/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11213321]

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

Has a more perfect opening paragraph than this ever been written? "The tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down on the palate to tap"? Seriously, how is it even possible to come up with this stuff.

[Anonymous No.11213324]

homeboy just took a page out of the old stream of consciousness book and then went, "damn I love assonance" and went to party. Also, outsider perspective on English, made for a fresh take at the time without doubt.

[Anonymous No.11213327]

>>11213321
>how is it even possible to come up with this stuff
1. Be Nabokov
2. Don’t be not Nabokov

[Anonymous No.11213331]

Falling in the house of air
Forever in the house of air

[Anonymous No.11213332]

I get depressed reading Nabokov because it makes me realize I'll never be as good at writing in English as a guy who learned it as a second language.

[Anonymous No.11213347]

>>11213324
how is this literally at all stream of consciousness

[Anonymous No.11213364]

>>11213321
Now I can't name my daughter Dolores like her grandma. Good book, though.

[Anonymous No.11213369]

>>11213321
Pretentious and gay.

[Anonymous No.11213385]

>>11213321
Reminder that the ta in Lolita is prounced with a hard t. Like the t in teddy, not the t in water.

[Anonymous No.11213393]

>>11213369
Enough about yourself. What do you think about Lolita?

[Anonymous No.11213406]

>>11213321
Nabokov was a shallow and pretentious writer who was more concerned with memorizing big, latinate words from old dictionaries or else inventing new, ugly ones than he was with writing good literature. One day you will wake up and be embarrassed to have ever liked his works. They are, on the whole, shabby, lewd, pretentious, narcissistic and annoying sprits of shit from a materialistic and perverted old man.

His literature is best left to pretentious, school-age girls who worship Lana del Rey, lipsticks and dangerous old men that do cocaine.

Pic related is the only acceptable fan of that that prick. You're in the same general category of normiehood if you like Lolita.

Song related should embarrass you. You fit in this trash group of normies that like this stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnIfpj0FRNI

[Anonymous No.11213412]

>>11213406
Name some good authors and books.

[Anonymous No.11213421]

>>11213393
nice

[Anonymous No.11213446]

>>11213412
Gene Wolfe, Philip K Dick, Vonnegut, Salinger

[Anonymous No.11213448]

friendly reminder that Nabokov did not "learn English as a second language," he spoke it from childhood and learned to read in English before he learned to read in any other language.

[Anonymous No.11213449]

>>11213406
Lolita isn't his only book you know

[Anonymous No.11213453]

>>11213412
As far as fiction goes, it's been awhile since I've picked up an actual novel. I read poetry/drama mostly these days (epic and lyric). My favorite poets are Yeats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Keats, John Clare, DH Lawrence, TS Eliot, among others. My favorite playwrights are the ancient greeks and Shakespeare.

As far as novels, my favorite of all time is el Quijote, which Nabokov called cruel and crude. I think he meant it in a bad way.

[Anonymous No.11213459]

A lovely alliteration!

[Anonymous No.11213464]

>>11213449
But it's his best one and it sucks.
>B-but muh Pale Fire
Shut up bitch

[Anonymous No.11213515]

>>11213449
I've read three of his books: Lolita; Bend Sinister; and The Eye. And I've read some of his poetry.

Lolita was the best thing I've read by him. I tried to read Ada, or Ardor once and couldn't get into it. The language was rough and super pretentious, the world he was trying to build was impossibly vague, and the characters were boring and unimaginative. I put it away after a couple chapters.

Bend Sinister was terrible. A shabby critique of Soviet politics told from the perspective of a philosophy professor when it's clear that Nabokov knows little about philosophy. His attempt to communicate ideas on metaphysics was embarrassingly bad. And the book was corny.

His poetry is yuck. And The Eye was a funny, nice novella, but not great.

On the whole, Nabokov had a lot of good moments. Lolita is by far his best work. But his pretentiousness and narcissism ruins most of his stuff. He is an example of a man who thinks good writing means using obscure words that nobody knows. He is the kind of guy who thinks he is smart because he knows an out-of-use latinate word like "illachrymable" or because he wrote a Russian word in English like "baba" or because he wrote a whole page in French! Wow!

From his interviews you could tell he was a total fraud. He never spoke anything spontaneously. He literally read his own pre-made writings. He create an original sentence on the spot. In order for him to make something quasi-pretty he had to spend time dictionary-swimming. He's the kind of dude with a dictionary open while he writes looking for weird words to include in his works. It's so yuck and so obvious.

