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/lit/ - Literature

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File: 13 KB, 272x340, Vladimir_Nabokov.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6656094 No.6656094 [Reply] [Original]

How much longer until you guys realize this guy is just pure affectation and pretentiousness? Nabokov is abhorrent, with lots of pretty writing to make up for the fact that he has nothing to say. He's a sham and a fake full of empty gestures. The only thing you guys take away from reading Nabokov is rubbing your nipples in ecstasy while muttering "muh prose".

Why don't you faggots just read something authentic and honest like Don Quixote instead?

But don't take my word for it.

>Nabokov, in his decline, imposes on even the keenest reader a horrible brew of piety, literal-mindedness, vulgarity and philistinism.

>"Lolita" is a demonstration of the artistic pitfall that awaits a novelist who invades the clinical field of the case history.

>Nabokov's sense of humor is on the same level as German scatological humor: exrement is funny simply because it is exrement. His comedy is a lie. It is dead. It is evil, like racial prejudice.

>"Lolita," then, is undeniably news in the world of books. Unfortunately, it is bad news. There are two equally serious reasons why it isn't worth any adult reader's attention. The first is that it is dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion. The second is that it is repulsive.

>Ultimately, however, it has no more artistic merit than Greaves's 'how-to' because it is merely a fancy 'I-did'.

>Dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion.

>However monumental may be its message, it takes on a triviality simply by virtue of being fiction in a time that does not want it. In all the history of the world no people have ever wanted art for its own sake or meaning for its own sake.

>Nabokov's humor only shows him up for what he is. We pity him his obsessions and frown at his tastelessness.

>> No.6656100

>>6656094
>In all the history of the world no people have ever wanted art for its own sake or meaning for its own sake.
Why can't I hold all this pleb?

>> No.6656109

>>6656094
>lots of pretty writing
I like that part of his writing. The fact that he doesn't have anything to say makes it even more delicious. It's literature for the sake of literature. Pure art.

>> No.6656124

Only retards on /lit/ think Nabsy is
>muh prose
The prose in Lolita is Humbert's prose and it's a hilarious black comedy with no big theme. It's just portrait of a pathetic nebbish literary type made out to be a fool by a pre-teen girl.

>> No.6656129

Why does a writer need to have "something to say"? Isn't beauty enough?

Nabokov himself was transparent with the fact that he wasn't trying to say anything.

>> No.6656133

>>6656094
>authentic and honest
What exactly makes one fiction author's work more "authentic" or "honest" than another?

>> No.6656135

>>6656133
u have 2 talk about wymyn's problems

>> No.6656149

>>6656094
>don't take my word for it
Why not? You've taken the word of whoever you've just green quoted.

>> No.6656150
File: 6 KB, 192x263, leddit.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6656150

>>6656149
>green quoted.

>> No.6656155

good ideas are hogwash

>> No.6656168

>>6656150
Eat dick, newfag. Green quoting and green texting are separate things.

>> No.6656189

>>6656168
It's just quotes and greentext, which when overlapping, just create greentexted quotes.

There is no greenquote.

>> No.6656195

>>6656189
Things change.

>> No.6656209
File: 538 KB, 245x320, 234542352345423.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6656209

>>6656195

>> No.6656219

Honestly yeah Nabokov is shit.

>> No.6656238

>>6656094
I already have

>> No.6656412
File: 531 KB, 1338x2048, image.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6656412

>b-but all his books are written bad on purpose, to show how the protagonist is an idiot

>> No.6656436

>>6656094
Don Quixote is probably the greatest work of literature to have ever been written. Nabokov wishes he had half the wit of Cervantes

>> No.6656439

>OP has only read lolita
>self proclaimed nabokov expert

>> No.6656594

>>6656129
Not enough, vafel. Do you like when man masturbates right in front of your nose? 'Beatiful' writer does the same.

>> No.6656667

>muh autenticity

Dostoevskyfaggots have crawled out of their holes to shitpost, what's the matter, got bored from hundreds of pages of whining characters?

>> No.6656675

>>6656094
I've always agreed with Alain Robbe-Grillet's famous quote: “The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it.”

Hardly anyone says it in a better way than Nabokov.

>> No.6656691

Yes, Nabokov is a soulless, empty, shallow writer who basically jerked off on paper and thus the words sounded nice.
He was mad at Dostoevsky because the man didn't have to lift a finger to be the God of literature that he is, while Nabokov spent his life being a shitty critic and a mediocre writer.

>> No.6656697

>>6656439

>implying OP actually read Lolita

>> No.6656710

>>6656691
>the man didn't have to lift a finger
He ought to get someone to do editing for him, but he didn't, and now his sycophants consider his retardation an advantage, expressive writing my ass.

>> No.6656726

>>6656094

>lots of pretty writing to make up for the fact that he has nothing to say.

You haven't read Pnin, have you? Pnin is the single best character study I've ever read. It's incredibly funny and touching. It isn't freighted with allegory. Every theme that arises from the book is light, masterfully light. That is Nabokov, he is a master of lightness.

Also Ada certainly has "something to say" in more aspirational and obvious sense that you mean. Read the first line. It announces itself. So does "Bend Sinister." Do you not detect Nabokov's resistance to science in "Speak, Memory?" And The fact that you are unable to draw any sort of moral education from the stained glass window that is Lolita also speaks to your character. There are morals in Nabokov, they just land gently on the text. He is never about them. He is about making you feel.

>> No.6656727

>>6656697
>implying anybody actually read Lolita

>> No.6656781

>>6656094
>reading authors who offer you what they "have to say" instead of offering you beauty itself.
pig disgusting.

