/lit/ - Literature

>>4968313
>The verbal poetical texture
into the trash . jpeg

>>4968313
I don't fully agree with him, but his opinion is more respectable than many,many others. He had balls.

He would be the perfect neighbour,yes.

>Nabokov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9nRNnTQhFA

>>4968313
>Heidegger
>understanding boxing

>>4968480
nigga what are you talking about?

>>4968480
kek

>>4968473
more like
Nabokov on Kafka's dick

>>4968313
>Punnegans
As a non-native, I don't get the pun, if any.

Any help?

>>4968313

Here's a lot more of his opinions...good fun.

http://wmjas.wikidot.com/nabokov-s-recommendations

>>4968313
>Despises Don Quixote

Because of the anxiety of influence. His major works, Lolita and Pale Fire, are both about people (arguably) deranged by literary sensibility. Cervantes, in the Spanish, is just as lexical as Nabokov.

>>4968878
>"not familiar" with Auden's poetry
>bells, balls, and bulls.
>so many authors not slighted

Nabokov had great taste, even if you violently disagree occasionally.

>>4968864

Finnegans Wake is entirely composed of puns.

>>4968313
Nabokov was retarded

>>4968961
oh ok thx.

>>4968878

and some more

http://www.mjiles.com/obookispage/?page_id=157

>>4968932
Yeah I'm disagreeing pretty violently right now to this:

>Faulkner, William. Dislike him. Writer of corncobby chronicles. To consider them masterpieces is an absurd delusion. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me.

>>4968313
>>Greatly admires XX century writers like Proust and Kafka, but thinks that Hemingway, Becket and Pound are overrated and nothing special.
Funny, to me it's the complete opposite.

>>4968473
he sounds like John Cleese mocking a Frenchman.

>>4968313
>disliked becket

actually he likes his novella trilogy, he disliked waiting for godot

can i have a source on his dislike of dostoyevsky?

daily reminder that Nabokov was a fascist and a child rape apologist

What's wrong with Dostoyevsky?

>>4969420
>>4969384
>Dislike him. A cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar. A prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. Some of his scenes are extraordinarily amusing. Nobody takes his reactionary journalism seriously.

he thinks balzac is mediocre...

nabokov comes off like such a fucking idiot

>>4968961
There are a lot of puns, but it isn't "entirely composed of puns."

Nabokov is so full of shit

He claims he was reading Keats, Rimbaud, Tolstoy and 10 years old

>>4969480
at*

>>4969461
>>4969464
He had an irritating opinion on everyone. I can understand taking a pot-shot or two at some fellow author you hate, but to go up and down a list saying these things about all notable writers from present to past...it's just gauche and hints at deep insecurity.

Can anyone post a passage of Nabokov's that isn't pure purple shit?

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Even more awful than Camus.
Nausea. Second-rate. A tense-looking but really very loose type of writing.

lol

>>4968313
So I read his list of 'critiques'.

Even if I disagree with a lot of them, I respect him for doing so.

It's much more interesting to read an opinion of someone who isn't afraid to speak their mind.
It's far more stimulating than reading a critic who just says 'great' 'brilliant' 'influential' over and over, as if they are expected to say it.

>>4969480
i can believe that

Keats speaks in fairly plain English

Rimbaud is taught to French students from a very young age - he spoke French

Same with Tolstoy - he spoke Russian

Nabokov despised M. Ageyev's "Novel with cocaine" (which was attributed to Nabokov in the first place, but he stated later that "Novel with cocaine" was obscene and vile, something like that).
Hence Nabokov was a cretin.
I don't even want to know more about him.

>>4969507
Being a loudmouth is not a virtue.

>>4969544
what sort of critic has virtue?

>>4969480
>>4969519
Yeah, Tolstoy is actually given to Russian kids--his more simple works, of course.

>>4968878
>this man puts Salinger and Queneau above Céline and Dostoevsky
>people still take him seriously

>>4969580
look at this corn cobby man! full of clap trap aren't you blockhead?

