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/lit/ - Literature

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10159200 No.10159200 [Reply] [Original]

Who's the most pretentious writer you've read? Mine is Nabokov hands down.

>> No.10159201

Rimbaud

>> No.10159216

For a board dedicated entirely to words you all seem to completely misunderstand a shocking number of them.

>> No.10159222

Ulysses, the author of james hpjoyce

>> No.10159226

I tell all my friends Franzen is the most pretentious author I know
he's undercut his credibility by turning up his nose at Gaddis, Gass, and other experimental writers as "too complicated", and he tries to be as un-pretentious as possible, so I make sure it doesn't work

>> No.10159228

>>10159216

I don't know how you deduced that from what has been said. Do you mean to imply that if someone doesn't understand a text, they'll just call it pretentious? I've read multiple books by Nabokov, some of them easier to read than others, and they all strike me as pretentious.

>> No.10159251

TS Eliot probably. At least in terms of his essays.
He seems like the kind of guy that would make fun of you if you haven't read The Bible in ancient Hebrew and written a 50 page essay on the meaning of the Book of Job.
He just has that "I'm smarter than you" arrogance about him. You just want to smack the bastard.

>> No.10159257

>>10159228
You're either a pleb who hasn't read many books or you don't know what 'pretentious' means.

>> No.10159262
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10159262

>>10159200
This faggot. He couldn't just write and be contented, he had to take a bunch of selfies and brand himself an iconoclast. Pathetic desu.

>> No.10159265

>>10159251
Bertrand Russell fucked his wife while her and Eliot were still married

>> No.10159316

>>10159257

Well, instead of refuting my point, you're just resorting to insults so, good talk.

>> No.10159366

>>10159200
Joyce no question. The man literally has nothing to say. Aesthetics and allusion abound but he is the least profound thinker of the “greats”

>> No.10159410

>>10159257

Nabokov is the most prententious writer I've ever read. He reads exactly like what a collegiate english professor would read like. The reason Lolita works so well was because Nabokov's writing was perfect to imitate a character like Humbert.

>> No.10159419

>>10159366
>Joyce is the least profound thinker of the greats
have you even read Finnegan's Wake

>> No.10159481

>>10159316
That post isn't even me, the one you originally responded to. And either way your point is nonexistent, you do realize that right? So even if it were a back and forth exchange, you'd have done nothing anyone who hasn't read a single book couldn't do to back up your stance or give me any responsibility in responding, but I will anyway. What I'm implying is that calling something pretentious is saying (generally) that it doesn't have any depth, yet pretends to. In what way does this apply to Nabokov? Can you give even one example or at least expand on how you came to that conclusion?
But yes, what you said does apply as well, unfortunately: people regularly call literature they struggle with pretentious without being able to provide any reasons for this, people on this board. The irony here being that calling something pretentious without being able to clearly state why is far more pretentious, as an action, than anything the writers being listed here ever wrote.

>> No.10159565

>>10159410
>imitate
Nabokov is Humbert and Lolita is a self satire. Nabokov is basically the Same Hyde of literature

>> No.10159574

>>10159565
Sam Hyde isn't self satire.

>> No.10159584

>>10159574
what is he then

>> No.10159766

>>10159200
Did you read the brilliant takedown of Nabokov in the current issue of New Criterion too?

>> No.10159777

Updike.

>> No.10159779

>>10159251
He is un-ironically smarter than most people though. I don't understand the problem.

>> No.10159781

>>10159766
>current issue
its not in the current issue senpai thats from a 1991 issue, they're trying to increase web traffic
there's a good piece on burgess in the current issue tho

>> No.10159784
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10159784

>> No.10159795

Faulkner, probably. Beautifully written long sentences. I mean, three pages for one paragraph, like, holy shit, what's the point. Bernhard comes to mind, but without the pretentiousness.

>> No.10160282

>>10159781
I read the Burgess piece but yeah, you got me there about the Nabokov. I just saw it on the front page and clicked without realizing it was from an older issue. The articles by Nuechterlein and Conrad Black were also great. I'm a great fan of Black's writing and plan on reading his biographies of Roosevelt and Nixon someday... however, they don't appear to be light reading considering their length. I love Mr. Kimball's work as a writer and editor for the New Criterion. I pray he'll live long to continue at it!

