Vladimir Nabokov's thoughts on different authors

[Anonymous No.22247274]

Your thoughts?

[Anonymous No.22247277]

>>22247274

[Anonymous No.22247281]

[Anonymous No.22247297]

>>22247274

[Anonymous No.22247301]

[Anonymous No.22247350]

Did I miss him mentioning The Greatest work of the 20th century, or is he reserving that status for one of his own efforts?

[Anonymous No.22247354]

>jane austen
>great
What a pathetic simp

[Anonymous No.22247355]

>>22247274
based take on camus

[Anonymous No.22247357]

>>22247274
This is tongue in cheek

[Anonymous No.22247359]

>>22247350
He named Ulysses in one of the screenshots above.

[Anonymous No.22247363]

>>22247274
He's a retard.

[Anonymous No.22247371]

>>22247277
>don quixote
>crude old book
wow this retard really didn't get it

[Anonymous No.22247385]

>>22247371
Do you ever wonder if he had that grandiose persona for lulz.

[Anonymous No.22247389]

>>22247354
He didn't like Pride and Prejudice and thought women in general couldn't write, but Mansfield Park won him over. And then
>In the margins of his copy and on separate sheets of notepaper, Nabokov draws charts, maps, and diagrams, makes lists of dates and names, and calculates distances, incomes, or ages from the numerical crumbs dropped by Austen. Guided by her descriptions, he maps the grounds at Sotherton Court, sketches a barouche to determine the spatial arrangements of the characters in a carriage, and lays out the rooms of Mansfield with architectural confidence. He also sketches maps of England, including a small one in the top corner of his copy’s opening page, noting the locations of both real and imaginary places mentioned in the text, such as “Portsmouth,” “Huntingdon,” “Hampshire,” “London,” “MP.” He triangulates the presumed location of Mansfield Park from the stated distances to real-world cities: “120 m” between MP and Portsmouth, “50” from Portsmouth to London, and “70 m” from London to MP. He circles her alliterations and underlines important phrases.
>Nabokov calculates from specifics in the story that the year of the “main action” is “1808,” explaining in his lecture how he arrived at this date: “The ball at Mansfield Park is held on Thursday the twenty-second of December, and if we look through our old calendars, we will see that only in 1808 could 22 December fall on Thursday.”
Whatever was wrong with him was much more profound than simping.

[Anonymous No.22247391]

[Anonymous No.22247397]

>>22247274
He’s a prick. Dost and Faulkner are way better than him and he knows it. Also I love Barth but Lost in the Funhouse (which i own) is one of the worst books i’ve ever read. Again, he’s a jealous prick.

[Anonymous No.22247408]

Pseud.
Fucking. Pseud.

[Anonymous No.22247432]

>>22247389
Nabokov was really critical of worldbuilding in art so he autistically mapped out every novel he read to make sure that they made sense. He drew out the setting of Mansfield Park, he tracked the time span of Anna Karenina, he deduced which type of insect Gregor transformed into in The Metamorphosis, etc. I think he was aware that art isn't successful unless the audience is totally immersed into it and believes that whatever work of fiction they observe is real and profound. If art is illogical and the world isn't cohesive then the illusion is broken.

[Anonymous No.22247458]

>>22247432
You'd like this
https://rarefilmm.com/2021/09/nabokov-on-kafka-1989/

[Anonymous No.22247571]

>>22247350
Ah thanks anon, skimming too fast.

[Anonymous No.22247574]

>>22247359
>>22247571
Damn it, meant for you

[Anonymous No.22247593]

>>22247297
He considers Finnegans Wake...conventional?

[Anonymous No.22247594]

>>22247274
>Vladimir Nabokov
I could never get into Barth, I struggled through Chimera- not for lack of understanding but for lack of interest. His writing style as a self insert is a bewildering choice.

[Anonymous No.22247616]

>>22247432
> he deduced which type of insect Gregor transformed into in The Metamorphosis
Unsurprising given that writing was what paid the bills for his true passion, staring at the nutsacks of butterflies.

[Anonymous No.22247641]

>>22247297
This pseud didn't even read Philip K Dick?

[Anonymous No.22247653]

He was absolutely correct about Faulkner and Dostoevsky, but his confidence in ranking things as the second- or fourth- or whatever "best" works of prose is pretty odd.

[Anonymous No.22247662]

>>22247616
>nutsacks of butterflies
you’ve never been outside, have you?

[Anonymous No.22247679]

Nabokov's my favourite author but he had some bad takes. I doubt he'd have wanted people to blindly agree with him. He's capable of criticising work by authors he liked and vice versa - that's a good way to be.

[Anonymous No.22247778]

>>22247274
>>22247277
>>22247281
>>22247297
>>22247301
You left out the last few, including him slobbering all over Updike's thesaurus-penis

[sic itur...ad astra No.22247899]

I don't care who he shits on, as long as he doesn't shit on Lewis Carrol or Charles Dickens. He's okay in my books.

[Anonymous No.22247955]

>>22247899
"If it were possible I would like to devote the fifty minutes of every class meeting to mute meditation, concentration, and admiration of Dickens"

[Anonymous No.22247986]

No Melville?

[Anonymous No.22248011]

>>22247277
>>22247297
Genuinely embarassing takes. His opinion on Dostoevsky reads like parody. The only people who think "Metamorphosis" is Kafka's best work are those who have never read "The Trial."

