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/lit/ - Literature

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12122649 No.12122649 [Reply] [Original]

It starts off great, but it completely deflates in the second half and I fucking hate how one in three sentences is in fucking French.

>> No.12122660

No spoilers though, I haven't finished it yet.

>> No.12122664

>>12122649
I wonder if in the French translation one in three sentences is in a funny font

>> No.12122670

>>12122649
i just read the relevant parts

>> No.12122677

>>12122670
ba dum tchsss

>> No.12122710

I feel so smart because I understood that one Latin paragraph without looking anything up, you guys.

>> No.12122719
File: 108 KB, 396x385, 1523618100873.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12122719

>>12122649
I gotta say, the end makes up for the way the second half drags on. Go back and read the Intro after finishing the last page. But don't look at the intro again until then.

>> No.12122733

>>12122710
I remember having very little trouble with it too. Do you think it's designed that way?

>> No.12122737

>>12122733
you can kind of just tell vaguely what latin is saying if you speak english and maybe a romance language

>> No.12123317

>>12122649
Funnily enough, Nabakov comments on this. I don't have the exact quote as it was in the afterword of my copy but it was something like: "I have found that people tend to like the second part less because it is less erotic". If anyone has their copy near them they can probably find the real quote.

>> No.12123447

>>12123317
I found two:
"They expected the rising succession of erotic scenes; when these stopped, the readers stopped, too, and felt bored and let down".

"Publisher X, whose advisers got so bored with Humbert that they never got beyong page 188, had the naivete to write me that Part Two was too long. Publisher Y, on the other hand, regretted that there were no good people in the book. Publisher Z said if he printed Lolita, he and I would go to jail".

>> No.12123480

a literal pleb filter. thanks for playing op

>> No.12123492

Pynchon based his entire career on the Quilty fight.

>> No.12125063

>>12123317
>>12123447
it's not because of the eroticism it's just the book loses focus and becomes boring during the road trip, it picks up again towards the end

>> No.12125113

The second half is a reflection of the first. Read closer.

>> No.12125297

>>12122649
The second half is supposed to feel that way, OP. It's a splash of cold water to make you realize the fucked up situation Humbert got himself into, instead of the erotic paradise of his imagination.

>> No.12125492
File: 120 KB, 1080x1080, 1536022691257.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12125492

>>12122649
>not reading french
never gonna make it, ami

>> No.12125511

>>12122649
>Want to read Lolita
>Work as a shelver in my local library
>If I order it into there my normie coworkers will have to put it under my name and think I'm a pedo incel

wat do?

>> No.12125536

>>12122649
The deflation is purposeful serves a thematic end.

The first half has you tittilated, experiencing the guilty erotic tension of Humbert’s seduction of Lolita. It is a wild dream of passion and excitement and anticipation: just like the courting phase of love itself.

The second half charts what happens in love after the object of desire has been conquered. Things get routine. Mundanity rears it’s head. Lovers quarrel over trifles. Charms wear off.

Lolita is no longer the impossible-to-attain nymphet whose body promises a preternatural bliss so transcendent that it will consume the world. She is a bratty teenager who needs cash, and also to have her friend over, and also to do better on her homework, and also a consent form filled out so she can be in the play. Humbert is no longer handsome and forbidden man of mystery that Lo used to read about in her magazines. He’s a grouchy and controlling pedophile.

The success of this shift is a real testament to Nabokov’s mastery of trickery. The concept of the book was then and still is incredibly controversial. The idea of drawing a sympathetic portrait of a pedophile seems to be one most people would judge unwholesome, if not morally repugnant. But by making the reader long for the first half of the novel, Nabokov forces any would-be readers who would criticize the subject matter into an hypocrisy. They, along with the rest of us, long for the lost days of excitement and seduction. Despite their principles about the moral bankruptcy of Humbert, they too want to go back and watch Lolita longingly from afar, they too want to gradually grow closer to Lolita, have her play on their laps, have her asleep in their hotel room, have her...

By making the first half of the book more engaging, in short, Nabokov 1) follows the meteoric rise and gradual fall of passions according to which any love develops; and 2) makes the reader feel complicit in, and implicitly condoning of, Humbert’s behaviour by making him long for the first half again.

