/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.5336950]

Just finished Lolita about an hour ago

I'm kind of ambivalent to how I feel about it. I really liked the first ~120 pages, then I felt like the middle kind of dragged, but picked back up after Part II began.

I thought it was really well written, and it definitely expanded my vocabulary and dusted off my French a little bit, as well.

I mean there's lots of pretty words, and at some points I even sympathized with HH, but I kind of felt the ending with CQ was kind of hamfisted in.
I don't know, maybe I just need to let it digest, or it'll benefit from a re-read in a year or two.

What's everyone's thoughts on this "classic"? Favorite parts or lines?

[Anonymous No.5336973]

>>5336950

Read Pale Fire next, definitely Nabokov's best.

[Anonymous No.5337017]

>>5336950
I just finished it yesterday.

I actually really liked the end. It gave a bit of re-clarification to what, in my opinion, became a muddled and more than a bit drawn out story. The final scene with HH and CQ was my personal favorite part of the book and made me wish that Nabokov had written more action scenes into the book. The French was really frustrating, because I have no french base and was forced to just skip those parts.

Overall, I thought the book had some great parts and truly great writing, but the complexity of the writing just felt unnecessarily turned up to 10. Not that it was really difficult to understand or anything, but it felt at times like Nabokov was just showing off to show off rather than using careful placement of that kind of eloquence to highlight the more important parts of the book. I understand and appreciate what he was trying to do, but it's just a flavor of writing that isn't my preference.

[Anonymous No.5337109]

>>5336950
One of my favorites, and not for the subject matter itself. As somebody else said, Pale Fire is his best.

I always loved (and still love) the descriptions of Charlotte, especially Humbert's first meeting with her.

Favorite Lines?

"Don't touch me; I'll die if you touch me."
"There was no Lo to behold."

Some spoilers:

I was a big fan of the ending. You know it's coming, and the little hints along the way make it all the better. It might be common sense, but the ending is told as a mutilated fairy-tale: the named weapon ('Chum,' Hum's gun), personification of random objects (birds and clouds come to mind), the simple fact that Humbert still sees himself as a knight attempting to rescue his princess from a castle (Quilty's manor, and it is he (CQ) who takes the role of the captor/beast). It's all beautifully done. And, of course, the princess Humbert is trying to rescue is not in the castle at all.

"There was no Lo to behold."

Essentially, you know (roughly) what is going to happen throughout the confession after the first few pages, which makes the fact that the book is still interesting all the more noteworthy.

[Anonymous No.5337268]

>>5336950
Haven't finished it, but it had the best opening lines I've ever read. Blood Meridian had an incredible opening as well but I think that opening's merit comes from the concept and not the individual lines.

[Anonymous No.5337279]

>>5337017
I haven't read his other stuff so I can't say if he did this on purpose, but I don't think you can judge Nabokov's prose based on Humbert's, if you get my meaning.

[Anonymous No.5337321]

My absolute favorite part, and I implore somebody to find a direct quote for me, as I would be forever grateful.

OK, it is the passage in the beginning. When HH is swimming with that wife of his and they are halfway in the lake. On the far side of the lake are a couple of cops, and on the near side of the lake are their friends or just regular people, I forget the specifics. He is debating whether or not to kill her right then. Something about him being halfway to saftey and halfway to jail with the cops on one side and the other people on the other. Ugh, I can't remember the specifics but if anybody knows the novel well I am certain that can point me in the right direction.

I wouldnt love anything more than to read that passage again. It was perfect in my mind.

[Anonymous No.5337393]

>>5337321
Here she blows. It's beautiful.

