/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20531024]

Nabokov's opinions on other writers. Part 1 of 6

[Anonymous No.20531026]

>>20531024
>Nabokov's
Who?

[Anonymous No.20531027]

[Anonymous No.20531033]

>>20531026
idk some asshole

[Anonymous No.20531037]

[Anonymous No.20531059]

Of course that pretentious faggot would like Borges.

[Anonymous No.20531070]

[Anonymous No.20531074]

>>20531059
Big contrarian vibes 2bh. He would have loved 4chan

6/6

[Anonymous No.20531075]

He would have really fit in around here

[Anonymous No.20531098]

Who cares about the opinion from someone who isn’t from a country of literary tradition, ie, greco-roman-hispanic? It’s like when people from non footballing nations talk about the sport.

[Anonymous No.20531104]

people throw around pretentious a lot but here is a man truly deserving of the word. what a fatuous old bitch he was.

[Anonymous No.20531116]

>>20531024
he was right about everything

[Anonymous No.20531122]

>>20531037
Pound made him seethe harder than anyone, and we all know why. Pound was 100x the writer he was. Nabokov's only talent was using a dictionary.

[Anonymous No.20531130]

>>20531024
He disliked anyone who deviated too much from his own writing style

[Anonymous No.20531136]

>>20531122
pound was a fraud hack

[Anonymous No.20531161]

>>20531122
Imagine simping for Mussolini's mouthpiece.

[Anonymous No.20531163]

>>20531024
his borges remarks a bit curious
>how freely one breathes in his marvellous labyrinths
i remember borges criticizing citizen kane at the time for being a labyrinth

[Anonymous No.20531167]

>>20531037
>Pirandello, never cared for him
wow that's the rudest one

[Anonymous No.20531186]

>>20531075
lol people here cling on to the canon for dear life, they don't dare to deviate one bit. basically forcing themselves to like stuff
>>20531104
>having opinions is… LE BAD

[Anonymous No.20531200]

>>20531186
he's entitled to his opinions, but he very clearly expressed them in an excessively bitchy way and he was indeed a pretentious old codger. nothing wrong with that necessarily.

[Anonymous No.20531227]

turnabout is fair play

[Anonymous No.20531253]

>>20531136
>>20531161
Pound's early work was fantastic and among the best poetry of the 20th century in the English language. Apart from that, he was a synergetic force for an entire literary movement. Nabokov was a Russian-Jewish pervert who wrote with a dictionary open trying to include as many weird words as possible to make himself look smart. At least he admitted that Joyce BTFO's him though.

Anyways, Nabokov shouldn't express opinions on poetry. He never wrote a single line of verse worth a damn.

[Anonymous No.20531264]

>>20531027
>Disliked both Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment
That is sad.

[Anonymous No.20531275]

>>20531253
>Anyways, Nabokov shouldn't express opinions on poetry. He never wrote a single line of verse worth a damn.
is that the rule? let's see your verse

[Anonymous No.20531277]

>>20531264
If you read his lectures he actually respects a lot of aspects about Dostoevsky's works

[Anonymous No.20531303]

>>20531024
If someone calls a person "a non-entity", then it's more a sensational pamplet than a genuine opinion

[Anonymous No.20531305]

>>20531027
Kek, if Dosto would smoke Nabby in 1 minute if they ever met

[Anonymous No.20531333]

>>20531264
Why would it be sad? Dosty's wooden prose and Christian moralism only goes so far.

[Anonymous No.20531341]

>>20531333
They are both among my favorite authors, that is why I find it sad.

[Anonymous No.20531354]

How do I write like Tolstoy? Currently reading AK and I'm blown away by how well written it is prose-wise.

[Anonymous No.20531359]

>>20531305
real life isn't one of your marvel movies

[Anonymous No.20531391]

>>20531359
people don't HIT each other in real life !! there's no violence!

[Anonymous No.20531395]

>>20531275
Graves is trash. Who fucking cares what he thought?

[Anonymous No.20531402]

>>20531395
had a feeling you'd take that line

[Anonymous No.20531413]

>>20531275
>caring about what a faggot thinks
Graves isn't going to suck your cock, bro. He is dead.

