catcher in the Rye
?
>>22317167
>but his pseudo-intellectual, liberal-arts-educated way of writing ruins it for me.
its narrated by a delirious opinionated academic. in both lolita and pale fire this learned style is used for humorous bathos when the characters are humiliated or their pretentious self indulgent speech accentuates their neuroticism.
>Nabokov seems to be a writer for the sake of being a writer, when he really has nothing to say.
in the case of pale fire he has one of the most original story structures to "say", and that even goes for the surface story alone, let alone the different layers in different directions.

If you aren't having the time of your life reading Lolita, then I am not sure you are even human, imo.

>>22316344
>using AI to fact check things

All this proves is how useless it is to think in terms of rankings and god-tiers and GOATs. I don't care about whether I'm reading the Blue Eyes White Dragon of literature. Literature should be a space to sprawl out and exercise the parts of your mind that aren't immediately reducible to a recognised metric of value. To have fun with it, in the broadest sense possible. When people try to remove an artwork to a transcendent realm of Platonic beauty, I feel actively cut off from it; it's no longer an invitation to that experimental, open space. Not that those experiments can't lead to profound and mysterious places.

I read this recently, and I thought it was insightful:
>i feel averse to art that has no dead parts, no listlessnesses, no flubs - “nothing but the best”. as if meaning and value were so rare that they could never be left to chance. a paranoia that diminishes the thing it’s trying to celebrate, converting it to yet another luxury good to be stockpiled by those of means or exquisite sensitivity. i think the only thing you can do when you run across the good is to let it go again. i think whatever you risk losing in doing so is balanced out by the beauty of the notion that there’s always more to find.
>[...] art as a lucky dip bag that holds equal chance of turning out to contain a plastic whistle, two lollipops, a magic ring or somebody’s hand.

>>22317532
>in the case of pale fire he has one of the most original story structures to "say", and that even goes for the surface story alone, let alone the different layers in different directions.
He literally copied Sartor Resartus.

>>22317728
No? Have you not read both?

>>22316288
based retard

>>22317728
>>22316403
shallow comparisons

>>22316344
AI is going to ruin idiots, man. At no point is this describing trite as a noun, and in all five examples of using trite as a noun it is used as an adjective.
Also why did 4/5ths of the nincompoops responding to this act as if this wasn’t apparent?

>>22316344
You idiot, the examples it gives are all uses of it being an adjective. Take an english class

do you also watch porn for the plot or what is this thread about

>>22318835
some old porn films have good plot

>>22317794
Cope Nobocoper. The entire "original" schtick is a 1 to 1 copy. The only think nabocuck adds is that he includes that terrible poem in the book.
>>22318721
Cope Nabocuck. Nabocope is an unoriginal copier of better writers.

>>22319863
>Nabocope is an unoriginal copier of better writers.
pic. the nab has an immediately recognizable and distinct style.
>The entire "original" schtick is a 1 to 1 copy
read a summary at least. even if that "schtick" was an entire trope, pale fire would easily be one of the most original works ever written. it does so much more than even people who HAVE read it discover.

>>22316344
I you posted this image as a 4d-chess level of trolling.

>>22320605
Sure showed me with a twitter screencap, nabocuck. I am far better read than ypu are. His distinct style is copying Proust but more pompously.
>all that coping
The whole schtick is copied. There is nothing original about copying. He can stuff in any amount of puzzles as he wants, the main structure of the novel/main premise is unoriginal to begin with. Fuck off.

>>22320605
That schtick is not a trope, coper. You take away the premise and Pale fire becomes another one of those 1st person unreliable narration novels popular in the 20th century. There is nothing original about it without the main structure which itself is copied from Carlyle. Try me if you think I haven't read the book. I just don't suck on Nabocuck's cock like you vermin do.

>>22320686
>>22320694
tellem why u mad tho

>>22316035
It's shit.

>>22320702
It's fun working up Nabocucks because they have no response.

>Not a single poster has provided any actual criticism of OPs quote.

>>22320712
Why?

>>22320738
It's ESL garbage. I don't even mind ESL most of the time but the author/translator needs to know his limits and write within those limits.

>>22320723
seems to me the only one who's worked up here is you

>>22320750
That doesn't really say anything. Please elaborate.

>>22320694
you might as well have not read it if you think even its main structure is reducible to that.
>That schtick is not a trope
or maybe you have comprehension issues since you couldnt understand my post. i said even if whatever inconsequential resemblance it has to sartor was a convention shared by many other works, PF would still be distinguished from all the others.

>>22320694
>You take away [thing] and [thing] becomes another [thing].
You're very smart.

>>22320768
Dumbass cope
>"it's totally original!!"
>no it's not. Here is a book that does everything functionally similar with its premise
>"no he hasn't written the same book exactly so it's actually still original"
What retardation. All books are original by this logic because writers aren't rewriting previous texts even if they influence them. Hence pf being very original becomes a retarded statement even this way.
>>22320799
And that thing that makes it the thing which the retard is creaming about is copied from better writers, hence breaking any delusion the retard holds. Congratulations on not being able to follow something this simple, retard.

The only good prose there is in the English language (20th century onwards) is in McCarthy and Faulkner.
The rest is shit in great part because the English language is so limited.