"I hope so," said Charlotte entering the water. It soon reached the
gooseflesh of her thick thighs; and then, joining her outstretched hands,
shutting her mouth tight, very plain-faced in her black rubber headgear,
Charlotte flung herself forward with a great splash. Slowly we swam out into the shimmer of the lake.
On the opposite bank, at least a thousand paces away (if one cold walk
across water), I could make out the tiny figures of two men working like
beavers on their stretch of shore. I knew exactly who they were: a retired
policeman of Polish descent and the retired plumber who owned most of the
timber on that side of the lake. And I also knew they were engaged in
building, just for the dismal fun of the thing, a wharf. The knocks that
reached us seemed so much bigger than what could be distinguished of those
dwarfs' arms and tools; indeed, one suspected the director of those
acrosonic effects to have been at odds with the puppet-master, especially
since the hefty crack of each diminutive blow lagged behind its visual
version.
The short white-sand strip of "our" beach--from which by now we had
gone a little way to reach deep water--was empty on weekday mornings. There
was nobody around except those two tiny very busy figures on the opposite (See next post)

[Anonymous No.5337401]

>>5337393
side, and a dark-red private plane that droned overhead, and then
disappeared in the blue. The setting was really perfect for a brisk bubbling
murder, and here was the subtle point: the man of law and the man of water
were just near enough to witness an accident and just far enough not to
observe a crime. They were near enough to hear a distracted bather thrashing
about and bellowing for somebody to come and help him save his drowning
wife; and they were too far to distinguish (if they happened to look too
soon) that the anything but distracted swimmer was finishing to tread his
wife underfoot. I was not yet at that stage; I merely want to convey the
ease of the act, the nicety of the setting! So there was Charlotte swimming
on with dutiful awkwardness (she was a very mediocre mermaid), but not
without a certain solemn pleasure (for was not her merman by her side?); and
as I watched, with the stark lucidity of a future recollection (you
know--trying to see things as you will remember having seen them), the
glossy whiteness of her wet face so little tanned despite all her endeavors,
and her pale lips, and her naked convex forehead, and the tight black cap,
and the plump wet neck, I knew that all I had to do was to drop back, take a
deep breath, then grab her by the ankle and rapidly dive with my captive
corpse. I say corpse because surprise, panic and inexperience would cause
her to inhale at once a lethal gallon of lake, while I would be able to hold
on for at least a full minute, open-eyed under water. The fatal gesture
passed like the tail of a falling star across the blackness of the
contemplated crime. It was like some dreadful silent ballet, the male dancer
holding the ballerina by her foot and streaking down through watery
twilight. I might come up for a mouthful of air while still holding her
down, and then would dive again as many times as would be necessary, and
only when the curtain came down on her for good, would I permit myself to
yell for help. And when some twenty minutes later the two puppets steadily
growing arrived in a rowboat, one half newly painted, poor Mrs. Humbert
Humbert, the victim of a cramp or coronary occlusion, or both, would be
standing on her head in the inky ooze, some thirty feet below the smiling
surface of Hourglass Lake.
Simple, was it not? But what d'ye know, folks--I just could not make
myself do it!
She swam beside me, a trustful and clumsy seal, and all the logic of
passion screamed in my ear: Now is the time! And, folks, I just couldn't! In
silence I turned shoreward and gravely, dutifully, she also turned, and
still hell screamed its counsel, and still I could not make myself drown the
poor, slippery, big-bodied creature. The scream grew more and more remote as
I realized the melancholy fact that neither tomorrow, nor Friday, nor any
other day or night, could I make myself put her to death. Oh, I could
visualize myself slapping Valeria's breasts out of alignment, or otherwise
hurting her

[Anonymous No.5337414]

>>5337401
and I could see myself, no less clearly, shooting her lover inthe underbelly and making him say "akh!" and sit down. But I could not kill
Charlotte--especially when things were on the whole not quite as hopeless,
perhaps, as they seemed at first wince on that miserable morning. Were I to
catch her by her strong kicking foot; were I to see her amazed look, hear
her awful voice; were I still to go through with the ordeal, her ghost would
haunt me all my life. Perhaps if the year were 1447 instead of 1947 I might
have hoodwinked my gentle nature by administering her some classical poison
from a hollow agate, some tender philter of death. But in our middle-class
nosy era it would not have come off the way it used to in the brocaded
palaces of the past. Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a
killer. No, no, I was neither. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the
majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning,
physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are
innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community
to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant
behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the
police and society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not
rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen,
sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults,
but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet.
Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill. Oh, my poor Charlotte, do
not hate me in your eternal heaven among an eternal alchemy of asphalt and
rubber and metal and stone--but thank God, not water, not water!
Nonetheless it was a very close shave, speaking quite objectively. And
now comes the point of my perfect-crime parable

