/lit/ - Literature

>>4759083

Yes and that's a shit cover.

original cover is way more tasteful

also I hate the book because it make me realize why most of my relationships failed

>>4759093
are you a paedophile

>>4759090
well its better than the one iv got, its all they had in the store

i fucking hate this cover so much, im probably going to read it again but i want to get a better version first

>>4759098
I'm not even that guy and I can still tell you with certainty that it has nothing to do with being a pedo, it has to do with being a beta living life with your eyes closed.

>>4759109
Wow can they stop trying to make the covers "scandalous" or sexual in any way? It doesn't need a picture of a little girl on it for crissake--it's not an emotional appeal against pedophilia or something, which is what putting pictures of actual children on the cover nearly cheapens it to.

>>4759098
nah, moreso coveting and treating people as objects of affection rather than actual human beings

>>4759083
Only pedophiles like it.

>>4759119
Yea, the way she's staring at you too as if to say i dare you to like this

It's disgraceful

>>4759123
why are the two mutually exclusive?

>>4759129
What part of it would pedophiles like more than anyone else? The part where all the things that make the pedophile attracted to young girls turn out to be complete myths?

>>4759138
He didn't say they were, he said "No, actually it was this." He said flat out that it wasn't pedophilia.

>>4759136
I know, and it betrays such a misunderstanding. I wonder if whoever demanded that the covers for all those editions be a provocative photo of a young girl even read the damn thing.

Anyway I'm sure everyone has seen that thing by now, that thing I've started thinking of--it's like a little collection of fan-made cover concepts for Lolita, a number of which were actually pretty good.

>>4759129

>>4759152
where do I go from this with Nabokov?

>>4759161
(didn't mean to quote)

>>4759161
What percentage of the sentences in Lolita would you say you fully understood? (Including the French)

What did you like about it?
These questions will help us make recommendations.

It honestly kind of creeped my out when I read it so I just put it down. Not really into the whole that type of sh*t

>>4759147
I own the cover in the OP just as an excuse to have the image cover art.
The actual story isn't that great. I think a lot of people will say that, but it's true. The prose is delicious.
I did have a solid erection for at least half of the novel, though.

>>4759161
Pale Fire is my go-to recommendation.

>>4759169
I'd say I understood it to a reasonable degree. I liked the unreliable narrator and voice just oozing through the pages.

>>4759175
Well that's always the correct answer, but I was going to wait and hear what the guy's reaction to Lolita was before saying that. I would say it's one or two notches up on the difficulty if you actually want to get a valuable experience out of it--at the very least you probably need to do some outside research.

>>4759183
Hmm, OK, then Pale Fire probably is the way to go for you!
It's probably my favorite book in the world, certainly my favorite to think about or write about, so treat it kindly!

>>4759188
Agreed, Pale Fire definitely deserves more attention, at least in comparison to Lolita, but the controversy fuels most of the conversation around Lolita.

I will now post some of those fan-made or alternative Lolita covers that I actually like.

This one is essential, mostly for the butterfly.

>>4759188
I think i might buy this tomorrow
Pale Fire vs Lolita?

>>4759183
read pale fire

it's probably better than lolita but i haven't decided yet. it's very difficult. was not expecting the difficulty since lolita was pretty breezy, but it's genuinely tough

>>4759202
Structurally, Pale Fires is very different from Lolita, but in terms of prose and the use of an unreliable narrator, they have definite similarities.

>>4759200
Structurally, Pale Fire is very different from Lolita, but in terms of prose and the use of an unreliable narrator, they have definite similarities.

This cover is possibly my personal favorite out of all that I've seen, but it would never work as a cover for a publication run--the significance is only apparent to those already familiar with the book (then again, who isn't?).

What I especially like about it is that it puts the language of the book front and center, with the sexual implications of the lips and tongue merely an afterthought--just a method to convey the language itself. This reflects the character of the book accurately in my opinion.

>>4759200
What do you mean "Pale Fire vs Lolita"? Which one should you buy? How do they compare to each other? I'm not sure what you're saying.

>>4759203
Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah. Ah: Dawkins: Ah.

>>4759221
what are the similarities and differences and how do they compare in terms of quality

This one feels more like the cover of a DVD box set of a British television drama series for housewives, but at least it's an example of a provocative image related to the novel that doesn't involve any sex appeal.

>>4759202
I don't know about "more attention"--Lolita is a book that "the masses" can consume, while Pale Fire is a jab aimed squarely at literate academia. Pale Fire deserves its fair share of formal study, of course (though in doing so Nabokov makes fools of every would-be analyst!), but I think it does get this. Even poor old Nabokov knew that no matter how brilliantly he wrote, he would never author a book that eclipsed the fame of Lolita.