[Anonymous No.22248094]

>>22247274
Borges is all I give a fuck about and I was not disappointed

[Anonymous No.22248396]

>>22247274
who cares dude? it's like going through gary glitter's favorite records.

[Anonymous No.22248723]

>>22247397
Why not abbreviate Faulkner too? Faulk perhaps?

[Anonymous No.22248787]

>>22247297
>calls Joyce great
>lists three books
>calls two of them shit
What a knobhead. Was he just pretending?

[Anonymous No.22248806]

>>22247274
The beauty of art is you can like whatever you want

[Anonymous No.22248810]

>>22248787
one masterpiece is all you need to prove yourself, he disliked most of tolstoy's work outside of Anna Karenina too

[Anonymous No.22248849]

>>22248806
I'd like you to kill yourself

[Anonymous No.22248924]

>>22247391
The fact you like V. makes you a pleb.

[Anonymous No.22248928]

>>22247899
You are a manchild

[Anonymous No.22248930]

>>22247274
>>22247277
>>22247281
>>22247297
>>22247301
Usually I hate commies, but then I read this pretentious flabby aristocrat and it all makes sense to me

[Anonymous No.22248935]

>>22247986
Can't find a single gothic author. Nabby is such a pseud.

[Anonymous No.22248948]

>>22247397
Dost is profoundly overrated. Maybe a good psychologist and philosopher but not a great artist.

[Anonymous No.22248998]

>>22247274
"one would like to have filmed [Lewis Carroll's] picnics"
not surprising from the author of Lolita

[Anonymous No.22249001]

>>22247986
He said he loved him in the full list. OP left some writers out.

[Anonymous No.22249008]

>>22249001
Post it please

[Anonymous No.22249028]

Nabokov's criticisms used to irritate me but they've slowly come to take a different sort of shape in my mind. He's certainly a venomous iconoclast and puts men like Pound to shame in that regard, but I get a sort of half-serious, ironical tone from some of these thoughts and others I find to be more sincere yet interestingly cutting and laser focused. I find it interesting that he seemed to hate Don Quixote because I have read a quote from him that described the titular DQ as the parody becoming the paragon. I haven't read the lectures this quote comes from, so I have no context for the statement, but I've found it nicely sums up the substance of the novel regardless of Cervantes intent. I'd also love to know why he felt Finnegan's Wake was "conventional" and why the only Kafka he cares to acknowledge is The Metamorphosis.

[Anonymous No.22249032]

I have a feeling his opinions might have been sincere enough but he often challenged people to prove him wrong. He wanted people to think about why they actually liked the authors

[Anonymous No.22249049]

>>22248011
Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaased the trial enjoyer

[Anonymous No.22249069]

Reminder that these snippets are Frankensteined together from disparate sources with context removed and don't read the precise way they were intended

[Anonymous No.22249430]

>>22248924
>you

[Anonymous No.22249499]

>>22249028
>>22249069

[Anonymous No.22249741]

>>22249499
I chuckled
>grinning_aragorn.exe

[Anonymous No.22249854]

>>22247297
I’ve never taken Nabokov’s opinions seriously. But he once called Henry James a “pale porpoise” which is the funniest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. And I’m a major fan of James.

[Anonymous No.22250028]

I went into the water park
Out of stomach came a warning bark
I hid away, groaning
Reading Fear and Loathing
After a fart, came patches of dark

[Anonymous No.22250043]

reminder you all are being triggered by either a LLM-generated list or very simply a shitpost designed to bait you (duplicates, etc.)

[Anonymous No.22250106]

>>22250043
this image set is very old, genius.

[Anonymous No.22250110]

>>22248998

it's insane to me that he just says this, shamelessly

[Anonymous No.22250140]

>>22250106
it makes it even worse, then
I'm a tourist

[Anonymous No.22250209]

>>22250043
read the thread before posting

[Anonymous No.22250288]

>>22247432
He would have loved Tolkien.

[Anonymous No.22250309]

>>22250288
But they were contemporary,no? He seemed to dislike genre fiction.

[Anonymous No.22250318]

>>22250309
Shut the fuck up

[Anonymous No.22250367]

>>22250318
Hahaha. Genrefag keep crying

[Anonymous No.22250428]

>>22247274
I totally agree with his stance on: Brecht, Flaubert, Hawthorne and Shakespeare. You seem to have forgotten a huge part of the actual list (http://wmjas.wikidot.com/nabokov-s-recommendations)) that includes his negative opinion on Mann, which I agree with, and his positive thoughts on Melville and Milton.

I totally disagree with his thoughts on Conrad and I absolutely reject his idea that Maupassant is "certainly not a genius".

[Anonymous No.22250674]

>>22247281
>Nabokov hated Faulkner
As based as a man can be.

[Anonymous No.22251045]

Who cares what this retard thinks?
His takes on some authors are beyond cringe, Dostoevsky in particular, especially when he turns around and praises R. W. Emerson. His opinions sound edgy and cheap as if he is trying to revel in his own intellectual narcissism. And you know this because the highest compliment he has to give is that an author is “charming” or “amusing”, but there’s no doubt he thinks of himself as beyond them.
He is incredibly pretentious.