[Anonymous No.5337418]

>>5337414
We sat down on our towels in the thirsty sun. She looked around,
loosened her bra, and turned over on her stomach to give her back a chance
to be feasted upon. She said she loved me. She sighed deeply. She extended
one arm and groped in the pocket of her robe for her cigarettes. She sat up
and smoked. She examined her right shoulder. She kissed me heavily with open
smoky mouth. Suddenly, down the sand bank behind us, from under the bushes
and pines, a stone rolled, then another.
"Those disgusting prying kids," said Charlotte, holding up her big bra
to her breast and turning prone again. "I shall have to speak about that to
Peter Krestovski."
From the debouchment of the trail came a rustle, a footfall, and Jean
Farlow marched down with her easel and things.
"You scared us," said Charlotte.
Jean said she had been up there, in a place of green concealment,
spying on nature (spies are generally shot), trying to finish a lakescape,
but it was no good, she had no talent whatever (which was quite true)--"And
have you ever tried painting, Humbert?" Charlotte, who was a little
jealous of Jean, wanted to know if John was coming.

[Anonymous No.5337422]

>>5337418
He was. He was coming home for lunch today. He had dropped her on the
way to Parkington and should be picking her up any time now. It was a grand
morning. She always felt a traitor to Cavall and Melampus for leaving them
roped on such gorgeous days. She sat down on the white sand between
Charlotte and me. She wore shorts. Her long brown legs were about as
attractive to me as those of a chestnut mare. She showed her gums when she
smiled.
"I almost put both of you into my lake," she said. "I even noticed
something you overlooked. You [addressing Humbert] had your wrist watch on
in, yes, sir, you had."
"Waterproof," said Charlotte softly, making a fish mouth.
Jean took my wrist upon her knee and examined Charlotte's gift, then
put back Humbert's hand on the sand, palm up.
"You could see anything that way," remarked Charlotte coquettishly.
Jean sighed. "I once saw," she said, "two children, male and female, at
sunset, right here, making love. Their shadows were giants. And I told you
about Mr. Tomson at daybreak. Next time I expect to see fat old Ivor in the
ivory. He is really a freak, that man. Last time he told me a completely
indecent story about his nephew. It appears--"
"Hullo there," said John's voice.

(End Chapter)

I hope it was as good as you remembered.

[Anonymous No.5337430]

The hamburger/hamburger line is genius. Someone post it for me. It's my favorite sentence ever.

[Anonymous No.5337450]

>>5337422
It was, it was! Thank you so much!

I think most of my favorite parts of this novel coincide with him pleading towards the 'ladies and gentlemen of the jury' (he says that quite a few times). But my god, the imagery and the metaphors it is all so perfect. Sublime. Every bit as good as I remembered it!

I could go on and on about this passage in detail but I will spare y'all that. Thank you so much for finding it. I hope you and everyone else who reads it enjoys it as much as I do.

[Anonymous No.5337461]

>>5336950
>>5337109

His description of Charlotte was perfect.

I'm paraphrasing obviously, but when he first encounters her he describes her speech something like
>'- her polished words reflecting a book club, or bridge club, but never her soul'.

Loved that line

[Anonymous No.5337490]

>>5337430
"my fool preffered the corniest movies, the most cloying fudge. To think that between a hamburger and a hamburger, she would -- invariably, with icy precision -- plump for the former."

I could do this all day.

[Anonymous No.5337536]

>>5337461
Yes, yes, yes.
In general, it was amazing. The perfect cliche of a woman.

Here is the a part of the scene. The description of her appearing on the staircase gets me every time. (I mean the order in which her body parts/ clothing appear.)