>>4969590
? lol

>>4969580
>belittling Queneau
jesus christ, conceal your plebeian judgements

>>4969580
B-B-But muh Lolita and Pale Fire, how could he possibly have shit taste?

>>4969580
he didnt put them above

he just prefers them

>>4968313
>Camus, Albert. Dislike him. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me. Awful.
wht will /lit/ say now?

>>4969902
Camus is pleb author for teenage girls though, everybody knows that

>>4968473
this is the funniest shit ever to me

why would they make this lol

>>4968878
"Updike, John. By far one of the finest artists in recent years. Like so many of his stories that it is difficult to choose one."

lord's truth

Makes me feel so pleb. I don't have such strong, articulate and idiosyncratic views about writers and their styles.

>>4968878
>all those read from 10-15

fuck...

>>4969934
its hard to comprehend from an english speaking background, but students who speak those languages would learn them from young ages

its like how we learn Shakespeare around those ages

>>4969944
I suppose you're right. But He listed Robert Browning and that seems impressive. He's a dense poet and I, at the age of 18, am not even close to being able to dive into his poetry.

>have read Lolita
>reading Pale Fire
Do all of Nabokov's books have this kind of protagonist? Arrogant artistic types with fancy prose styles? It feels like an excuse for Nabokov to get as overblown as he wants...

I respect Nabokov's opinions because he has the credibility to back them up. What is pathetic to me are the c/lit/s who go around parroting his views in lieu of fabricating their own, like it's some kind of short cut to "patriciandom" (yes, I am certain it is this type of sad person who self-identifies as "patrician".)

>>4968473
lol

I'm so glad I dropped out of uni

>>4969480
Well Keats and Rimbaud were only about ten years older than that when they wrote their finest work.

>>4968473
why would you have this guy play nabokov lol

>kafka is jewish

it all makes sense now

>>4968878
For some reason I was surprised to see him speak so highly of Salinger. I'm glad, though.

>>4969957
In the UK most of us study Browning by 15 at the least.

>>4969645
I know Queneau deeply, and in French of course. No big deal. At best, he is in the inferior bracket of good writers, like the other oulipians, also like Robbe-Grillet, Camus, Salinger, or Nabokov himself. All these writers lack depth, sublime, cleverness or variety at some point. They are too predictable, limited, not moving enough. They meet your heart cold and leave it even colder.
These people are certainly not on the level of Céline, Dostoevsky, Balzac or Cervantes who all belong in the superior spheres, in spite of being trashed by the Nab.

>>4969692
Pale Fire was quite weak. Don't know for Lolita, I have no time to waste with semi-asinine swindlers like Nabokov. Someone like Borges is much better at "Pale Fire" kind of stuff, because he's always much shorter and not as cold and dry (even in his older work like El Libro de Arena). Obviously, "cold and dry" could be a quality with other people, but it's too unconvincing with Nabokov.

>>4969711
Our cretin's statements try to be objective. According to him, Salinger is "one of the finest artists in recent years", while Céline is "second-rate".
Actually, a whole novel by Nabokov isn't even worth the first chapter of Voyage au bout de la nuit.

>>4972303
>pale fire
>cold and dry
are you literate

>>4972303
>Borges better at Pale Fire stuff
Nice to see someone who doesn't fellate that shady shoddy novel, but Borges is one I cannot stand, on level wth your antipathy to VN; while I take him at his word as a "second rate" English prose artist, he surely doesn't deserve that sort of maligning, with that severity --It seems to be a function more of his literary criticism than his novels as such to me, in fairness.

>>4972303

mon jimmies!

>>4973315
The prose is this or that. The soul is cold and dry... sterile.

>>4973432
lol'd hard

>>4968473
This is shit but that parallel with the opening of Lolita was kind of clever

>>4973429
Borges is a swindler too, but funnier than Nabokov, with excellent absurd ideas sometimes (but he's often phony: all these obsessions with tigers and labyrinths and mirrors and manly gauchos... terrible, really). He's no genius either, and I think he knew it.
I'm harsh with Nabokov because I simply copy his style of criticism. Day of Retribution!