[Anonymous No.22251091]

>>22247281
>>22247297
"nothing i would care to have written" is genuinely one of the funniest lines ever penned and i routinely plagiarize it for shitposting purposes

[Anonymous No.22251123]

>>22247281
He's right about Hawthorne :)

[Anonymous No.22251129]

>>22247274
>>22247277
>>22247281
>>22247297
>>22247301
>A favorite between the ages of x and y, and thereafter

[Anonymous No.22251222]

>>22247274
Based bergson enjoyer

[Anonymous No.22251236]

>>22247391
>didn't read M&D or against the day
Fuck this pleb

[Anonymous No.22251239]

That he didn't care for Faulkner makes him seem quite biased.

[Anonymous No.22251247]

>>22248935
Nabokov alluded to Melmoth the Wanderer in Lolita.

[Anonymous No.22251259]

>>22247274
>one would liked to have filmed his picnics
Ummm what did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.22251264]

>>22247281
>rhythmic urination

[Anonymous No.22251310]

>>22251091
Kek

[Anonymous No.22251348]

>>22247274
Great post and the replies didn't disappoint. He's very odd. It is as if he is trying to play a character, that of a caricature aristocrat. I'm sure he's a great artist though.

[Anonymous No.22251385]

>>22251045
The praise for Emerson is quite baffling to me.

[Anonymous No.22251419]

>>22251091
All of the things he says are hilarious and sometimes when I critique certain artists in my head I autistically borrow his phrasing for laughs.

>Nolan, Christopher. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me.
>The Dark Knight. Loathe it. Ghastly rigmarole.

[Anonymous No.22251420]

>>22251045
nothing wrong with being pretentious if it's justified

[Anonymous No.22251437]

>>22249008
Since OP is a fag and every other poster is lazy here's what he left out

[Anonymous No.22251438]

>>22251236
He died in 1977. You have to forgive him for having a one strike policy against authors when he has to cross worlds to get hold of their books.

[Anonymous No.22251441]

>>22251437

[Anonymous No.22251445]

>>22251437
>karl marx
>loathe him
very based

[Anonymous No.22251452]

>>22247274
Can one of you lads put in order what he thinks were the best prose? I see Joyce and Proust but lack the autism to go through all of this to find the rest.

[Anonymous No.22251454]

>>22251437
>Pound, Ezra. Definitely second-rate. A total fake. A venerable fraud.

[Anonymous No.22251462]

>>22251437
>Poe, Edgar Allan. One would have liked to have filmed his wedding.
Laying it on a bit thick

[Anonymous No.22251483]

>>22251441
For the love of God, someone explain to me why he compares Wells to Conrad and why he prefers the former to the latter. Some of these statements are so baffling to me.

[Anonymous No.22251528]

>>22247277
>Shakespere
>Greatest the world has ever known
Opinion discounted. People who say this are brainwashed.

[Anonymous No.22251588]

>>22251483
Pic related is something he wrote about Wells.
The origin of that exact phrasing is this:
>As a private person I am good-natured, warm, cheerful, straightforward, plainspoken, and intolerant of bogus art. I do not mind my own writings being criticized or ignored and therefore think it funny that people not even concerned with literature should be upset by my finding D. H. Lawrence execrable or my seeing in H. G. Wells a far greater artist than Conrad.
It might just be that he liked Wells and disliked Conrad and both those opinions were notably unusual, with no further connective tissue. Remember that everything in that list is taken out of context, he didn't compose it himself.

[Anonymous No.22251630]

>>22251452
(he actually said "the first half" of isolt)

[Anonymous No.22252011]

>>22249049
Cheers to you, Kafka fren.

[Anonymous No.22252024]

>a favorite between the ages of x and y
>one would have liked to film x
Was it autism?

[Anonymous No.22252468]

>>22251437
Plato one his hilarious. My nigga never wrote his dialogues for the aesthetic enjoyment of fucking Vladimir Nabokov that’s for fucking sure

[Anonymous No.22252545]

I’m pissing myself reading his comments; is this intentional on his part or is he completely clueless?

[Anonymous No.22252604]

>>22252545
These comments are paraphrased from opinions he gave in interviews compiled in the book "Strong Opinions." So he didn't individually describe the authors with these little comments but included them in generalized statements. But the actual comments are indeed what he really said

[Anonymous No.22252605]

>>22247354
Lmao you have no clue what you’re talking about, retard

[Anonymous No.22252607]

>>22250309
Not true, he liked Poe, Carroll, and Wells. Tolkien is … eh.

[Anonymous No.22253352]

>>22247277
>GK Chesterton
>romantic in the LARGE sense
kek

[Anonymous No.22253827]

>>22247297
>gives at least a sentence or two for every writer
>except Kafka
What did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.22253839]

>>22247281
>Loathe his works about bells, balls and bulls
kek

[Anonymous No.22253846]

>>22247274
>fakes realism with easy platitudes
What does this mean?

[Anonymous No.22253850]

>>22247389
>Whatever was wrong with him was much more profound than simping.
Based on your post it was autism.

[Anonymous No.22254330]

>>22247274
I couldn't give two shits what this guy thinks of literature. He sounds like a seething attention whore mad that more people will love Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy than his own work, and it's not particularly close. Hell, even the anon who did the gorgeously written, hysterically funny Dostoevsky shitpost was probably a huge Crime & Punishment/BrothersK fan.

[Anonymous No.22254341]

>>22248011
Shits on Faulkner too, I'm dying here. It truly is the case that writers and academics are the most prideful, envious, thin-skinned of people.