>>4759210
Lolita surely has the kind of depth such that a critic can pour over every paragraph for hours, but that type of reading isn't necessary to extract the most meaningful morsels. But without the right perspective, Pale Fire becomes an aimless and exhausting work indeed.

>>4759220
"Structurally," Pale Fire is very different from any book I've ever read, and I don't mean "the poem and the commentary." Pale Fire is, I think, the only book I know of in which the index reveals more of the plot than the pages it catalogs!
But, yes, I agree with what you said even if I feel like it's a bit of an understatement. That's why I said Pale Fire was the right prescription for someone who liked the narration and voice of Lolita.

>>4759224
I'm sorry, I don't really understand what you mean.

>>4759224
Shush.
>Shoots wing off

>>4759221
Would not read in public/10

Even though I don't find this cover especially aesthetic (and I usually love black and white), and even though I think the sexual undertones are possibly too strong even with just this much, I can't help but smile at this cover because the line about the sock is probably my favorite in that chapter, even over tongue lines referenced above.
>She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock.

>>4759228
Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada contend for Nabokov's best written novels. Lolita is more playful with language itself, while Pale Fire delights more in contorting the concept of constructing language: authorship. Ada over-indulges in both and becomes unreadable without a complete annotation, which is why it isn't really part of this discussion.
In Pale Fire you will still find Nabokov a joyful wordsmith, don't worry about that, but the concepts you'll be expected to explore will be more concrete and specific (and therefore will require more diligent interpretation) than the more emotionally universal ideas in Lolita.

>>4759283
People would just think it's a guide to learning lip reading, or something. Anyway the only use for this cover would be in the personal library of a fan of that particular line (but who isn't?).

>>4759283
are you american

>>4759258
By attention I meant from the literati.

And just as an aside, as someone who obviously enjoyed Pale Fire at least as much, if not more, than I did, have you read House of Leaves? If so, did you like it?

Christopher Hitchens liked it... nuff said!

>my cover, read without jacket

I think it's a great book. Nabokov is an excellent writer. It's not the cheese pizza fest that some /lit/s make it out to be. I had no "omg i'm a peeedo" revelation.

>>4759324
I'm still not interested.
You can put a tripcode on if you like, anon.

best cover coming through

>>4759258
By attention I meant from the literati.

And just as an aside, as someone who obviously enjoyed Pale Fire at least as much as, if not more than, I did, have you read House of Leaves? If so, did you like it?

>>4759329
shouldn't you get back to the one book you have slated to read this month? or is April pamphlet season?

I usually recommend Appel's annotated edition. Ol' Nabokov was the king of left-field allusions and bridging three languages with a single pun. A casual reading misses a helluva lot of nifty shit.

>>4759341
I generally recommend people read it blind for the first time and for them to read annotated editions only if they really appreciated the text and wanted to understand some of the more obscure bits.

This cover won the contest, but I don't really get it. The text of the Mann Act digs a little too hard into the Americana elements and political theme to be appropriate for a cover, not to mention being rather trite and boorish in terms of subject matter. Actually, that might be just as ingenious and subtle as the ones I said I liked, and I'm just taking the piss because I don't like the pink heart.

>>4759312
>>4759334
I enjoyed House of Leaves as a piece of somewhat interactive horror fiction, but I certainly wouldn't subject it to critical rigor. After all, when your work resembles a parody of your own genre, that isn't a good sign.
I remember in high school after I read my (full color, paperback) copy, I loaned it out to my friends and we ended up passing it around and adding our own little easter eggs, slipping new pages into the spine and such. An annotation to the annotation, a little collaborative, creative writing exercise. In the past on this board I have gone as far as to call House of Leaves "Pale Fire for teens," but I'm not sure I would be wise to maintain that as more than tongue-in-cheek. It has its own merits, and a fundamentally different sphere of influence.

P.S. I liked your comma placement better the first time around.

>>4759341
Sure, but like I've been saying, I don't think the annotation is "necessary" to enjoy Lolita (the first time around, at least) the same way it is to Ada. Nabokov's clever little morsels are packed so densely in Lolita that an average reader gets enough of them reading normally to remain tickled the entire way through, so I don't see anything wrong with leaving the more obscure jokes for a second or third read.

Anyone know of any useful essays or (preferably) video lectures about lolita? I have seen Nick Mounts on youtube and i loved it but I can't seem to find anything as good

>>4759363
I hate to compare the two honestly; they are completely different beasts, but I was just curious as to how you would feel about the annotative narrative. At the end of the day, HoL lacks in quite a fair number of categories, but it was really the whole "horror" gimmick that made me like it. If i'm being honest, I've never loved any story Nabokov wrote, that is, for the story (this is actually a complete lie, but hey, what are you gonna do about it?). I can honestly say that I enjoyed HoL's story more than PF's, but I think that PF is an infinitely better book.


The initial comma placement was to easily construed as incorrect, better to be concise and clear on image boards.