There was a staircase at the end of the
hallway, and as I stood mopping my brow (only now did I realize how hot it
had been out-of-doors) and staring, to stare at something, at an old gray
tennis ball that lay on an oak chest, there came from the upper landing the
contralto voice of Mrs. Haze, who leaning over the banisters inquired
melodiously, "Is that Monsieur Humbert?" A bit of cigarette ash dropped from
there in addition. Presently, the lady herself--sandals, maroon slacks,
yellow silk blouse, squarish face, in that order--came down the steps, her
index finger still tapping upon her cigarette.
I think I had better describe her right away, to get it over with. The
poor lady was in her middle thirties, she had a shiny forehead, plucked
eyebrows and quite simple but not unattractive features of a type that may
be defined as a weak solution of Marlene Dietrich. Patting her bronze-brown
bun, she led me into the parlor and we talked for a minute about the McCoo
fire and the privilege of living in Ramsdale. Her very wide-set sea-green
eyes had a funny way of traveling all over you, carefully avoiding your own
eyes. Her smile was but a quizzical jerk of one eyebrow; and uncoiling
herself from the sofa as she talked, she kept making spasmodic dashes at
three ashtrays and the near fender (where lay the brown core of an apple);
whereupon she would sink back again, one leg folded under her. She was,
obviously, one of those women whose polished words may reflect a book club
or bridge club, or any other deadly conventionality, but never her soul;
women who are completely devoid of humor; women utterly indifferent at heart
to the dozen or so possible subjects of a parlor conversation, but very
particular about the rules of such conversations, through the sunny
cellophane of which not very appetizing frustrations can be readily
distinguished.

[Anonymous No.5337562]

>>5337490
Hamburger and a Humburger*

[Anonymous No.5337623]

Oh I just remembered another one I enjoyed immensely. The first time they are at the hotel and you know who is outside smoking.

And he says something and then coughs and then HH is like, wait what did you say, and his reply rhymed with what he actually originally said. Like 'It's warm in July' when he really said "that girl can't be past 9".

Of course what I said isn't close at all to the actual writing. Can anybody find it? It was great and quite funny.

[Anonymous No.5337631]

These quotes are cringe-inducing. I thought Nabokov was known for his prose?

[Anonymous No.5337702]

>>5337631
Right.

[Anonymous No.5337768]

>>5337623
Here ya go. It's favorite of mine.


I left the loud lobby and stood outside, on the white steps, looking at
the hundreds of powdered bugs wheeling around the lamps in the soggy black
night, full of ripple and stir. All I would do--all I would dare do--would
amount to such a trifle . . . Suddenly I was aware that in the darkness next
to me there was somebody sitting in a chair on the pillared porch. I could
not really see him but what gave him away was the rasp of a screwing off,
then a discreet gurgle, then the final note of a placid screwing on. I was
about to move away when his voice addressed me:
"Where the devil did you get her?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said: the weather is getting better."
"Seems so."
"Who's the lassie?"
"My daughter."
"You lie--she's not."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said: July was hot. Where's her mother?"
"Dead."
"I see. Sorry. By the way, why don't you two lunch with me tomorrow.
That dreadful crowd will be gone by then."
"We'll be gone too. Good night."
"Sorry. I'm pretty drunk. Good night. That child of yours needs a lot
of sleep. Sleep is a rose, as the Persians say. Smoke?"
"Not now."
He struck a light, but because he was drunk, or because the wind was,
the flame illumined not him but another person, a very old man, one of those
permanent guests of old hotels--and his white rocker. Nobody said anything
and the darkness returned to its initial place. Then I heard the old-timer
cough and deliver himself of some sepulchral mucus.

[Anonymous No.5338505]

>>5337623
American Psycho does a lot of stuff like this as well

[Anonymous No.5338534]

I finished this book a year ago and I still think about how borderline haunting it is.

Obviously he's an unreliable narrator but the fact he seems to project the moral ambivalence onto the reader is really odd. He almost convinces you that what he's doing isn't wrong but occasionally the writing reminds you that it is absolutely wrong.

