/lit/ - Literature

I don't know anyone who's accused him of that. Of course, I only talk about literature to people who value the precision of someone like Nabokov's language.

Because he is Nabokov.

>>2882129
Wait, I misread your post, mentally replacing 'doesn't' with 'does'. IN that case, it's because of his precision of language, lol.

Fuck thesauruses. Tools for lazy writers and hacks. Use words learned the right way and be accused of sounding "thesaurusy". Fuck that. What good is knowing words if you can't use them?

>>2882151
Have you taken your medication today?

>>2882151

I read your post and his like six times looking for either 'does' or doesn't'. Neither are there.

>>2882175
You will never get laid.

>>2882124
The short answer is that Nabokov uses words that aren't even in the thesaurus.

The long answer is that Nabokov clearly knew his shit, and in more than a few different languages. Nobody can really accuse him of using a thesaurus because it's obvious he didn't need one. For example, I've seen him use the word "chamfrain", which is armour for a horse's head. What could he have possibly looked up to get that word from a thesaurus?

He was so good with words it was obvious he had transcended the thesaurus-thumbing hackwork of people like DFW.

>>2882222
>the thesaurus-thumbing hackwork of people like DFW
>dat obsession
Just an addendum, in Lolita, it's possible Nabokov would have wanted a thesaurusy effect.

Because he uses the words well.

>>2882184

I already got laid a whole bunch of times

>>2882228
Your post is consciously congruent to fanboydom.

>>2882222

>that denial

See the Walrus. Embrace the walrus. He is the all-father.

>>2882228
I kind of doubt that. HH is clearly portrayed as a very intelligent and well-educated person, with his articulate, allusive and erudite voice

>Adjective doesn't sound right it a sentence
>Use thesaurus to make it flow better
>Don't know what part of something is
>Look at wikipedia diagram

Do people really look down on shit like that?

>>2882239
No. It's called research, something every great writer does.

>>2882233
DFW, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Dee-Ef-Uu.

>>2882242

lol

>>2882238
He's very much an overblown and bombastic character though, so his intelligence doesn't preclude a tendency during the more passionate moments to slip into what some could consider purple prose.

>>2882247
Can you give some examples? I don't remember any of it being genuinely purple, at least in a way that would indicate use of a thesaurus

because its okay to use big words as long as it sounds good and youre using them alongside plenty of little words

>>2882255
Well, you don't necessarily need lots of little words surrounding them. Example: James Joyce

>>2882251
>r was my excessive desire for that child only the first evidence of an inherent singularity? When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions and so forth, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past.

>She would try to relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion.

I have read it once, and only once, when I was 17. I knew a lot less words at that stage, so perhaps thesaurusy was incorrect, Nothing thesaurusy jumped out at me while I was scanning.

I thumbed to the Annabel section, I think these extracts could arguably be called purple. If I wrote one of these myself, I'd consider it too purple. I certainly don't see this it as a bad thing, purple prose is a relative term, I'd have to close myself off from nearly all pre-20th century works if I were to take a hard-line stance on it.

>>2882263
>I thumbed to the Annabel section, I think these extracts could arguably be called purple.

I agree, but that's primarily because its allusiveness wouldn't be recognized by someone unfamiliar with the poem, and that person would just be left confused, as I was when I first read it.

Honestly, Humbert is a bit too playful for me to think of him as bombastic, but I might be missing something

So when I read lolita am I gonna need a dictionary to hand? My vocabulary's wide but it sounds like Nabokov pulls out all the stops.

>>2882283
No, but you should get the annotated version. There's a lot of French.

>>2882228
Lolita definitely has a conscious purple-prose thing going on. This isn't deployed in, say, Pale Fire despite the narrator being even more delusional than Humbert.

You people are seriously losing it if you believe that using a thesaurus is a bad thing in some way.

>>2882795
It can be bad. Depends on the acumen of the user.

>>2882795
It really can be, if it's the first time you're seeing the word in the thesaurus. A word that means the same thing, might not be suitable in the same context.

Ignorant generalizing thread is ignorant and generalizing.

I rather like David Foster Wallace's intentional wordiness; he overuses punctuation, footnotes, parenthesis within parenthesis. The man overuses everything, for effect, why would you think he wouldn't overuse his vocabulary?

>who use such like words learned legitimately do

>>2883345
...writers who use suchlike words, learned legitimately, do [get accused of sounding thesaurusy].

I can't begin to tell you how many words I've illegitimately learned.

>>2884570
I loled

>>2884570
So you've learned them by seeing them in a thesaurus?

>>2882263
Arguably purple? Try, absolutely, unquestionably, grotesquely

>>2884570
>>2884570


>he thinks you can learn things illegitimately, lol

>>2882151
>>2882151


>he thinks there's a 'right way' of learning, lol

>not reading and copying the dictionary daily.

Why doesn't Vivian Darkbloom get accused of sounding "Dan-Browny" while lesser writers who use such like words figured out legitimately do?

>>2882124
>Nabakov
wut?
>Nubokav
>Nebukiv
>Nibakev
>whatever