[Anonymous No.22254369]

>>22254330
He liked Chekhov and was lyrical about Tolstoy, especially Anna Karenina.
Different people like different things. He just didn't like Dostoevsky. It's gonna be okay.

[Anonymous No.22254391]

>>22254341
>>22254369
Nabokov seems thoroughly averse to the concept of "the great in the small", while also detesting any sense of piety and religious passion or devotion. A most fatal admixture of conceit.

[Anonymous No.22254729]

>>22247408
post yours

[Anonymous No.22254841]

>>22254341
He’s not prideful, envious or thin-skinned, he just has strong opinions. Are you missing all the writers he calls genius or when he calls his own prose garbage in comparison to Joyce?

[Anonymous No.22254890]

>>22254841
> when he calls his own prose garbage in comparison to Joyce?
He was right about this

[Anonymous No.22255111]

>>22254391
Yeah, he didn't have a taste for religion. In Pale Fire Kinbote gets very annoyed at Shade's atheism.
In Ada religion is conspicuously absent except for a scene where it seems that in this world Jews are a kind of Christian and they do eat pork. I still have no idea what that was about.

[Anonymous No.22255389]

>>22247679

He can also be contradictory. Claiming he hates allegory and then saying Metamorphosis is one of the greatest works of literature.

[Anonymous No.22255395]

>>22248011

It is funny how he praises Dostoyevsky's worst work "The Double" as being his masterpiece.

It's hard to believe that he actually read anything by Dostoyevsky at all and didn't just formulate his opinions through some kind of prejudice.

[Anonymous No.22255501]

>>22255389
he doesn't see metamorphosis as an allegory at all, he praises it for its structure and detail

[Anonymous No.22255527]

>>22255389
Symbolic interpretations of the Metamorphosis are superfluous for Nabokov's purposes. You can say that Gregor's transformation into a beetle is leprosy or whatever, but all the experiences are still there if you don't do that. Gregor feels no less shame and betrayal due to his bugness than he would due to some realistic condition.
Nabokov said he "always preferred the literal meaning of a description to the symbol behind it". He was intensely concerned with the faithful capturing of experience. If you interpret the Metamorphosis fully literally (as he did) then it's still chock-full of that.
It also helps that there's a bug in it. He liked insects.
He wrote a long lecture about the story if you're interested: http://www.kafka.org/index.php?id=191,209,0,0,1,0

>>22255395
He had a very particular taste that Dostoevsky doesn't fit at all. There's nothing more to it than that. You don't need to defend Dostoevsky's honor, he just had different priorities.
Nabokov explains it at length here if you're really interested: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/08/23/magazine/nabokov-on-dostoyevsky.html
He praises the tension in his plots but says that he doesn't really care about tension himself since he wants to reread everything a dozen times and chew it to pieces. He complains about the lack of sensory detail because to him this is one of the most important things in literature, never mind that to most people it's optional. Dostoevsky prioritizes things Nabokov doesn't care for and leaves out things Nabokov hunkers for. Nobody is at fault.

[Anonymous No.22255574]

>>22255111
>he didn't have a taste for religion
not organized religion but he dealt with metaphysics quite often and has hinted at personal paranormal beliefs. 1/4th of pale fire the poem is rumination on god. afaik in ada log (god) plays an important part
>>22254391
>the great in the small
he didnt like empty generalities. otherwise he was all about the small
>while also detesting any sense of piety and religious passion or devotion.
he loved the death of ivan ilyich (which imo does also suffer from "mystical didacticism"), and thought highly of milton and salinger's deeply religious works. its the artistry he's judging.
>>22255389
you dont have to read it as allegory, and most allegorical interpretations for it are awkward or dull anyways.

[Anonymous No.22255630]

>>22255574
>1/4th of pale fire the poem is rumination on god.
There's a lot about the (possibility of an) afterlife, and if Boyd is to be believed there's evidence of actual ghosts, but God is dismissed halfway through the first canto and barely shows up:
>My God died young. Theolatry I found
>Degrading, and its premises, unsound.
>No free man needs a God; but was I free?
>How fully I felt nature glued to me

>afaik in ada log (god) plays an important part
I didn't notice anything important.

[Anonymous No.22255697]

>>22249499
I thought this was parodying Scriabin until the last line.

[Anonymous No.22255739]

>>22247357
its not. hes being serious here. he really hated freud. the curtain is drawn here, hes not being ironic at all.

[Anonymous No.22255753]

>>22247385
no. he cared a lot about literature and scholarship. if u read pale fire its all about bullshit academics. his brutish manner when it comes to works he thinks are crap is because he wants people to know how crap they are and to not leave any room for interpretation. freuds crap took the world by storm and realy misled pepople for a long time.

[Anonymous No.22255779]

>>22247616
thanks to that, the scientific community had to throw out their previous entomological classification for some butterflies. particularly american blues, iirc. they thought some butterflies were of the same species but examination of their genitals showed they were of different species. hes considered important in scientific communities.

[Anonymous No.22255788]

>>22248930
freud, marx, frauds and sharks
-vlad nab

[Anonymous No.22255796]

>>22248998
did u read lolita
nabokov is the polar opposite of a pedo

[Anonymous No.22255808]

>>22255389
>ALLEGORY OF WHAT?!