Absolutely fantastic.

[Anonymous No.5338762]

>>5336973
Haven't read pale fire, but Ada was definitely really great. Would recommend you read that next

[Anonymous No.5338883]

>>5338505
Yes, but not quite as poetic as Nabakov.

[Anonymous No.5338928]

>>5338534
I was never really taken in by him when reading it actually. I thought his moral grovelling in the beginning was amusing and then his obsessive control of Lolita disturbing. The only thing he did that possessed any decency was the actions at the end, but ultimately his desire for reconciliation came too little too late. And even then, the motivations were hardly pure.

[Anonymous No.5339596]

>>5337393
>>5337401
>>5337414
>>5337418
>>5337422
Well shit. In that one part he compares himself to Dante and rationalizes his evil by alluding to Beatrice. In this case it seems that he is doing the same with Hamlet.

[Anonymous No.5339622]

come on children
please grow up
pedophiles are fucking immature assholes in my book
you bunch of shitty cocks!

[Anonymous No.5339675]

>>5336950
I think you should read it again.
Srsly, not being an asshole.
There is a lot of stuff all throughout the book that anticipates and foreshadows the ending, that everyone misses the first time through. When you read it again, you see how everything fits together. There are even things in the Introduction (by "John Ray, Jr.") that will be new and interesting.
You might want to hunt down "Keys to Lolita" for a more thorough explanation of the resonances and allusions.

[Anonymous No.5339694]

>>5339622
Surely you ruse

[Anonymous No.5339695]

>>5336950
My thoughts are that Lolita is a masterpiece for its prose if for nothing else, the words themselves are consistently lapidary without appearing purple or overblown, the flow almost effortless while maintaining incredible detail. The use of "paedophilia" is amusing and original but people mistakenly glob on to it as an inflammatory work rather than a love story. My issue with Lolita is that it attracts morons who then read it and say to themselves "Well looks like that's it for Nabokov" and rob themselves of the infinite beauties of Pale Fire or Invitation to a Beheading. That is what infuriates me most, I have lost count of the times that I have became tremendously excited when an acquaintance proposes to discuss Nabokov only to find that they not only have only read Lolita but seriously believe that Lolita comprises the entirety of his work.

[Anonymous No.5339763]

>>5336950
This book tore me to bits. The whole time I was reading it I was fully aware of what I was getting myself into and why I was reading it, but...dear god, never did I ever want to murder a fictional person so much as vile, vile Humbert. I devoured that book in 2 days straight and finished with the most hollow and dead feeling I have ever felt at the conclusion of a literary work.

Humbert's way of thinking wasn't exactly new to me, though; I see moralfags and fetishist white knights go at it all the time here and I hear similar rationalizations out of those white knights to those of Humbert's, such as historical/multicultural precedents for sex with children. His chronophiliac classifications in spatial terms (i.e. being on an island) was interesting though, separating them from the rest of the human race in his own mind and putting the blame on them (i.e. "sirens put on this earth to drive men mad with longing," and "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, SHE seduced ME.") for his own demented desires.

I would contend with you,>>5339695, sir, that Lolita is not a love story because what Humbert felt was not love. It was infatuation, lust and pure, twisted selfishness. Throughout his disgusting pursuit and possession, he acts first and foremost for himself, even though he deludes himself (and the unwary reader) into believing he is in love. Humbert's account of his life throughout Act I confirms he has no idea what love really is, and for us to believe his physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual scarring of a 13-year-old girl is love is, frankly preposterous. The novel is a literary masterpiece, certainly, but it is not, and never will be, a love story. It is the Confession of a White Widowed Male - and nothing more.

I look forward to reading more of Nabokov's work. Which would you recommend first?

[Anonymous No.5339770]

>>5339695
Aside from his novels in English what would you recommend?

[Anonymous No.5339771]

>>5339763
tumblr plz go

[Anonymous No.5339781]

>>5339771
50 bucks says your reading scores on the ACT were below average.