>> No.10160290

>>10159251
Yes, and he wasn't bullshitting. He had the creds to back himself up. He's an intellectual icon, because he not only has that snobbery, but is entirely justified in it.

>> No.10160313

>>10160290
which illustrates again the disconnect between those that 'know' and those that don't, and the oft futility of aiming pretentiousness at the canon. not to say they're sacred but something as puerile as 'it's pretentious' or, as above, [what's the point] reveals more about the person than the thing referred to

>> No.10160500

>>10159265
Bertrand Russell got cucked by a strapping American journalist who made two kids with his while he was still married to her

>> No.10160517
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10160517

>>10160500
>you will never cuck Bertrand Russell

>> No.10160518

bukowski

>> No.10161475

>>10159200
Though I nonetheless like him, sadly D. H. Lawrence. His Travel books are excellent, however.

>> No.10161747

>>10159201
Nique ta mère

>> No.10161845
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10161845

I just hope that those that are arguing that Nabokov is pretentious aren’t doing it because of his densely metaphorical prose, his rhetorical flowery.

There’s a lot of people today that just want plain and simple journalistic prose, and anything that uses inventive and bold imagery is seen as “pretentious”.

The problem is that the same people that see Nabokov’s style as pretentious for this reason – I am not saying that is the case of the people of this thread, but it is with writers of articles, with critics, and with novelists such as Milan Kundera (Kundera thinks that metaphors should be used only when they are absolutely necessary, when there is no other way to put the idea more clearly) – are also the people that think that Shakespeare is the greatest writer in all literary history.

Usually this same people think that what makes Shakespeare great is his character creation, the dilemmas and messages of his plays, the philosophy of his work, his “invention of the human”, his “knowledge of every single human feeling and emotion, of our fears and hopes and passions”, while ignoring that what really makes Shakespeare Shakespeare is his unmatched poetic power, his language, the greatest and most beautiful ever created (and in great part due to his metaphors).

I wonder: why it’s OK for Shakespeare to be bombastic, with a language that is extremely metaphorical and exploding with imagery almost in every line, while any modern writer that does the same is “pretentious”? To say that something is permissible in one age and time but not in another age “well, Shakespeare could write like that because it was the style of his time, but Nabokov is a twentieth century writer, so what he does is simply Kitsch”, to state something like that is just nonsense: that’s the real pretentiousness, to say that you cannot disobey the spirit of your time.

>> No.10162239

>>10159200

bump

>> No.10162279

dfw

>> No.10162301

>>10159222
>>10159222
>>10159222

>> No.10162315

>>10159251

why is it so hard to accept that there are a lot of people a lot smarter than you?

>> No.10162321

>>10162315
R-raycis!

>> No.10162324

>>10159200
Thomas Pynchon or Vladimir Fraudikov

>> No.10162386

>>10160518
fucking this

>> No.10162404

James Joyce, writes 800 pages of literally nothing and pretends he is a gift from God. If only Homer knew what this dilettante is using his poem for...

>> No.10162446

Plebs think being pretentious is bad, but it's often the opposite. Most of the greatest authors in history were pretentious, arrogant and shamelessly over-dramatic and over-ambitious (in style, not biographically). Case in point: Nabokov, Nietzsche, Joyce, Baudelaire, Pound, Pessoa, Goethe, Molière, Proust, Bataille, Burroughs, Rilke...

>> No.10163543

>>10162446
>>10162446

this.

Anyone writing like Shakespeare today would be called pretentious

>> No.10163563

>>10162446
It really isn't a bad thing.

If your work is actually important, and you act like it is, well, that doesn't detract at all from its value.

If Einstein were a huge pretentious wanker he wouldn't have been any less of a physicist.