>>4968473
We should start a rumor that Pinecone has a cameo somewhere in the classroom.

>>4973432
I will assume your cretinism until your posts are written in clearer English, sorry. I don't know your stupid memes, slang or whatever.

>>4972303
>hasn't read lolita
>expects to be taken seriously

>>4973552
I've read Pale Fire entirely, which was tedious; and the beginning of Lolita, which was even more fake and ugly than Pale Fire, despite the author's capabilities. I stopped here because life is short, and bad taste can be contagious.

>>4973537

"I will assume your cretinism"

Speaking of memes...

>>4971216
As someone who bandies about his opinions, I do it because I can see why he's right. I don't do it in lieu of my own, I do it because finally someone had the courage to say Dostoevsky IS a "rank moralist". and etc


I still liked Don Quixote

>>4973508
Ah, finally something worse than someone who just repeat opinions, a someone who merely mirrors them back at them like a diminutive doppelganger!

>>4968313
not to mention he was the greatest writer of the 2nd half of the twentieth century

>>4970476
no because they're not all in the first person, see Pnin

>>4973674
Mirroring style, not opinions. That's called pastiche and it's perfectly respectable. As you can see I'm not even that harsh with Nabokov; I said he had good capabilities but also a terrible taste (see the first sentences of Lolita for a perfect example of what rings untrue and fabricated). Good night.

>>4973792
>Mirroring style, not opinions. That's called pastiche and it's perfectly respectable.

i know

that's the joke

>>4968313
nabokov is an excellent artist, I don't know why he wanted to achieve similar praise as a critic

he's a horrible critic, and nobody in the high ranks of literature takes his opinions seriously

just read his lectures on don quijote or on the russians -- they're ludicrous and sensationalist, and that's evident even for the college freshman

>>4973798
This is a serious forum about serious literature. We are the patricians. No jokes allowed.

>>4973823
Usually the most excellent artists are lucid critics, see Baudelaire, Céline, Verlaine. But pride is a sin & Nab fell for it.

>>4971265
3 or 4 poems is not diving. Read sordello at 15, it doesn't happen.

>>4969480
I was reading that stuff by 13 and I am probably not even half as brilliant as him

>>4971257
Pedophiles tend to like other pedophiles.

>>4969176
Go right ahead and disagree with that. Then reflect on how very obvious it is that that opinion was dashed off based on a cursory reading and peremptory dismissal of an author's work most likely colored by a reaction to that author's reputation (and for the x-factor, add in Nabokov's pride as a 'whatever status you would like to believe he believed himself to be' author)--and the fun part is, before you lose that thought: when was the last time you did that?

This morning?

Last week?

When you overheard those strangers talking about ASOIAF?

>>4970476
Dude, if you haven't learned to disassociate yourself from characters enough to see how that arrogance is universally degraded by the authorial voice speaking behind the narrative and that those 'fancy prose styles' are a way of lampooning that very arrogance, you're either a fucking retard or as arrogant as the characters you revile. At least those 'artistic types' can read between the lines, shitass.

>>4973679
>greatest writer of the 2nd half of the twentieth century
>not Bernard Mickey Wrangle
>argonian this hard

>>4968878

I'm convinced that he only calls another author "a genius" when he fully believes them to be more intelligent than him. I mean, it would be ballsy to contend that you were of equal stature compared to Chekhov, Shakespeare, Proust, Joyce, or Milton, even if you are Nabokov. Must've been quite a cocksure and pompous, albeit brilliant, man.

>>4974275
Woah. You're really going to assume that I didn't know the characters are supposed to be unsympathetic? Despite the fact that I called them 'arrogant'?

You're reading too much between the lines there, anon, and coming over all hostile because of it.