[Anonymous No.5339789]

>>5339763
For me, the agonizing part is that he DID love her. By the end, he admits fully that he committed horrible crimes against her and ruined her life, but... "I was a pentapod monster, mais je t'aimais, je t'aimais!"
How many of us can say that they never did anything bad toward anyone that they loved? Humbert is the epitome of the person struggling with the contrast between the purity of love and the needs of lust.

[Anonymous No.5339793]

>>5339622
>come on children

[Anonymous No.5339803]

>>5339763
I'm >>5339695
The point that I am hanging my statement on is that even after Dolores passes out of the golden zone of attraction of H.H., goes off with Quilty, and manages to get herself knocked up by a plebeian, in other words disinvests herself of all her allure and sexual attraction, she is still beloved by H.H. because he loves "her" (soul, being, gestalt what have you) rather than loving her attributes which is the premise that you the reader is going on up to the end. That is what makes it a love story to me, to realize that love is not about (twisted) sexual attraction, or any number of traits possessed by the individual but rather love of the individual even when no longer alluring, desirable, and "wanted".

[Anonymous No.5339805]

>>5339781
i'm actually blind i just click around the page and throw out memes i heard through my text to speech software at random hoping one will stick

[Anonymous No.5339812]

>>5339763
I support this dogma against pedophilia, as it is true evil. Dogmas, good or bad, are still dogmas though. While it should impact your reason, to let it impact your feelings in such a way to feel the need to express such disgust and to not even empathize with it's protgonist even if unreliable, perhaps one of the most important parts of reading any book, Lolita in particular.
Your dogma has overstepped it's limits beyond reason and too far into emotion. It's intellectual poison at this point.

[Anonymous No.5339905]

>>5339789
I disagree; his feelings, tempered and cooled by time as they might have been, were still not love. He poured so much time and energy into his obsession with her that he was nothing more than a creature of habit by the end of it, unable to move on. He was still in love with the idea of being in love with her, not with her.

>>5339812
"Methinks thou dost protest too much," eh? Well, riddle me this: how does not emotionally identifying with a child predator equate to intellectual poison? I was able to enjoy the book and fully appreciate it as a work of fine literary art. But if you lose sight of what Humbert is through his own self-serving bias, you've wandered into dangerous territory where his emotion can override your intellectual judgement of his character. Empathize more that just a little, and you begin to question whether or not what he's doing is really wrong because he's doing it for "love."

[Anonymous No.5339920]

>>5339905
And let me amend to this, we need to share an assumption about the meaning of the word "love" before we argue this any further or it'll be pointless.

Love is more than just a pining and affection towards another member of the human species. That pining and affection is known as infatuation. It's a one-sided emotional state that often gets mistaken for love, but it ISN'T love. Love has more dimensions than that.

Love isn't something you feel. Love is something you do.

[Anonymous No.5339930]

>>5339905
>I disagree; his feelings, tempered and cooled by time as they might have been, were still not love. He poured so much time and energy into his obsession with her that he was nothing more than a creature of habit by the end of it, unable to move on. He was still in love with the idea of being in love with her, not with her.

Then what the hell is love then? Everything is either lust, obsession, ego, cowardice or duty. Give me a love story and I will prove that it is not.

>how does not emotionally identifying with a child predator equate to intellectual poison? I was able to enjoy the book and fully appreciate it as a work of fine literary art. But if you lose sight of what Humbert is through his own self-serving bias, you've wandered into dangerous territory where his emotion can override your intellectual judgement of his character. Empathize more that just a little, and you begin to question whether or not what he's doing is really wrong because he's doing it for "love."
You reek of prejudices against whatever his name is. Of course, the narrator always injects his own's bias but to dismiss the everything based on that is asinine.

[Anonymous No.5339982]

>>5339930
Love is patient and kind, not envious or boastful, proud or rude or seeking of its own interests, and it doesn't keep a record of wrongs done to it. Humbert was, throughout his entire relationship with Dolores Haze, constantly pursuing her in a vain attempt to meet an aching void in himself created by an earlier event in his childhood. THAT'S NOT. FUCKING. LOVE. SIR. It's many things, including a dooming passion and a sordid affair, but love ain't one of 'em.