[Anonymous No.20531426]

>>20531354
through finely-honed observational skills. have your characters be actual people with hopes and dreams of their own instead of dostoevskian hand puppets. and remember: tone is everything

[Anonymous No.20531432]

>>20531413
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzLuG3tM84I&t=857s

[Anonymous No.20531433]

>>20531074
>>20531070
>>20531037
>>20531033
>>20531027
>>20531024
Thank You. Very much appreciated. I really enjoyed reading through that.

Every so often I think /lit/ is a lost cause, Then I stumble across a wonderful set of posts like these.
Awesome !

[Anonymous No.20531439]

>>20531074
>>20531070
>>20531037
>>20531033
>>20531027
>>20531024
I do think it's worth mentioning that his endorsements for American fiction were extremely strong. John Barth, Cheever, Salinger, Melville, Hawthorn, Wells, and Updike were all raved about.

[Anonymous No.20531442]

>>20531439
Apologies Wells is English*

[Anonymous No.20531461]

>>20531432
Geez, sounds like a faggot. Looks like a faggot. And his ideas are general faggotry.

[Anonymous No.20531482]

>>20531426
Dostoevsky's characters are more real than Tolstoy's. Cope.

[Anonymous No.20531488]

What did he think of Pynchon?

[Anonymous No.20531495]

>>20531391
that was in reference to openly fantasizing about epic szechuan sauce time travel showdowns. silly me, expecting reading comprehension from a dostodrone

[Anonymous No.20531503]

>>20531488
>Who?

[Anonymous No.20531521]

>>20531495
Not everything has to be physical you fucking faggot, there can be rhetorical showdowns which also exist in real life

[Anonymous No.20531530]

>>20531074
His praise for Wells caught me off guard, wasn't expecting that.

[Anonymous No.20531538]

>>20531482
lol
lmao, even

[Anonymous No.20531541]

>>20531024
Don’t give a fuck

[Anonymous No.20531542]

>>20531488
>>20531503
Pynchon was Nabokov's student, his essays had terrible handwriting

[Anonymous No.20531549]

>>20531482
More vivid, maybe, but certainly not more real.

[Anonymous No.20531556]

>>20531163
>Pseud gets filtered by actual art
Many such cases

[Anonymous No.20531559]

>>20531482
I like both a great deal but you're wrong

[Anonymous No.20531562]

>>20531521
thanks for clarifying

[Anonymous No.20531563]

>>20531024
Idgaf what this pedo thought

[Anonymous No.20531564]

>>20531433
OP stole this from reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/vcu9yx/nabokovs_opinions_of_other_writers/

[Anonymous No.20531575]

Were it not for the fact that he wrote a single book dealing with shocking coomer material, Nabokov would be a non-entity and mean nothing to anyone. Why anyone cares what he has to say at all is beyond me.

[Anonymous No.20531587]

Nabokov, Vladimir. A pornographic purveyor of fetish fiction. Nothing I have wished to have written myself. A non-entity. A non-value.

[Anonymous No.20531593]

>>20531564
Well we can't all be women with eating disorders who listen to redscare

[Anonymous No.20531602]

>>20531556
cosign

[Anonymous No.20531605]

>>20531563
>>20531575
>>20531587
>muh perv
>muh pedo
>muh coom
ngmi. go back and defend christianity on twitter or whatever you usually do. leave art to the big boys

[Anonymous No.20531608]

>>20531461
his ideas about loving women?

[Anonymous No.20531616]

>>20531587
A favorite between the ages of 14 and 15.
(When I was 14, my parents gave me an e-book for my birthday. It had a sizeable collection of torrented books, and one of them happened to be Ada, or Ardor. This single book ended up responsible for a significant fraction of my faps for about half a year.)

[Anonymous No.20531618]

>>20531605
Are you complaining about people defending their favorite authors by defending your favorite author?

[Anonymous No.20531619]

>>20531564
this gets posted on /lit/ every week and has been for years, newfriend

[Anonymous No.20531622]

>>20531608
Who cares? He was a literal faggot. He took it up the ass.

