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/lit/ - Literature

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6360725 No.6360725 [Reply] [Original]

Well /int/, I finished the first part of the book (there are 2 parts). I took some time to read it because I am reading in English - which is not my mother tongue.

Overall, it is what I expected: many pedophile references and many, MANY french words.

Anyone else read it already?

>> No.6360740

Which part is that? when he picks her up from the summer camp?

You are getting close to the best part

>> No.6360754
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6360754

>There she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined narrow hands and her gooseflesh white arms, and her shallow ears, and her unkempt armpits, there she was, hopelessly worn at seventeen, with that baby, dreaming already in her of becoming a big shot and retiring around 2020 A.D. --and I looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. She was only the faint violet whiff and dead leaf echo of the nymphet I had rolled myself upon with such cries in the past; an echo on the brink of a russet ravine, with a far wood under a white sky, and brown leaves choking the brook, and one last cricket in the crisp weeds...

>my fucking face when English isn't even his native language

>> No.6360762

>>6360754
He grew up trilingual with Russian, French and English

>> No.6360763

>>6360740
Exaclty. Good to know. I need to finish some university stuff, but after that I will start reading the second part :^).

>> No.6360820

>>6360754
Why is this guy so good at descriptions holy fuck

>> No.6360842

>>6360725
You are correct.
It's beautifully written, but it is about pedophilia. I think this was his Madam Bovary.

>> No.6360894

>>6360842
I have to say, the way how he describes the feelings of Mr. Humbert to nymphs makes hard to believe that he wasn't himself a pedo.

>> No.6360933

>>6360894
that's why it's so brilliant. insofar as we can believe that he wasn't a pedophile, the ability of him to so eloquently and beautifully write from such a perspective, with such empathy and understanding, so much that we start to question whether or not the real author is a pedophile, is amazing.

I thought it was 5/5, or at least 4.5/5, but my friend who's read Lolita and an Invitation to a Beheading says the latter is better.

OP, I'd say part 2 is better than part 1, but they're pretty close.

>> No.6360942

>>6360933
>rating books out of 5 stars

pleb detected

>> No.6361065

>>6360942
what.

>> No.6361314

>>6360942

he's just making a reference point but I agree with you. Goodreads/Amazon should not have 5 star rating systems for any music, film, lit, or any art. Art is a matter of did you get anything out of it or not. Yes or no. Thumb up or down. Who the fuck thinks they have the right to give Sun Also Rises or Dubliners 3 stars. Ridiculous.

>> No.6361317

>>6360933

Interesting. I gave up on Ada or Ador but I think Pale Fire is masterful so far. It's a bit troubling because I'm not sure if his other work can possibly top Pale Fire

>> No.6361322

>>6360725
I finished it a couple of weeks ago. It's genius. Powerfully written and extremely clever.

I'm reading Pale Fire now. It's not as beautiful or enjoyable, but probably more clever. Maybe not though. I'll see when I'm finished.

>> No.6361925

>>6360754
>>my fucking face when English isn't even his native language
I only just finished Lolita, and it's my first Nabokov book, but apparently he apparently was no longer capable of using his other languages in the way he had mastered English. He's a (beautifully written) explanation, regarding Lolita's translation:

>the "story of this translation is the story of a disappointment. Alas, that 'wonderful Russian language' which, I imagined, still awaits me somewhere, which blooms like a faithful spring behind the locked gate to which I, after so many years, still possess the key, turned out to be non-existent, and there is nothing beyond that gate, except for some burned out stumps and hopeless autumnal emptiness, and the key in my hand looks rather like a lock pick."

>> No.6361963

>>6361314
well in that case very much yes

>> No.6361982

>>6360725
I've seen this book discussed here a lot and it's made me want to check it out. Though, can someone give me a really quick synopsis of what it explores?

I hear pedo references in regards to this book most of the time, and I'm just wondering if it's a book simply dealing with someone with pedophilic urges or an argument in favor of said urges.

>> No.6361990

>>6361982
Check this shit out if you're not even willing enough to google it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kMTSvg3PG4

>> No.6361992

>>6360933
I feel the same way about Mishima being gay after reading Confessions of a Mask, but I think his homosexuality is a little more obvious than Nabokov's pedophilia.

>> No.6361998

Just started reading this based on a recommendation from a friend. Just finished the first part myself, I found it beautifully written but at the same time boring up until the end of part one. It gets so good.

>> No.6362002

>>6361982
It explores just about everything regarding pedophilia -- the indulgence and the ramifications, both real and psychological

The first half of the book is the only thing that could really be called erotic. After that, it's just really fucked up. Beautifully written all the way through, which is the real reason anyone should read it, imo

The tone is somewhat that of a sarcastic, dark comedy (with fucked up, erotic undertones), which seems to be guided by fate. I chuckled to myself a few times

>> No.6362039

Why would a proper man even waste his time reading this pedo shit?

>> No.6362061

>>6362039
>caring about being a proper man

K E K
E
K

>> No.6362074

>>6362061

ok, worthless NEET, whatever you say.

>> No.6362081

>>6362074
>NEET

It's nice that we completely devalue words by using them to describe things or people we don't like.

>> No.6362086

>>6362081
Can't hear you. Maybe you should come out of your mom's basement.

>> No.6362090

>>6360754
That book was beyond disturbing. Fuck Humbert.

>> No.6362098

>>6361982
here's something from the afterword:

No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sensuous and the sensual; this is preposterous; I can only admire but cannot emulate the accuracy of judgments of those who pose the fair young mammals photographs in magazines where the general neckline is just low enough to provoke a past master's chuckle and just high enough not to make a postmaster frown. I presume there exists readers who find titillating the display of mural words in those hopelessly banal and enormous novels which are typed out by the thumbs of tense mediocrities and called "powerful" and "stark" by the reviewing hack. There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and despite John Ray's assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is either topical trash or what some call Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammer and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at Mann.
...

It is childish to study a work of fiction in order to gain information about a county or about a social class or about the author. And yet one of my very intimate friends, after reading Lolita, was sincerely worried that I (I!) should be living "among such depressing people" -- when the only discomfort I really experienced was to live in my workshop among discarded limbs and unfinished torsos.
After Olympia Press, in Paris, published the book, an American critic suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel. The substitution "English languge" for "romantic novel" would make this elegant formula more correct.

>> No.6362112

>>6362098
Interesting. So, what's the general /lit/ opinion on how novels should be presented? Should they attempt (obviously or otherwise) to convey a message about something, be it anything at all, or should they simply be creative works of expression for the sole sake of creating?

>> No.6362116

>>6361990
Nice, thanks, I love black people.

>> No.6362778

Bump