>>4974330
Nah, he was just cocksure and pompous. Nothing really brilliant about him. He got to where he got through hard work and studying holed up in a room some where. No real meaningful life experiences (save maybe his father's murder) except what he read in books. No real talent, just really literary and well read.

>>4974275
first of all, you could have said that sentence in, like, half as many words. Secondly, even if all that was true, then it was good the first time, and when he does that a second time he's just being unoriginal.

>>4974450
what do you in english language lit from 1945 onward

>>4969228
Pound is actually really bad - give us your favorite lines/passage by him - some convincing can go far but I remain unenthusiastic

>>4974693
In a station of the metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough

>>4969228
>Becket

It's Beckett and he was a fan of the trilogy. It was his plays he didn't like.

>>4972303
I love Borges, but he's one of the coldest and driest writers I can think of, much colder and drier than Nabokov.

>>4968313

>dislikes Don Quixote

Why would you do this to me, Nabby?
We used to be so tight.

>>4974704
meh, would have been decent if it had some poetic form, just feels like a prose sentence to me

>>4973508
>Borges a swindler

Nigger, Borges was patrician as fuck. Have you ever read his essays? Or his poetry? Or taken a good look at his untranslated prose? Or even how many other writers he influenced, certainly much more than Nabokov? His themes are cute, and he was really self-conscious about them, but they're no less valid than whatever tripe you read.

>>4972303
I don't see how you can possibly bracket Salinger alongside Oulipo authors. He's the opposite of cold. Mawkish, if anything.

Don Quixote is great.
Quixote stands for a human being trapped by delusion, and all the people around him are demons encouraging his delusion, and Sancho Panza is his guardian angel. He tries so hard to be brave and live his romantic dream; his delusion is a metaphor for sin. When he wakes up from his delusions and humbles himself it's like he's being baptized / born again.

>>4968878
>>4969008
well, the guy was a hipster. He hated all the russian writers.

What other good writers were also critics? I need some more hate pls

>>4975378
borges is possibly the only good writer who was also a good critic

they're a very rare kind, and thank fuck for that

>>4975378
Henry James

>>4974168

But you are brilliant. What do you do?

>>4968313
>Thinks Tolstoy is a genius, but doesn't like Dostoyevsky very much;
>Greatly admires XX century writers like Proust and Kafka, but thinks that Hemingway, Becket and Pound are overrated and nothing special.
And that's exactly why he's a faggot.

>>4973624
>Beginning of Lolita
>Fake and ugly

You're right about that bad taste bit, though. Need to get the fuck out of this thread.

>>4975563
all very generalized things of what nabokov said

of hemingway he really enjoyed "the killers" and "old man and the sea", and enjoys beckett's books much more than this plays

basically, nabokov espouses the viewpoint of judging a book not by the author, but the quality of the book

>>4975025
I've read nearly all Borges, including "Fervor de Buenos Aires" and other rare stuff. Most of his fictions and essays look like advanced jokes (say, intellectual hoaxes) to me. But I like hoaxes.
His poetry is decent, no more, and all his purple prose style feels awkward, "heavy", and just as fake as Nabokov. Borges' later style is dryer and better.
Why you think strong opinions stem from ignorance?

>>4975653
Why do* you think

>>4974070
>3 or 4 poems
Not him, but we had to study a pretty wide range of his material. Naturally not Sordello since the exam is only about an hour long, but we were given about 15-20 poems to study, only one of which would come up in the exam.

>>4968313
Sounds like a fucking twat who talks out his ass.

>>4968313
>Thinks Tolstoy is a genius, but doesn't like Dostoyevsky very much

me too, I'd shit on his frontdoor daily

>>4975653
That's almost always the case on /lit/. Anyway, calling Borges a swindler is basically just as bad as calling him a hack, which is just plain wrong.

>>4975735
>great writers are not allowed to have non-standard opinions
lol do you hate woolf, shaw, and tolstoy too?

>>4968878
How is it possible for someone to take this guy seriously?