/lit/ - Literature

Dismiss all nabokovposters, hide nabokov threads.

>>7951750
Quite a few authors through Vila-Matas' Bartleby&co and A Portable History, but I can't remember any names right now.

a book on par with most of pynchon's work and a great musician too

if he'd lived longer he would have written a canonical masterpiece

JR via Dellilo.

Also pic related, bought it solely because Pynchon recommend it on the blurb on the back.

>>7951750

Discovered John Fante through Bukowski and quickly realized that Bukowski was just a cheap Fante imitation.

>>7951750
why do you think that's a masterpiece, anon?

are you russian / do you speak the language to start with?

>>7952149
>are you russian / do you speak the language to start with?
Yeah, I see what this Anon is getting at. Petersburg is a masterpiece and I love it. However, I think a lot of his play on language is lost in translation. Too bad, really. A great read regardless.

I found Bellow through Roth, Nathaniel Hawthorne through Pynchon, Bernhard through Someone I can't remember, Isaac Babel through Barthelme, Vives through Montaigne

>>7951798
How was this? I've been interested for some time

>>7951750
This is one of my enduring favorites. It's one of the few novels I've read more than once.

>>7952251
>Yeah, I see what this Anon is getting at. Petersburg is a masterpiece and I love it. However, I think a lot of his play on language is lost in translation. Too bad, really. A great read regardless.

considering petersburg a masterpiece without having read it in russian is as pathetic as considering ulysses the greatest novel of the 20th century without having read it in english

>>7952338
Whatever meme man

Not all of us can be pentalingual or whatever you claim to be.

>>7952309

>That akward dinner conversation scene Nikolai has with his father

We all agree Nikolai's father was probably the best character in Petersburg? The man was pretty based.

>>7952251
>>7952149

I'm not Russian nor do I speak it but I can appreciate the symbolism it has and the religious themes of course.

Reminded me of a cross between Aragon's Paris Peasant and Crime & Punishment

>>7952338
>a lot of his play on language is lost in translation

that's the shittiest trick a writer has, man. If you said his rythm, his elegance on word choice, but his play on language?

>>7951798
I've been eyeing Jim Dodge's Stone Junction for the same reason. But slightly suspect old Pynchon of craziness.

>>7952458
>le corn man said it's masterpiece so it's truly masterpiece!

I seriously fail to see how you can consider something a masterpiece if you just explicitly stated that you do not have the ability of palpating the one thing that makes it a masterpiece

sure, it's still a good book in translation, but nothing more than that; certainly not a masterpiece

>>7952517
Here's the thing though: I'm going to keep calling it a masterpiece.

even though I don't read Russian

>>7952535
I wish you best of luck in your quest for finding an authentic thought

>>7952483
Plays on language can be pretty amazing, Anon.

For example, Kafka does this all the time. Gregor turns into a "ungeheueres Ungeziefer"

This is significant because 'geheueres' and 'geziefer' are words that cannot stand on their own and depend on the 'un' prefix to convey meaning. Gregor is, then, a dependent being--a slave to his family. This is manifested in what he turns into AND the term used to describe it. It's a literalization of metaphor in the mere name given to him.

This is all lost in 'monstrous vermin' or whatever the English translation is. The work is stil great in translation, but the tricks within the words are gems as well

>>7952483
it's not so much his play on language as the way he exploits it to attain the apex of symbolism and a sublime effect

>>7952557
good post anon, I did not know this

>>7952557
Right, ok, I get it. But still, plays on language are just one layer, which is almost always lost in translatin, sure, but there are so many layers in each work. Just because you miss this detail doesn't mean you should give up on reading translated works.

>>7952600
Yeah, I bet some native German readers even missed that .

>>7952600
>Just because you miss this detail doesn't mean you should give up on reading translated works.
Oh no, im not saying that; I love translations. I don't read Spanish or Russian but I love Cervantes and Bely. I was merely pointing out that plays on language aren't always cheap tricks. Sometimes they're brilliant.

>>7952600
no, you shouldn't, and that's not my point

however, in this case, you're missing out the main and thickest "layer"
the rest of the layers are good, but do not even constitute 50% of the work's merit

imagine how much more you'd love petersburg if you'd actually spoke russian

>>7952675
>but do not even constitute 50% of the work's merit
This seems arbitrary and made-up

Do you speak russian?

>>7952692
I do

>>7952695
Well unfortunately for you, I think you're full of shit. I guess that's the problem with anonymity

>>7952710
I guess you'll never know because you don't speak russian yourself hehe

ps; it's nabby's birthday today

>>7952710
oh, on another note

why do you think nabokov rated it so highly if not, primarily, for its use of language, i.e. the russian language?

>>7952675
I had no idea that this board is home to a regular Petersburg scholar. I can't even imagine the number of times you must have read Petersburg to come up with such statistics concerning the work's merit.

You should start a Petersburg thread and educate the translation-bound proles. We could use some informative posts

>>7952738
you don't have to be a joyce scholar to understand that ulysses simply doesn't work in translation

I think knowing english suffices to reach that conclusion

>>7952745
doesn't work in translation the same way it would work in its original language*, sorry

>>7952483
>>7952338
Just go read Walter Benjamin's essay on translation you memefags.

>>7952754
the task of the translator?

I read Infinite Jest, which I then found out was based on a play, so I looked it up, and discovered "Hamlet."

>>7952758
yes

>>7951750
If being admired by other authors is the criterion, Robert Walser is definitely noteworthy. The usual pitch with him is that he's a modernist once loved by many German authors we now admire, e.g. Kafka, Musil, and Benjamin, but ultimately not famous at all. More recently he has a slew of proponents, like Gass, Sebald, Sonntag, and Coetzee.

He's wonderful and insanely prolific, writing thousands of small stories, but also a few novels. He's remarkable for being by far the closest kin to Kafka in style. Jakob von Gunten is his most famous, but probably my favorite story ever is his "Kleist in Thun," though I'm not sure a decent translation of it exists yet.

>>7952557
"geheures" and "Geziefer" can stand on their own though. They don´t need the "un" prefix.

>>7952338
but <<Ulise>> was meant to be read in Italian and gains tremendously from translation.

There's a reason why he spoke to his kids in Italian.

>>7953301
he straight out said his only regret in life was writing in English instead of Dantes language

>>7952556
so let me get this straight...if he agreed with you now it would be an authentic thought?

dumbass

>>7953350
I don't know from where you gather that conclusion

>>7951756
C O R N C O B
O
R
N
C
O
B

>>7951750
>>7951793
>>7951798
>>7952007
You people are me.

Also, I found out about Dog Soldiers through some introduction or another. Can't remember where, though.

Burroughs recommended You Can't Win by Jack Black and talked about how it fueled his criminal fantasies.

John Fowles talked about how much Le Gran Meaulnes by Alain Fournier influenced The Magus (I liked The Magus better though)

Henry Miller introduced me to a bunch of other writers, including Knut Hamsun, Huysmans and Blaise Cendrars