>> No.10163615
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10163615

>mfw Nabokov described part of the process of disrupting the order of a set of encyclopedias and used the phrase 'burs an appendix'

>> No.10163632

Joseph McElroy

>> No.10163673

>>10161845
I actually do think Nabokov is a master craftsman in terms of style, he's just lacking in the idea department. Don't downplay the ideas in Shakespeare just to make your point that part or most of the appeal of Shakespeare is his skill at language. Essentially Shakespeare learned how to use just about every tool in the kit, whereas Nabokov just learned how to use one tool very well. Novel ideas are also part of a great artist's toolkit and I don't think Nabokov had much going for him besides language... but this is just coming from someone who has read Lolita twice, Pale Fire and Speak Memory once. Shakespeare on the other hand I've read his complete works and revisited many times.

Shakespeare of course does have his limits. He wasn't a great poet like Homer, Virgil, Dante, Baudelaire, Whitman, etc. But what he did for theater hasn't been imitated since. One need only look at the Restoration theatre or his predecessors to see clearly how unique Shakespeare's talent was. Not only was he a master of language, his ideas have been completely incorporated into Anglo culture.

>>10162446
Except all of the authors you mentioned ARE one-trick ponies besides Goethe. Goethe was a Da Vinci who could write.

>>10163543
No one can imitate genius. Even making a true satire of Shakespeare's genius would be difficult because you'd more likely be mocking conventions of his speech rather than the actual ideas in his plays.

>> No.10163879

>>10163673
>He wasn't a great poet like Homer, Virgil, Dante, Baudelaire, Whitman, etc

I am actualy quite interested on this view. Why do you think that Shakespeare,with all his gift for language,was not a great poet?

Are you not counting the texture of the plays as poetry?

>> No.10164381

>>10163879
>Are you not counting the texture of the plays as poetry?

This. The texture is poetic, but they are not formal poems. It's important to remember an artist's intent when we judge his work. Shakespeare's intent wasn't to produce poetry, but plays with great language.

On the other hand, the poets I mentioned were chiefly poets who had at least one great enterprise that was meant to be their best work such as The Iliad, the Odyssey, Divine Comedy, Les Fleurs du Mal, Leaves of Grass, etc. Shakespeare's equivalent are the sonnet sequence, which is brilliant, but it is not really grand the way that the aforementioned are because he's frying smaller fish.

>> No.10164412

>>10159784
>>10159777
>>10159262
>>10159226
These are correct

>> No.10164415

>>10163673

This is pretty much what I'd say as well. Nabokov was a master prose writer, and one of the most linguistically talented men ever but there isn't anything to intellectuality grapple with in his works- no ideas. His most idea-loaded book was Bend Sinister and it's a very shabby and uninspired critique of collectivism which reads like a well-written Hunger Games with less violence. You can't pretend to be a genius and not have any fucking ideas about anything. He was a linguistically talented but on the whole uninspired man with little to offer the world except le aesthetic.

>> No.10164450

>>10163673
>>10164415
>there isn't anything to intellectuality grapple with in his works
>he's just lacking in the idea department
I actually disagree, but I also just don't think about literature in that way. I don't think there's such a thing as ''only aesthetic'' or ''pure style'' in literature, and I find Lolita specifically to be a very overlooked book when it comes to philosophical critique. I started writing some stuff about it, maybe I'll publish it someday.

>> No.10164485

>>10164450
Good luck on the article. In mean time, please explain to the rest of us why you think literature is not about representation and ideas.

>> No.10164495

>>10162446
You don't know what "pretentious" means, and in many of those cases they weren't arrogant in quite the way that you probably are.

>> No.10164502
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10164502

This fucker right here. He's great, brilliant, don't get me wrong. But you can feel him preen in every verse. He's an arrogant and incredibly pretentious guy.

>> No.10164510

>>10164450

Well, I wouldn't mind hearing your ideas about it. I think at most he is doing some stuff with point of view and subject-object relations. And he had some stuff to say about time. But it's the least impressive quality of his writing and not very original at all.

>> No.10164513

>>10159584
Tim & Eric rip off

>> No.10164562

>>10159784
Arrogant, but not remotely pretentious

>> No.10164567

>>10164485
I don't believe that any good art lacks ideas. If it's beautiful it already is meaningful: the aesthetic ecstasy itself is tied with truth, we're moved by the beauty of a work because it reveals something to us.