[Anonymous No.22255814]

>>22255796
I think he probably wasn't a pedo but "polar opposite" doesn't fit. He might have been a pedophilophile, his interest wasn't really moralistic.
Like, what the fuck was this about?
>An American, a certain Ivan Ivanov of Yukonsk, described as an “habitually intoxicated laborer” (“a good definition,” said Ada lightly, “of the true artist”), managed somehow to impregnate—in his sleep, it was claimed by him and his huge family—his five-year-old great-granddaughter, Maria Ivanov, and, then, five years later, also got Maria’s daughter, Daria, with child, in another fit of somnolence. Photographs of Maria, a ten-year-old granny with little Daria and baby Varia crawling around her, appeared in all the newspapers, and all kinds of amusing puzzles were provided by the genealogical farce that the relationships between the numerous living—and not always clean-living—members of the Ivanov clan had become in angry Yukonsk. Before the sixty-year-old somnambulist could go on procreating, he was clapped into a monastery for fifteen years as required by an ancient Russian law. Upon his release he proposed to make honorable amends by marrying Daria, now a buxom lass with problems of her own. Journalists made a lot of the wedding, and the shower of gifts from well-wishers (old ladies in New England, a progressive poet in residence at Tennesee Waltz College, an entire Mexican high school, et cetera), and on the same day Gamaliel (then a stout young senator) thumped a conference table with such force that he hurt his fist and demanded a retrial and capital punishment.

[Anonymous No.22255817]

>>22250288
theres no way. lord of the rings is romantic fantasy cliche crap. its for children so maybe he would have thought it ok for kids. idk about tolkiens other works.

[Anonymous No.22255825]

>>22251045
nabokov wrote in 20th c
names 4 works other than himself as 'greatest'
'let people compare me to joyce by all means, but my english is patball to joyce's champion game. a genius'
did u read the list or what

[Anonymous No.22255842]

>>22251437
>>22252468
woo wooo woooo!!!

[Anonymous No.22255852]

>>22251528
take it up with the academy

[Anonymous No.22255858]

>>22252024
misquotes ?

[Anonymous No.22255859]

>>22255814
>Mнe двaдцaть двa гoдa, a мoeй мyзe - двeнaдцaть.
>I am twenty-two years old, and my muse - twelve.
From a letter to Sergei Potresov. Dunno about pedo, but I probably wouldn't hire him as a tennis teacher for my kid...

[Anonymous No.22255877]

>>22247397
If you are alluding to Dostoevsky’s worst novels, then, indeed, I dislike intensely The Brothers Karamazov and the ghastly Crime and Punishment rigamarole. No, I do not object to soul-searching and self-revelation, but in those books the soul, and the sins, and the sentimentality, and the journalese, hardly warrant the tedious and muddled search. Dostoyevsky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity – all this is difficult to admire. I do not like this trick his characters have of ”sinning their way to Jesus” or, as a Russian author, Ivan Bunin, put it more bluntly, ”spilling Jesus all over the place." Crime and Punishment’s plot did not seem as incredibly banal in 1866 when the book was written as it does now when noble prostitutes are apt to be received a little cynically by experienced readers. Dostoyevsky never really got over the influence which the European mystery novel and the sentimental novel made upon him. The sentimental influence implied that kind of conflict he liked—placing virtuous people in pathetic situations and then extracting from these situations the last ounce of pathos. Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway. Dostoyevsky seems to have been chosen by the destiny of Russian letters to become Russia’s greatest playwright, but he took the wrong turning and wrote novels.

[Anonymous No.22255885]

>>22252024
There was this kind of form you'd fill out to amuse yourself and your friends in those days, mostly gone now but similar to online dating profiles and Tumblr ask memes. One question he filled out was "Scenes one would have liked to film", and below that heading he wrote a couple of bullet points.
The person who compiled this list pulled it apart and reversed it and distributed it, turning the single title into the first half of multiple sentences.

[Anonymous No.22255901]

>>22255814
he said in an interview he became something of an expert on the subject of pedo

there is a theory that he was pedophilized by his uncle

a big part of lolita is about misleading unscrupulous readers. he lures them in, thinking theyre going to read a raunchy novel and get their rocks off, but what theyre met with is the opposite:

By a
paradox of pictorial thought, the average lowland North-American countryside
had at first seemed to me something I accepted with a shock of amused
recognition because of those painted oilclothes which were imported from
America in the old days to be hung above washstands in Central-European
nurseries, and which fascinated a drowsy child at bed time with the rustic
green views they depicted--opaque curly trees, a barn, cattle, a brook, the
dull white of vague orchards in bloom, and perhaps a stone fence or hills of
greenish gouache. But gradually the models of those elementary rusticities
became stranger and stranger to the eye, the nearer I came to know them.
Beyond the tilled plain, beyond the toy roofs, there would be a slow
suffusion of inutile loveliness, a low sun in a platinum haze with a warm,
peeled-peach tinge pervading the upper edge of a two-dimensional, dove-gray
cloud fusing with the distant amorous mist. There might be a line of spaced
trees silhouetted against the horizon, and hot still noons above a
wilderness of clover, and Claude Lorrain clouds inscribed remotely into
misty azure with only their cumulus part conspicuous against the neutral
swoon of the background. Or again, it might be a stern El Greco horizon,
pregnant with inky rain, and a passing glimpse of some mummy-necked farmer,
and all around alternating strips of quick-silverish water and harsh green
corn, the whole arrangement opening like a fan, somewhere in Kansas.