And on the contrary I have not dismissed "the everything." I simply filtered Humbert's bullshit out of the equation. I am able to call Lolita a wonderful piece of prose based on its style, consistency and cast without getting dragged under by the torrid waves of emotion felt by an admitted sex offender. What is asinine is your implication that one is not allowed to be disgusted by a person after having walked a mile in their shoes. I'm not saying there's something wrong with the book. I am saying there is something wrong with the protagonist himself. He's a fucking emotional screwball.

[Anonymous No.5340042]

>>5339930
And for the record, how are YOU able to let him off the hook so easily? How are you not able to look past everything he SAYS to look at what he DOES the whole time? This is a man who takes advantage of a 13-year-old girl for two years, holds her against her will, isolates her from the world so as to preserve his control over her and violates the natural trust of the parent-child relationship. He's a parasite, not a lover. Oh, and let's not forget he tried to drug her before the first time he tried to take advantage of her.

I get that the sweeping sentiments he made about how he feels are beautiful.That's one of the things that made it such a good book. But that doesn't in any way diminish HH's bankruptcy of virtue, or invalidate my standpoint that he as a person is fucking disgusting.

[Anonymous No.5340048]

And on that note, it's 3 a.m. I'm going to bed now. Nighty-night, /lit/.

[Anonymous No.5340099]

I love literary references. Everyone who read or at least knows who Melmoth the Wanderer was must have cracked a smile at the fact Humbert named his car Melmoth.

[Anonymous No.5340331]

>>5339920
>>5339905
>>5339812
>>5339803
>>5339763
>all this verbosity

[Anonymous No.5341162]

>>5339770
You didn't ask me, but I've read all of his novels.

'Mary' is his first and the least entertaining. Avoid it, unless you have read almost everything else.

'The Eye' is his second worst.
(These are simply my opinions, btw)

Aside from "Transparent Things," which was written in English, the two novels/novellas mentioned above are his shortest, and they are from the Russian years.

You can't go wrong with anything else he wrote. Even "The Eye" and "Mary" have literary merits, but they are best read after experiencing others.

"Laughter in the Dark" is his most popular novel from his Russian years. It, along with "Despair", share more traits with "Lolita" than anything else he wrote in Russian. I mean this only when it comes to characters and plot; although "Despair" contains plenty of word play.

I'd start with either of those two. "Laughter" is a straight-forward and highly entertaining.

Lastly, out of all of his Russian novels, "The Gift" is widely considered to be his most literary of his Russian years. IMO, it's not the place to start.

Here are some quotes to get you into the novels:

[Anonymous No.5341203]

>>5340331
>Can't read a story unless it's greentext

>>5341162
Thanks for the recs. I'll take Laughter in the Dark for 200, Alex.

[Anonymous No.5341282]

>>5339982
>>5340042

>Love is patient and kind, not envious or boastful, proud or rude or seeking of its own interests, and it doesn't keep a record of wrongs done to it
Rhetoric. Give me you love story, and I will prove that it is not. Whatever you think it is will be either lust, obsession, ego, cowardice or duty.

I haven't defended the guy. I simply pointed out why you are no more an intellectual than some random bigot.
>I have not dismissed "the everything." I simply filtered Humbert's bullshit out of the equation
"His bullshit" here is everything he said. Your praise of the prose is nothing more but a strawman. You used the most established and neutral opinions of most people here as an "concession" to give an impression of a reasonable reader. But you are nothing of the sort. You came to witness how that "admitted sex offender" weasel his way out. You were not interested in his story, Hell, you didn't even think he had a story to tell, just a confession with flowery words.

[Anonymous No.5341611]

>>5336973
Not OP, but Pale Fire and Ada are two that have intrigued me the most (I also have only read Lolita, several months ago).