>> No.10164575

>>10162315
he's a conservative who thinks "all people are made equal" and that the "intelligentsia" is evil

>> No.10164586

>>10164575
>conservative
>all people are made equal
what

>> No.10164591

>>10164513
>Any kind of post ironic humor is a rip off of Tim and Eric
Only people who are extremely butthurt about Sam's political views think this

>> No.10164594

>>10164591
Pretty sure he's admitted as such like h3h3.

>> No.10164599

Pynchon. Gravity's Rainbow is pretentious in a non self aware way. Nabakov just loved language and I don't agree he didn't have good ideas.

>> No.10164610

>>10164594
Sauce?

>> No.10164619

>>10164610
One of the podcasts he's been on. Either way most of his skits are pretty clearly heavily by TAAS.

>> No.10164677

>>10164619
Post Ironic humor doesn't stem solely from Tim and Eric, you do realize though? I don't really see any similarities between their styles? I don't remember their being any social commentary or real cinematography in Tim and Eric.

MDE was post ironic like them, but I'm a completely different vein. It's like comparing TS Elliot to Ezra Pound , they're both modernist but totally different at the same time.

https://youtu.be/JQIyYN0ZsSs

https://youtu.be/NFTaiWInZ44

>> No.10164689

>>10164677
Better example
https://youtu.be/Q1yrH4qS2RA

https://youtu.be/kjTtM0p-VCY

>> No.10164707

anyone saying joyce is a mental wastrel—a subcharlatan decrying shakespeare out of resentful ignorance

>> No.10164731

>>10162315

This is the generation that received medals for participation.

>> No.10165007

>>10162279
this

>> No.10165599

>>10162446
if it's actually good then it's not pretentious because nothing is being pretended

>> No.10165615

>>10163673
Nabokov is a writer's writer. It's not that he has no great ideas, it's that the great ideas come in the actual writing itself: the ways he engages with the medium. Experimentation with unreliable narrator, metanarrative, everything about Pale Fire, etc. It's strange that he reached such prominence even in non-literary circles during his own lifetime. These sorts of writers often don't.

>> No.10165648

>>10165615
Nabakov wrote the way he did because he felt that the post-modern idea of mediums was a hasty rehash of what was in the beginning an attempt at maintaining quality. The term is only ever used in self-parody.

>> No.10165662

Bret Easton Ellis

>> No.10166250

>>10164495
you dont know what pretentious means either

>> No.10166454

Philippe Sollers (still love his work).

>> No.10167719

>>10159419
>really makes me upturnpikepointandplace

>> No.10167903

>>10159200

George Saunders
David Foster Wallace
Henry James
Rupi Kaur

>> No.10167931

>>10159200
Gene Wolfe

>> No.10168041

There'a another great article from the archives of the New Criterion available on Nabokov: https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2006/5/shades-shadow

>> No.10169164

>>10163673
>He wasn't a great poet
you have supreme retardation, mon frère

>> No.10169216

>>10161845
>Kundera thinks that metaphors should be used only when they are absolutely necessary, when there is no other way to put the idea more clearly

When should you use metaphor, /lit/?

I'd agree with Kundera if it weren't for the fact that she seems to be using the word "clearly" in a completely different way than I tend to. It sounds like what she's actually getting at is more like obviousness rather than resolution. I would say image resolution is what I prioritize; if metaphor gives the reader a more distinct impression of what you're getting at, then I think it's fine to make them jump through some extra hoops to get there. Though if not, I wouldn't use metaphor for its own sake.

How do you think people should prioritize these things?

>> No.10170069

>>10165662
this. I love his work but literally, most of his books are
>muh upper class lifestyle
>muh city life moral wasteland
>drugs and brown blonde kids
>Tanning beds

>> No.10170170

>>10159262
idk if it's pretense or just shitty writing but i sorta go with this. really difficult to get anything concrete or intelligible out of his writings. brilliant word soup with great ideas that don't actually stand up to any questioning because they are so non-specific.

>> No.10170723

georges bataille