[Anonymous No.22255908]

>>22255814
halfway thru the book here is a different quote:

A combination of naivete and deception, of charm and vulgarity, of blue sulks and rosy mirth, Lolita, when she chose, could be a most exasperating brat. I was not really quite prepared for her fits of disorganized boredom, intense and vehement griping, her sprawling, droopy, dopey-eyed style, and what is called goofing off--a kind of diffused clowning which she thought was tough in a boyish hoodlum way. Mentally, I found her to be a disgustingly conventional little girl. Sweet hot jazz, square dancing, gooey fudge sundaes, musicals, movie magazines and so forth--these were the obvious items in her list of beloved things. The Lord knows how many nickels I fed to the gorgeous music boxes that came with every meal we had! I still hear the nasal voices of those invisibles serenading her, people with names like Sammy and Jo and Eddy and Tony and Peggy and Guy and Patty and Rex, and sentimental song hits, all of them as similar to my ear as her various candies were to my palate. She believed, with a kind of celestial trust, any advertisement or advice that that appeared in Movie Love or Screen Land--Starasil Starves Pimples, or "You better watch out if you're wearing your shirttails outside your jeans, gals, because Jill says you shouldn't." If a roadside sign said: Visit Our Gift Shop--we had to visit it, had to buy its Indian curios, dolls, copper jewelry, cactus candy. The words “novelties and souvenirs" simply entranced her by their trochaic lilt. If some cafe sign proclaimed Icecold Drinks, she was automatically stirred, although all drinks everywhere were ice-cold. She it was to whom ads were dedicated: the ideal consumer, the subject and object of every foul poster. And she attempted--unsuccessfully-to patronize only those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads.

i dont want to spoil the fun for u. but he was showing how its impossible for an adult and a child to have a real relationship. of course its easy to mistake that he was a pedo, especially for those who never read the book. but there are lots of examples of 'great writers' whose works went on trial for being profane. give it another shot. it seems uncomfortable, but youll be laughing every page.

[Anonymous No.22255912]

>>22255859
full quote?.. date of the letter?...

[Anonymous No.22255918]

>>22255395
Seems like literally the 4chan contrarian thing to do. Pick any author or director, shit on their famous works, and then praise the least important one as their best.

[Anonymous No.22255920]

>>22255912
http://www.nabokov-lit.ru/nabokov/pisma/letter-7.htm
translate it on google

[Anonymous No.22255946]

>>22255908
>he was showing how its impossible for an adult and a child to have a real relationship.
Mind that this is not at all incompatible with being a pedophile. He was capable of self-criticism. The thing with the uncle is more plausible but portraying pedophilia in a bad light provides no evidence one way or another.
I quoted the multigenerational incest bit from Ada because it's very hard to extract a neat lesson from it.
>give it another shot. it seems uncomfortable, but youll be laughing every page.
I've already read it once. I do need to give it a reread, Pale Fire and Ada didn't properly come through on the macro level until my second read.

[Anonymous No.22255973]

>>22255859
>>22255920

I am twenty-two years old, and my muse is twelve. Ten years, I remember, I translated from English into French, in incredible Alexandrian verse, Mainried's novel The Headless Horseman. Years passed (quiet years of antediluvian life), I often scribbled paper, filling school notebooks with awkward stories, in which there were kisses, and crocodiles, and the scent of colorful pinkertons; then, one evening, in July 1914, I composed a poem about a country sunset, in the morning I made a couple more, and off and on - I got a taste, and since then, it seems, there has not been a day that I did not write anything. In the 16th year I had the misfortune to publish a book (past, reader, past ...), and then the days of "drape" went on, I found myself in the Crimea, then in Greece, then in the 20th year at Cambridge University, from where I come on vacation to Berlin.

in response to the picnic filming joke:>>22255885

idk what ur insuinating.. him saying his muse is 12, sounds to me like him being self deprecating in terms of his literary maturity. hes saying that hes not yet a mature writer. thats how it sounds to me. muse = a person or personified force who is the source of inspiration for a creative artist.

i mean theres a possibility that he grappled with the subject of pedo as all men do at a certain point. but again and again he alludes to the impossibility of an adult-child romantic relationship in lolita. and he also said that people who enjoy pornography as having 'primitive minds'. so.. he valued love with someone of equal maturity as best.

[Anonymous No.22256000]

>>22255946
lust is a one night stand and is over the next morning. it is fleeting. love is lasting and stays with u ur whole life. real love requires a deep relationship and intimacy. if a relationship with a child is impossible then its impossible to be romantically in love with a child.

he wrote ada 14 years after lolita. as i said, in an interview he said he became 'something of an expert on the subject of pedophilia.' its unsurprising that he would expound on it more in a later work. he spent 5 years writing and researching for lolita. one of the first works he translated was alice in wonderland, which also deals with pedoism.

u dont have to give it another read if u dont want. i remember hearing in my lit class that the first 20 chapter of lolita are references to poe. the general reader will not notice this. nabokov has a piece of criticism in which he defines what makes great art and low art. and he says that in order to understand great art, you need to re-read works. works that are worthy of careful study are those which put in a lot of effort into innovation. so there's a lot of stuff in lolita that is between the lines. it has been said that the story is a chess game - at one point, humbert's queen, dolly, is captured by quilty. for the time being, read his 'good readers and good writers' essay if nothing else. http://moodyap.pbworks.com/f/nbkv.GoodReaders_Writers.pdf

[Anonymous No.22256034]

>>22255973
>HE WAS JUST BEING METAPHORICAL
you can't deny that the guy was pretty obsessed with the pedophilia theme. He wrote The Enchanter way before Lolita. There was also a story where he offloaded the pedo fantasy on a unsympathetic German protagonist.
The fact that he was intelligent enough to realize the "impossibility of an adult-child romantic relationship" doesn't say anything about his erotic obsessions, nor does his stance on pornography.