[Anonymous No.20531635]

>>20531622
he didn't

[Anonymous No.20531639]

>>20531618
i just find the pearlclutchers gay and disingenuous

[Anonymous No.20531654]

>>20531619
https://archived.moe/lit/search/image/QFDdcBwBZxKePzYtrB0GBA/

[Anonymous No.20531859]

>likes Salinger
Phew. My favorite writer is safe boys

[Anonymous No.20531863]

>>20531654
>>/lit/?task=search2&ghost=&search_text=nabokov-s-recommendations&search_ord=old

[Anonymous No.20531950]

>>20531616
I'm about two thirds of the way through Ada right now and am astounded by how depraved it gets. Damned if it isn't hilarious and beautiful and heartbreaking, though.

[Anonymous No.20532049]

What the fuck was his problem with Pound. Was it because his own poetry was never respected?

[Anonymous No.20532062]

>>20532049
a number of good judges don't share the elevated view of pound

[Anonymous No.20532070]

>>20532062
>good judges
Nabakov was absolutely not a serious critic; almost all of his literary criticism is about as poor as Harold Blooms is.
>Terrible, downright dreadful.
>No I simply refuse to actually elaborate in a meaningful way
Maybe he has some essays worth reading, but everything I have ever read from him are statements of the quality of the work without any information as to how he comes to the conclusion. Compare that to someone like Pound or Eliot Weinberger, the difference is immediately noticeable.

At least he likes John Keats

[Anonymous No.20532077]

Did he say anything about Blanchot, Lukács, Benjamin, Frankfurt School, Bataille or Berman?

[Anonymous No.20532102]

>>20531564
Not everyone is a receding chin loser who listens to fat retarded grifters snd simps for them. This exact list has been posted here since 2011 certainly

[Anonymous No.20532104]

>>20532070
i don't actually rate nabokov. i was thinking of kingsley amis, robert graves, george orwell, geoffrey grigson, dj enright, philip larkin, robert conquest

[Anonymous No.20532151]

>>20532104
I think most of those people loathe his political opinions, less so for his actual poetry, but I could be wrong. Even people like Ginsberg liked Pound, and he was a gay jew.

[Anonymous No.20532157]

>>20532104
>>20532151
My captcha btw

[Anonymous No.20532191]

>>20531024
Nabokov, Vladimir. A vulgar pseudo-academic, a rank defector of insipid inanity hidden behind a shallow veil irony. His fetishized ramblings can be safely ignored. Utterly puffed-up and formidably mediocre, means absolutely nothing to me.

[Anonymous No.20532192]

>>20532151
no doubt they despised his politics, but no these were talking about poetry.

[Anonymous No.20532209]

>>20531439
>John Barth, Cheever, Salinger, Melville, Hawthorn, Wells, and Updike were all raved about.
This is the first I'm hearing about them.

[Anonymous No.20532211]

>>20532209
... in the op images

[Anonymous No.20532258]

>>20532192
Yeah but Orwell is a fucking terrible writer, and an even worse literary critic. Idk there are certainly people that dislike his poetry and his prose works, but I have never seen an actual breakdown, its almost always /lit/ tier "he was bad"

[Anonymous No.20532355]

>>20532258
can't really agree on that orwell position. actually i can't see what would justify as provocative a verdict. as it happens, i think 'look at this. good (or bad), isn't it?' is as much as a great deal of what passes for criticism is really saying anyway. though yeah i've seen it broken down. one such in r graves' oxford lectures

[Anonymous No.20532412]

>>20531027

>Faulkner
Based

>Dostovsky
Not based

>>20531033
>Joyce
Based

>Kafka
Not based

>>20531037
>Proust
Really? Not so based

>Pound
Okay not based fuck this guy

[Anonymous No.20532423]

>>20531275
This is very gossipy in a true pretence pretentious waspy way

[Anonymous No.20532433]

>>20532355
>I don't understand
This is usually the extent of the criticism--that Pound isn't actually saying anything and is just stringing together words. But I think you can look at works like Hugh Kenners Pound Era, or Eliot Weinberger's extensive essays to see why his poetry worked. Even more simplistic authors like Hemingway liked the Cantos

[Anonymous No.20532440]