>> No.12125564

>>12125536
OP here. That makes sense. I appreciate the book more now.

>> No.12125572

>>12125536
Good post.

>> No.12125711

Is it heresy to say you prefer the Kubrick film?

>> No.12125715

>>12125711
you are forever condemned to /lit/ hell, the only place hot enough for that scorching take.

>> No.12125719

>>12125511
>library
buy it on amazon you fucking cuck what's wrong with you

>> No.12125726

>>12122649
Book about a pedophile by a lecherous narcissistic cretin, definitely not pedophilia apologia

>> No.12125756

Nabokov's other books are better. Pale Fire is my favorite. I didn't finish Lolita because of the massive tone shift in the second half.

>> No.12125776

Okay I finished it. It was ok. The afterword was full of pretentious wankery.

>> No.12125787

>>12125756
>>12125776
Ih dee its

>> No.12125915
File: 28 KB, 250x375, 1541863780069.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12125915

You see *sniff* there is an old joke that the priest on the train is reading Proust, but inside the Proust is concealed a copy of Playboy, *sniff* and the revolutionary sat next to the priest is reading a Playboy, but inside the Playboy he is secretly reading Proust. The reader of Lolita *scratches nose* has a copy of Playboy inside a Proust concealed by a Playboy. Because he would never admit to reading Playboy, so he says 'Don't worry, inside my Playboy is Proust!'

>> No.12125921

>>12125756
He would absolutely hate Ada if the french in Lolita bothered him

>> No.12126096

>>12125921
Ada was the most difficult yet most satisfying book I've ever read. It made me feel old even though I was 13 or 14 when I first read it. I want to read it again but it requires so much dedication.

>> No.12126106

>>12126096
Wow you must be pretty smart to have read that at 13! What an IQ on this one! Congrats man.

>> No.12126115

>>12125711
It is *always* heresy to prefer the movie to the book. What kind of simpleton are you that you need pretty pictures to tell you what's going on?

>> No.12126122

>>12126106
Aww shucks you aspie, I was lauding Nabokov's writing skill in making me feel

>> No.12126132

>>12126122
How many times had you read finnigans wake and being and time by your 16th birthday? Do you have any hobbies beside reading, like studying the mathematics behind string theory?

>> No.12126150

>>12126132
Never read that gibberish. Nah I'm into more practical things. What are you so mad about amigo

>> No.12126156

>>12126150
You mock me and the great gifts with which you have been bestowed with your false modesty! Why dull your own shine, prodigious star, brightest among heaven and earth?

>> No.12126161

>>12126156
very based post

>> No.12126185

>>12126156
I feel like I'm playing Morrowind and Dagoth Ur is speaking to me. 10/10 would discourse again

>> No.12126198

>>12126115
Willy Wonka is a good movie and a good book. The movie and the book are different but they are both good. For example, the book doesn't have the great music of the movie.

>> No.12126614

>>12125063
>the book loses focus during the road trip
Imagine having misread Lolita this badly.

>> No.12126627

>>12126614
I don't think it loses focus but it certainly drags on a little bit too much

>> No.12126686

>>12125511
>think I'm a pedo incel

They already think that senpai.

>> No.12126860

Why do thots seem to love Lolita so much?

>> No.12126938
File: 312 KB, 612x844, Screen Shot 2018-11-23 at 1.02.06 PM.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
12126938

>>12122649

>> No.12126975

>>12123492
Are you saying his books all resemble the overall feel of that scene? Then I must read Pynchon. That scene was EPIC.

>> No.12127026
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12127026

>>12125536
This is why I come to lit.

>> No.12127031

>>12125536

I like this post.

>> No.12127833

>>12126860
They think it's a love story.

>> No.12127937

>>12125536
Good analysis. What are your some favorite authors?

>> No.12128016

>>12122649
>one in three sentences is in fucking French.
this feel. Should I learn frogspeak just to better appreciate my pressed-treepulp russian fingerpaintings?

>> No.12128073

>>12127937
Shakespeare, Eliot, Stevens, Joyce, Faulkner, Borges, Plato, Nietzsche, Heidegger! How about you bro?