[Anonymous No.22256046]

>>22255973
Isn't he just saying that he's been writing since he was 10?

[Anonymous No.22256127]

>>22255630
>There's a lot about the (possibility of an) afterlife, and if Boyd is to be believed there's evidence of actual ghosts, but God is dismissed halfway through the first canto and barely shows up
the last canto is him deciding whether or not the fountain-mountain ordeal had actual divine significance. shade isnt an unwavering atheist. in fact if you do go by boyd, god in the novel are the ghosts from the afterlife arranging things poetically. Shade after dying inserts the Shadows into kinbotes zembla fantasy, so that the "assasin who killed him" will have been sent by him, so that his unfinished poem will end as it started, with a waxwing crashing into its own reflection. shade becomes a god. there is always a god-like authorial figure in the background causing coincidences, like quilty or the much more on the nose VN from pnin. nabokov also points out seeming synchronicities all the time in his own life. it is an important theme for him.

[Anonymous No.22256285]

>>22255574
>salinger's deeply religious works

What would that be?

[Anonymous No.22256303]

>>22255574
>you dont have to read it as allegory

>>22255501


The only reason it's considered literature and not science fiction is because it is read as allegory. Kafka is not and never was a genre writer. And Nabokov was not a reader of genre fiction.

[Anonymous No.22256313]

>>22256034
>pretty obsessed

I don't think it's necessarily obsession with the theme but there can be a writer's obsession with "getting it right" which means he will hvae ato repeat the attempt or theme if he thinks his first go was not successful.

Look at other authors and you will see they recycle themes all the time for this very reason. A lot of people say Hesse, for example, wrote the same novel over and over again improving it each time.

[Anonymous No.22256339]

This fraud taste in Films was equally bad:

https://mubi.com/lists/vladimir-nabokovs-favorite-movies-or-at-least-some-of-them

[Anonymous No.22256414]

>>22256303
>The only reason it's considered literature and not science fiction is because it is read as allegory.
no. the distinction comes from originality and craftsmanship. being allegorical doesnt give something literary merit. plus nabokov definitely did read and frequently allude to "genre" fiction and loved hg wells.
>>22256285
all of them except maybe catcher (theres still the exchange with the nun and holdens ramble on the disciples) deal with religion directly at some point (theology, prayers, koans, reincarnation...), and everything he writes always ends with a mystical epiphany of sorts.

[Anonymous No.22256425]

>>22256339
>Gold Rush
>Night at the Opera
>Safety First

Nah, we stan.

[Anonymous No.22256447]

>>22247354
>woman bad

[Anonymous No.22256525]

>>22255395
Dostocucks are such serious copers

[Anonymous No.22256678]

>>22256034
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldpj_5JNFoA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-wcB4RPasE
what did u think of the essay

[Anonymous No.22257254]

>>22247274
Shit taste.

[Anonymous No.22257274]

>>22257254
Brush your teeth.

[Anonymous No.22257861]

>>22256127
The word "religion" still feels inappropriate to me. There's no element of obligation, neither through morals nor through worship. Maybe this is semantic.
Some people who are obsessed with coincidence and the richly rhymed life project it onto a force of nature (astrology, quantum...) and try to keep divinity out of it. Shade's aloof and mute chess players are more divine than that, but religion? It needs a stronger qualification than "not organized" and I'm unsure about the value of calling it "god", singular.
But again, maybe I'm just fiddling with the meaning of words and we agree on the facts of the matter.

>>22256000
I meant that I was already planning to reread it regardless.
Pedophilia is usually defined by action or attraction, neither of which neatly follow knowledge or morals. Your interpretation is correct enough, I just don't think it has any bearing on the question at hand. If Nabokov were a pedophile he could still have written Lolita.

[Anonymous No.22258074]

Were Hemingway and Faulkner even aware who Nabokov was?

[Anonymous No.22258271]

>>22247277
>>22247297
>Conrad doyle and kipling are all described in pretty much the same way
True pseud

[Anonymous No.22258325]

>>22256447
>woman good

[Anonymous No.22258384]

>>22256447
Woman bad.

[Anonymous No.22258451]

>>22258074
By the time Nabokov became famous they were probably too drunk to take note of any new developments in lit.

[Anonymous No.22259061]

>>22255877
Ladies and gentlemen: the world's least interesting take.

[Anonymous No.22259069]

>>22259061
Actually one of the few interesting (and correct) takes on Dostoevsky.

[Anonymous No.22259075]

>>22259069
t. same anon

[Anonymous No.22259089]

>>22259075
Would someone go on the internet and pretend to be multiple people? Would someone really do that?

[Anonymous No.22259093]

>>22259089
You tell me anon...

[Anonymous No.22259101]

>>22259061
>>22259069
>>22259075
>>22259089
>>22259093
samefag

[Anonymous No.22259113]

Why are people so defensive about Dostoevsky in particular? Hot damn

[Anonymous No.22259122]

>>22259113
he's the only writer that will be remembered in a thousand years.

[Anonymous No.22259133]

>>22259113
Think of Dostofags as the male equivalent to Swifties and the picture should clear up.