>>20531024
balzac is based
fuck nabo

[Anonymous No.20532445]

>>20532423
>This is very gossipy
that's why i like it

[Anonymous No.20532463]

>>20532433
fools & charlatans doomed by their own absurdity

[Anonymous No.20532474]

>>20532412
>Proust
> Really? Not so based
Cry more, DYEL KWAB

[Anonymous No.20532552]

>>20531074
he would have RELISHED twitter

[Anonymous No.20532603]

>>20531059
Borges is so unpretentious though
Also Nabo recanted himself later

[Anonymous No.20532677]

Too scared to even mention Steinbeck, I see

[Anonymous No.20532798]

>>20532258
Terrible writer? Really? 1984 is widely regarded as one of the best stories ever written. Animal Farm isn't great it reads like YA tbf.

[Anonymous No.20533031]

>>20532355
This reads like the lyrics to a Residents song. It's profound nonsense.

[Anonymous No.20533042]

>>20531556
>citizen kane
the most overrated movie in history

[Anonymous No.20533069]

>>20533042
i think Welles has in this century received something less than his due

[Anonymous No.20533124]

I can never tell if Nabokov was this pompous, or self aware and tongue in cheek. He’s like a parody or caricature of himself

[Anonymous No.20533128]

Would have loved to hear his thoughts on McCarthy

[Anonymous No.20533134]

>>20531605
virtually all of the greatest art ever produced was christian

[Anonymous No.20533142]

>all these Ezra Pound dicksuckers who brainlessly and uncritically simp for him because he's "le based controversial poet"
how anybody takes this board seriously I have no idea

[Anonymous No.20533176]

>>20532355
So Pound used a foreign word that Nabokov didn't know and Nabokov seethes? Nabokov was the type of shit-muncher to get mad that someone knew more foreign languages than him lmao

[Anonymous No.20533195]

>Nabokov's father Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov was the most outspoken defender of Jewish rights in the Russian Empire, continuing in a family tradition that had been led by his own father, Dmitry Nabokov, who as Justice Minister under Tsar Alexander II had successfully blocked anti-semitic measures from being passed by the Interior Minister. That family strain would continue in Vladimir Nabokov, who fiercely denounced anti-semitism in his writings, and in the 1930s Nabokov was able to escape Hitler's Germany only with the help of Russian Jewish émigrés who still had grateful memories of his family's defense of Jews in Tsarist times.

[Anonymous No.20533217]

>>20533176
i think i mentioned -- this is from robert graves oxford lectures. & the word doesn't exist in greek
you might already know: pound has a poor track record with foreign languages,

[Anonymous No.20533225]

>>20531354
Youre not reading Tolstoy’s prose unless you’re reading it in Russian

[Anonymous No.20533231]

>>20532355
That picture is autism.jpg

[Anonymous No.20533232]

>>20533225
that means tolstoy gets no credit for his writing except among russian-speakers.

[Anonymous No.20534556]

>>20533142
No, I like him because he wrote good poetry and nearly all attempts to criticize him are "I don't understand it" by people who have spent very little amounts of time actually trying to understand what is arguably the hardest work of English literature.
>>20533217
This is definitely untrue, Pound made corrections to Cathay from the notes of Fellonosa without knowing the language. He had enough knowledge of Greek and Latin to write the pisan Cantos (where this comes from) without a dictionary near him, and his usage of language has never been called into question--other than people who object to random Greek lines

[Anonymous No.20534584]

Based for making Poundplebs seethe. Since critical acclaim is all they have to cling onto, when someone more regarded shits on him it destroys their entire world.
Doubly based for making chapotrannies seethe with his anticommunism:
>Without its obscurities and abracadabra, without its pernicious reticences, shamanic incantations and magnetic trash, Marxism is not Marxism.
>Another horrible paradox about Leninism is that these materialists found it possible to squander the lives of millions of real people for the sake of the hypothetical millions that would be happy some day.
>Under the Tsars (despite the inept and barbarous character of their rule) a freedom-loving Russian had incomparably more possibility and means of expressing himself than at any time during Lenin’s and Stalin's regime. He was protected by law. There were fearless and independent judges in Russia. The Russian sud after the Alexander reforms was a magnificent institution, not only on paper. Periodicals of various tendencies and political parties of all possible kinds, legally or illegally, flourished and all parties were represented in the Dumas. Public opinion was always liberal and progressive.
>Under the Soviets, from the very start, the only protection a dissenter could hope for was dependent on governmental whims, not laws. No parties except the one in power could exist... Bureaucracy, a direct descendant of party discipline, took over immediately. Public opinion disintegrated. The intelligentsia ceased to exist. Any changes that took place between November 1919 and now have been changes in the decor which more or less screens an unchanging black abyss of oppression and terror.