His best moments were when he put all that affectation aside and wrote with simple, unfeigned prose that actually came from his heart. No simulacrum, no mental masturbation, and no ugly old words. It wasn't plebeian, it wasn't pretentious. It was the right balance. Some of Lolita is like that.

[Anonymous No.11213523]

>>11213515
*he couldn't create

[Anonymous No.11213526]

>>11213453
>which Nabokov called cruel and crude. I think he meant it in a bad way.
Like most of his quotes bandied about that was taken out of context.

[Anonymous No.11213530]

>>11213321
I think it's pretty bad, desu

[Anonymous No.11213539]

>>11213526
Yeah, that makes sense. You're probably right. Scratch that part and leave my comment as stands.

[Anonymous No.11213630]

>>11213321
Call me Ishmael.

[Anonymous No.11213638]

>>11213332
Eh kinda, he knew how to write and read English better than Russian as a young kid, he also knew French at the same time.
He was insanely well educated and both his parents were intellectuals

[Anonymous No.11213641]

>>11213321
Maybe you'll find it cringy or pretentious if English is your native language, but as a non-native, it sounds pretty nice reading it out loud.

[Anonymous No.11213656]

>>11213641
OP here, I am not a native english speaker. That could be significant.

[Anonymous No.11213676]

>>11213630
Hi, Ishmael. This is supposed to be an anonymous site, btw.

[Anonymous No.11213710]

>>11213630

[Anonymous No.11213797]

On a day in August, a man alone disappears.

Pure. Simple. Perfect.

[Anonymous No.11214014]

>>11213515
Seems a reasonable critique

[Anonymous No.11214024]

>>11213453
>Yeats, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Keats, John Clare, DH Lawrence, TS Eliot
How exactly did TS Eliot make it into that otherwise embarassingly romanticist and juvenile list is a mystery.

[Anonymous No.11214036]

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

[Anonymous No.11214165]

>>11213797
Not even correct English

0/10

[Anonymous No.11216021]

>>11214024
Yeah, sorry but only two of the guys on that list are romanticists (Keats and Clare). Clare and Eliot were both hyper-religious, they're unified in that sense and much of their poetry was dedicated to the subject of God.

Manley Hopkins was a highly innovative writer and even though he preceded the modernists (kind of), he was more interesting and poetically experimental than most of the poets that came after him.

I shouldn't have to defend Yeats on this board, but if you can't see the similarities between Yeats and Eliot then you're mentally dimmed. Both wrote retreated into their respective spiritual beliefs as a reaction against the societal dissolution they saw around them. They're different in style, but spiritually they're of the same stock.

It's understandable that you don't like Lawrence. In some ways, he was stylistically similar to Eliot, but he was of course a harsh man with a chip on his shoulder.

The only thing I find is embarrassing is that you classified my list as romanticist. If you don't like the poets, that's fine, but it seems by your classification of them that you perhaps don't know them as well as you think you do.

[Anonymous No.11216032]

>>11213385
>Like the t in teddy, not the t in water.
Both of those are pronounced the same you ghastly American

[Anonymous No.11216047]

>>11216021
Also, Manley Hopkins wrote a lot about God too, just like Eliot. They're very much of the same religious vein.

[Anonymous No.11216048]

>>11214024
>trying this hard

[Anonymous No.11216120]

>>11216048
I know. I think that comment was embarrassing. Seems like that guy doesn't really know much about Eliot. Eliot never divorced himself from the poetic tradition that preceded him, so even if my list were romanticist (which it isn't), it would still make no sense to critique it.
>>11214024
I recommend reading some of Eliot's essays if you haven't already. "Tradition and the Individual Talent" is a good place to start. In this one he makes it clear about how he saw himself as a poet and how he saw poetry in general. It's very anti-individualist and he would've seen himself as part of a grander poetic picture of which he was only a piece. To try to divorce him from either those who preceded him and influenced him or those who were his contemporaries and spiritual peers is just embarrassing.

[Anonymous No.11216215]

>>11216032
I was indeed referring to US English, but not a US person meself, m8.

[Anonymous No.11217067]

>>11213321
Some good ones.

>The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Gibson, Neuromancer

>Waking up begins with saying *am* and *now*. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognised *I*, and therefrom deduced *I am, I am now*. *Here* comes next, and is at least negatively reassuring; because *here*, this morning, is where it had expected to find itself; what's called *at home*.

Isherwood, A Single Man

>Here's how it started. I'd never said a word. Not one word.

Céline, Journey to the End of the Night

>This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don't think it's a marvelous moral; I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Vonnegut, Mother Night