[Anonymous No.22259152]

>>22259061
Dosto is essentially sadomasochistic, he loves dwelling on characters who revel in how depraved they are, but who also prostrate themselves in the just punishment or humiliation of their depravity. Again, sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes imply the exact situation he adored, all the violence and sexual intrigue he desired so much, but with the approval of his super ego since they ritualistically degrade themselves in a kind of spiritual fetishistic pleasure in confessing, being punished, and then being "redeemed". It's lurid and partakes of a sick kind of gratification in self flagellation.

[Anonymous No.22259153]

>>22259133
Good comparison. Both Swifties and Dostofags have good taste.

[Anonymous No.22259174]

>>22259152
You're doing the same sanctimonious moralizing your implicitly criticizing Dostoevsky for. Calling him a 'sadomasochistic' for what? Writing situations he's been in? The world of 'soulful prostitutes' and 'sensitive murderers' was the world Dosto inhabited -- but you know this so what this moral deconstruction?

[Anonymous No.22259178]

>>22251437
>dislikes Pound
do we have something about his early life?

[Anonymous No.22259198]

>>22259122
Then surely he doesn't need people to make all these posts

[Anonymous No.22259203]

>>22247274
Why does this read like /brit/posting?

was Vladimir Nabokov an anglo?

[Anonymous No.22259209]

>>22259203
It's a list of abbreviated thoughts/opinions cobbled together from various sources.

[Anonymous No.22259222]

>>22259174
Notice how, in his literature, he does not seek to escape it, he seeks to revel in it. He ENJOYS the suffering, the sin, the overindulgence followed by the depraved ritualistic masochism of repentance. He designs his novels to partake of this pathological cycle, to extract pathos and self gratification out of it. I can't make it any more clear to you how much he centers his novels on this, particularly the aforementioned GHASTLY Crime and Punishment. It's like a fetish, if it floats your boat, good for you, but for well adjusted people, it's sickening in the extreme.

[Anonymous No.22259235]

>>22259209
so it's /brit/

[Anonymous No.22259262]

>>22255389
He literally turns into a bug though
Any other reading is incomplete

[Anonymous No.22259263]

>>22259222
Curious how (i'm guessing you're the original anon) you dismiss Dosto as a 'proto-freud' yet you revel -- no, ENJOY using the same method to deconstruct dosto. He's 'sick', it's 'ghastly', he has a 'fetish' for suffering. It's just projection at this point. Also criticizing dosto by using a bio-political category like 'adjusted people' to scold Dosto is hilarious considering what site you're on.

[Anonymous No.22259301]

>>22259222
Lots of well adjusted people like Dostoevsky. He's babby's first (and usually only) 'sewious' author together with Orwell. The tacky C&P fits perfectly among the true crime and self-help. Normies love Dosto's brand of goofy, trashy writing. It's like rap and porn, they get to dip their toes into abjection for a minute, get their rocks off and come away unscathed.

[Anonymous No.22259323]

>>22259301
>He's babby's first (and usually only) 'sewious' author together with Orwell
And both our great. Would you call Nabokov a sewious author aswell because normies love Lolita?

[Anonymous No.22259439]

>>22259323
I don't think he belongs in that Jordan Peterson school of fiction, where you read for utilitarian reasons. The most banal readings of Lolita are the ones about how HH "fools" the reader to go along on his wacky molestation adventure, like it's some spot-the-predator manual.

[Anonymous No.22259688]

>>22259153
Dostobros...

Not like this

[Anonymous No.22260882]

>>22259323
Do normies read it though? Or do they just like it?

[Anonymous No.22261155]

Can someone feed this into some AI and get his opinions on modern authors? Or is it just "non-conventional good, conventional bad"?

[Anonymous No.22261214]

>>22247274
>Lewis Carrol
>One would like to have filmed his picnics
What did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.22261228]

>>22261214
More accurate material for Lolita, I guess.

[Anonymous No.22261396]

>>22259263
The appeal to this board is that occasionally, amid the pseuds and hipsters, one may find an anon worth sharing a few words with. Despite 4chan's reputation, there are, indeed, many anons all too well adjusted, hard as this may be for you to believe. To make myself clear, I am not "reveling" or "enjoying" the same method as Dosto, I'm judging his works as lurid, cheap, and overrated, which they most certainly are. What may be an even worse fault, they are narrow minded and one-dimensional.

[Anonymous No.22261452]

>>22261155
>Can someone feed this into some AI and get his opinions on modern authors?
LLMs aren't smart enough for this yet. At best you might get randomly selected opinions in the same style.
>Or is it just "non-conventional good, conventional bad"?
No. He had a somewhat narrow taste for certain things that were reasonably conventional but not universal.

[Anonymous No.22261497]

>>22247274
A lot of those wrote far better things than Lolita

[Anonymous No.22262169]

>>22261497
what did Ballsack write that is better?

[Anonymous No.22262203]

>>22262169
who knows? he has a trillion books, La peau de chagrin was a'ight

[Anonymous No.22262222]

>>22251437
Lowell is the best translator Imo. Dude is a massive fraud imo.

[Anonymous No.22262230]

>>22259222
EMPHASIS

[Anonymous No.22262576]

>>22262203
>A lot of those wrote far better things than Lolita
>what did Ballsack write that is better?
>who knows?
>a'ight
this is not acceptable. kindly go back