[Anonymous No.20534635]

>>20531024
Nabokov sounds like he would have been very unpleasant to met in real life.

[Anonymous No.20534636]

>>20531024
If someone calls a person "a non-entity", then it's more a sensational pamplet than a genuine opinion

[Anonymous No.20534662]

>>20531027
>Chesterton
>Romantic in the LARGE sense
kek

[Anonymous No.20534757]

>>20531024
wow he really got filtered by Don Quixote of all things?

[Anonymous No.20534775]

>>20531037
When he refers to Marx, is he talking about Marx's plays from when he was a young man? If not why is he on the list at all?

[Anonymous No.20534795]

>>20531564
>posting a source is plagarism

[Anonymous No.20534921]

>>20533232
Das right.

[Anonymous No.20534956]

>>20534775
it's a list compiled by some website. all the opinions are collected from his various nonfiction volumes (mainly strong opinions)

[Anonymous No.20534966]

>>20534556
how about his prosody is ridiculously underwhelming.

[Anonymous No.20534971]

>>20533042
calling Citizen Kane overrated is a favorite activity of boring people.

[Anonymous No.20535187]

>>20534966
>The man more praised for his sense of rhythm and sound than any other modernist poet
>Bad prosody

[Anonymous No.20535699]

>>20531482
Agreed. I liked a couple of Tolstoi books, and I think one type will gravitate to those being more like "real people" and others to Dostoi characters. It really is all about the psiche of the reader.

[Anonymous No.20535854]

>>20531024
I agree with him on Cervantes. Don Xite is shit. No wonder the sunstricken subhuman spaniards consider him the best they've got to offer.

[Anonymous No.20535880]

Any anons ever read some of his interviews? Very cut and dry fellow.
I read his entire collection of short stories earlier this year which revived some interest in him.

[Anonymous No.20536062]

>>20535880
Didn't he refuse to do in person interviews and did everything by mail so he had enough time to come up with his pithy responses?

[Anonymous No.20536137]

>>20536062
I can’t speak for every interview he did, but in ‘Strong Opinions’ some are transcribed TV interviews (BBC for a few). I’ve always enjoyed his unrivaled ability to describe color and the play of light so vividly. I regard him similar to Joyce: hate him, love him, he’ll teach you something you didn’t know

[Anonymous No.20536141]

>>20531024
Very based. have never read this pedophile, but at least his opinions on literature seem somewhat reasonable.

[Anonymous No.20536158]

>am depressed and puzzled by his [Gogol's] inability to describe young women
kek
I guess he was qualified to make the call, considering his slightly disconcerting knack for describing young women.

[Anonymous No.20536219]

what does "romantic in the large sense" mean

[Anonymous No.20536232]

>>20531037
no wonder that he singled out the first half of proust's ISOLT - the second half is lacking because of the parts that focus on albertine (the entirety of volume 5 and the first half of volume 6)

[Anonymous No.20536308]

>>"A favorite between the ages of 10-20"

He is fucking crazy thinking that some russian kid read this much literature at such young age. They read ABRIDGED works (10 pages or less); and to think that a 17-18 will read a whole oeuvre ?
In countries like China,Russia.. you just dont have the time to read this stuff at such a young age.
Nabokov is insanely mad.

[Anonymous No.20536356]

>>20531024
Everyone always talks about his opinions here but now how matter-of-fact he is. I love reading these occasionally just because I find it hilarious how blunt and coordinated they are.

>Dislike him. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me. Awful.

[Anonymous No.20536433]

>>20531616
do your parents know this story?