[Anonymous No.5341654]

>>5339622
>Self-publishing

[Anonymous No.5341683]

>>5339905
>how does not emotionally identifying with a child predator equate to intellectual poison? I was able to enjoy the book and fully appreciate it as a work of fine literary art. But if you lose sight of what Humbert is through his own self-serving bias, you've wandered into dangerous territory where his emotion can override your intellectual judgement of his character.

I for one was secretly rooting for Humbert in the whole first half of the book, to the point where he considered drugging Lo, as fucked up as that was, but when he finally does get her all to himself, I was left feeling "well shit, what now?" and then after that, guilt.

[Anonymous No.5342133]

>>5336950
>and at some points I even sympathized with HH
Why would you sympathize with a manipulative child rapist?

[Anonymous No.5342159]

>>5337017

why note just use google translate or something? Sure it wouldn't be perfect buy you could get the gist

[Anonymous No.5342160]

>>5336950
The bit where school's principal(it was the principal lady, wasn't it?) describes the programme to Humbert is probably the most hilarious bit of literature I have ever stumbled upon.

Sadly Im not english and my copy of Lo is in my native tongue, so I won't post it; if anyone gets which bit is on my mind, post it please

[Anonymous No.5342192]

>>5342133
Because he is not able to control it, consumed by his own lust. Alone, never to be understood, never to be pitied.

Real human bean

[Anonymous No.5342466]

Not to change the subject away from the rousing discussion of the morality of paedophilia, but am I the only one who didn't particularly like Pale Fire? I don't mean that I disliked it, by all means, but I was so ready to really love it, considering how much I loved Lolita and Ada. I suppose I found it hard to get invested in a Kinbote when he was so ridiculous, but I can't really put my finger on anything I particularly disliked.

So, and I ask this without a hostile undertone: What do people see in Pale Fire? What did I miss? I caught on to Kinbote being a ludicrously unreliable narrator, obviously, but that hardly makes Pale Fire Nabokov's best.

[Anonymous No.5342560]

Has anybody read this? It's actual incest, unlike Lolita, and I wanted to know if it's any good.

[Anonymous No.5342707]

>>5342466

I found the poem to a touching and clever meditation on mortality - you really have to pay attention to how the daughter's death, and how that ironizes his statements about exceeding mortality, understanding the beyond - but Kinbote's sections to be over-artificial except in a few passages where they seem to brush in a truthful way with the disconnection of stimulus and response that makes madness madness. For me, he's the outlandish element of a joke taken way beyond the length of a joke, into the tiring. I think part of the problem, maybe the problem, is that the whole section is a sort of disembodied monologue. If it was contrasted more strongly, if it struggled dissonantly, with an actual, less fabulous life being lived, then I think it would have suceeded. I think some people get that out of Kinbote from the sections describing his professorship, but I personally found them to be too thin to do this.

Pnin is the only other novel of Nabokov's I really connected with on an emotional level.

[Anonymous No.5342728]

>>5342560

It's amazing.

[Anonymous No.5342906]

>>5337017
>but it felt at times like Nabokov was just showing off to show off rather than using careful placement of that kind of eloquence to highlight the more important parts of the book.

But that's the thing. He was so gifted he could actually expose himself like a peacock. He was so fertile that, instead of a careful search for the right words and the correct order he simply let the flux of images and metaphors in his brain go wild. In this he was like Shakespeare: he knew he was great and it seems that, when he thought about something, about a specific subject, so many good images bubbled in his brain that he couldn't resist in using them all instead of selecting the best one.

That metaphor and simile that was going to be the hearth of the poem of a minor poet was, in a Nabokov's paragraph, just one of the many cells. The same that Samuel Johnson said about Shakespeare can be applied to him (well, maybe not in the same scale, but close):

The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. Other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness.Shakespeare opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals.

[Anonymous No.5342924]

>>5336950
whats it about

[Anonymous No.5344716]

bump

[Anonymous No.5344776]

>>5341203
No, I'm perfectly literate.

As for the guys I was quoting, I'm not so sure.