I am now getting to the point that my drunkenness is surpassing my ability to type. Red squiggles be damned.

Oh shit, I didn't hit submit.

>>4759366
>tv-watching americans

"How to be a Good Reader" or "Kindness to Authors"—something of that sort might serve to provide a subtitle for these various discussions of various authors, for my plan is to deal lovingly, in loving and lingering detail, with several European Masterpieces. A hundred years ago, Flaubert in a letter to his mistress made the following remark: Commel'on serait savant si l’on connaissait bien seulement cinq a six livres: "What a scholar one might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books."

In reading, one should notice and fondle details. There is nothing wrong about the moonshine of generalization when it comes after the sunny trifles of the book have been lovingly collected. If one begins with a readymade generalization, one begins at the wrong end and travels away from the book before one has started to understand it. Nothing is more boring or more unfair to the author than starting to read, say, Madame Bovary, with the preconceived notion that it is a denunciation of the bourgeoisie. We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge.

>>4759433
>I can honestly say that I enjoyed HoL's story more than PF's, but I think that PF is an infinitely better book.
The thing is, Pale Fire's "story" isn't in Pale Fire--it's unwritten! Nobody knows who wrote the poem, who wrote the commentary, who wrote the index, let alone the story of how they came to be written. So you can't really call Pale Fire a story at all. It's just a literary exercise, or maybe a lesson.

House of Leaves certainly has a story, even if it is obscured at times. But more than the story, one of the things I loved the most about it was its persistent and captivating aesthetic. Just the phrase "Five and a Half Minute Hallway" gave me shivers. The struck out story was surely a gimmick, but it stuck with me. The portrayal of the house was intoxicating--for once I could truly visualize a fantastical scene as if I were staring at it. I wouldn't've thought it was possible to be honestly scared by a "horror" story in the form of a book (reading is cerebral, after all, and there are so many things more terrible than a monster under the bed to burden a mind), but House of Leaves proved me wrong.

>wow, who types up here
I love this.

>>4759474
Whoever wrote that said it well.

>>4759503
Seriously. I remember, vividly, actually shuddering at one point (it's been around ten years since I first read it, so I don't remember the exact part).
There's something here to be said about authorial intent with regards to Nabokov and Pale Fire, namely Nabokov's stated intentions for certain characters (beyond the narrative in the novel). I won't say what he said, (you might already know) but I remember reading it and being kind of pissed off at Nabokov for even going into it. It made me put a lot more credence into the whole "death of the author" idea.

>>4759554
To some extent I'd be willing to argue that Nabokov's expressed authorial intent is part of the "game" of Pale Fire, and he knows it. Nabokov is just another author who put his name on a work called Pale Fire. Just because he is "real to us," why should we trust him any more than we do Shade or Kinbote or Botkin? Just because we can't identify who "invented" dear Nabby?

So maybe we can convince ourselves that Nabokov had already embraced his own authorial "death," and merely enjoyed toying with us from beyond his grave, in the same way John Shade did (but is it really such a stretch to believe that the living author of a book with at least two dead authors already would be interested in games surrounding "the death of the author?").

Then again, maybe it's foolish to believe that the real Nabokov was as tricky and clever as the character he adopted for himself as the author of the stories attributed to him (if that makes any sense). Luckily, he's really and truly dead now, so he can't do much to disillusion us.

The thing that makes me keep loving Pale Fire is the fact that even now I'm victim to its grand insult. The whole thing is a farce that makes fools of even the most insightful critics--the book can always plead innocent to any charge of greater meaning and leave us as disgraced as Shade's ghostly commentator.

>>4759221

what a perfect cover. Kafka and Nabokov get all the good art.

>>4759109
>that cover

Would I enjoy this if I'm a pedophile? I've held off reading it for a long time for certain reasons.

>>4759474
>We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge.

No it isn't. A book is a sequence of words: even more literally, a series of ink-marked sheets of paper that exists very much within our own world. It is silly to pretend that we can make a meaningful distinction between our own 'world' and this sequence of words.

>>4760299
>ink-marked sheets of paper

The majority of books are electronic now.

>>4760313
This is irrelevant. I barely notice anyone using e-readers, but the point doesn't change if I say 'arrangements of pixels on a screen' or 'data on a hard-drive' instead.

>>4760322
You made a silly "literal" point, but now I guess you see you wasted your time.

>>4759119
This is the one i got, beat that for sexualising it!

>>4760328
It is maybe facetiously-put but it belies a real point. Authors and their works are inseparably intertwined with their contexts. It is impossible to try to consider a text as some kind of special separate Platonic ideal, some kind of ur-text; all we can deal with is the messy world of copies. This is especially true of works that have complex editorial histories, like Shakespeare plays, but equally true of something recent like Lolita.

>>4760378
She's pretty hot though