>>6656436
Nabokov might agree with you. Doesn't mean he's bad. Just because Bach is better than Mahler doesn't make Mahler not also a genius.

>> No.6656793

Go read Laughter in the Dark, OP.

>> No.6656899

the only people that read him are high school students. he will soon be forgotten. i asked someone who was reading lolita at the cafe if she liked nabokov and she had no idea who i was talking about. that's your average person reading lolita.

>> No.6658000

Oh look, another Nabokov thread.
It's been so long since the last discussion. All of you surely have a lot of original and important thoughts to tell. Not

>> No.6659266

Who are you quoting?

>> No.6659352

>>6656094
wrong!....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jX60BDHWf8

just beautiful, man

>> No.6659385

>>6656094
>with lots of pretty writing to make up for the fact that he has nothing to say.

>>6656094
>read something authentic and honest

>>6656436

Stop, just stop. Shakespeare and Tolstoy are far better (and I’m sure there are a lot of others).

>>6656594
>Do you like when man masturbates right in front of your nose? 'Beatiful' writer does the same.

>>6656691
>Yes, Nabokov is a soulless, empty, shallow writer who basically jerked off on paper and thus the words sounded nice.

>>6656691
>He was mad at Dostoevsky because the man didn't have to lift a finger to be the God of literature that he is

Tolstoy is superior in every way, by far.


To those people I quoted: I hope none of you have the desire to become writers. If you have, just abandon it now and avoid years of frustration and suffering: not a single one of you have what it takes to walk all the way.

If you only like to read, well, than keep reading: you are not very good at it but at least you will not suffer with the inexorable realization that you don’t have talent.

I would love to see what kinds of things you people have been producing on the last days and weeks: the mediocrity of it must be painful.

People who approach literature because they think they have “ideas” and “things to say” and “philosophical thoughts” are the worst, and never amount to anything. Everything has already been said, for literature deals with humanity and human nature, and countless writers and thinkers along history have already worked the same problems that every generation has to face eventually. There is nothing new; all is already old. Whenever you people think that someone or yourselves are different from others and are feeling something different or imagining something different remember that we humans are all terribly alike, that everything that compose us is also existing in the other humans.

What makes writers great is their art, their technics and their craft. Even writers that are “direct”, “simple” and “crystalline” like Tolstoy are, if you analyze them, deeply artistic.

>> No.6659420

>>6659352
That is so dumb.

>> No.6659513

>>6656209
nice tumblr gif

>> No.6659558
File: 11 KB, 248x300, 1381017985725.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6659558

>>6659385
>Shakespeare
cucked

>> No.6659567

>>6659385
>To those people I quoted: I hope none of you have the desire to become writers. If you have, just abandon it now and avoid years of frustration and suffering: not a single one of you have what it takes to walk all the way.
>If you only like to read, well, than keep reading: you are not very good at it but at least you will not suffer with the inexorable realization that you don’t have talent.
>I would love to see what kinds of things you people have been producing on the last days and weeks: the mediocrity of it must be painful.
>People who approach literature because they think they have “ideas” and “things to say” and “philosophical thoughts” are the worst, and never amount to anything. Everything has already been said, for literature deals with humanity and human nature, and countless writers and thinkers along history have already worked the same problems that every generation has to face eventually. There is nothing new; all is already old. Whenever you people think that someone or yourselves are different from others and are feeling something different or imagining something different remember that we humans are all terribly alike, that everything that compose us is also existing in the other humans.
>What makes writers great is their art, their technics and their craft. Even writers that are “direct”, “simple” and “crystalline” like Tolstoy are, if you analyze them, deeply artistic.

you must be a miserable cynic who cant help himself from projecting, sad cunt :0

>> No.6659602

>>6659567

prove him wrong and post your stuff faggot

>> No.6659621

Well, OP, speaking of being fatuous, I see precisely no substantial critique in your post. Now, I've never gotten around to reading Nabokov, but you could substitute in almost any generally well-regarded writer's name and your "point" would work just as well. To put it in Analytic philosophical terms, the truth value wouldn't change because there's absolutely no way to properly evaluate it. What you (and whomever you cited in your greentext) just spat out, OP, is one big nothing, and unlike Nabokov, it is not beautiful.

>> No.6660049

>>6656094
Martin Amis (the first guy you quote) generally loves Nabokov, just not everything about him. And why should anyone care about what Orville Prescott, Alfred Chester, and some goodreads reviewer (couldn't dig up more people?) have to say about it? Classic novels (Great Gatsby, etc) have gotten bad reviews, then proved to be lasting.

>> No.6660082

Nabokov is one of the best writers who ever lived. All these buttmad Dosty and Faulkner fags in this thread are just mad because based Nabokov called these fucking pretentious pseudo philisophical authors out on their bullshit.

>> No.6660097

I dare you to read Pnin and hold the same opinion afterward

>> No.6661354

>>6656094
Don't spew your shit buzzword "authenticity" on the glorious Don Quixote.

>> No.6662445

>>6656094
The thing about Nabokov is that he was shallow, his work is only pretty prose. He could be telling the story of a /gif/ bisexual cucking porn and it wouldn't have made much difference because he is all style no substance.

>> No.6662465

>>6656675
>"The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it.”

NOPE, this is exactly the garbage aestheticism that took over the 20th century and made most of its literature worthless because it was all egotistical assholes trying to impress people wit their own "unique style" rather than acknowledging that style is just a medium in which to communicate the poetic idea.

This "all that matters is style" is the creed of all the poetaster faggots who should never have read anything in the first place because they are superficial women always beholden to the most surface aspect of things.

>> No.6662473

>>6659385
Tolstoy is an overhyped journalist.

As for Shakespeare. It's a crime that he's put anywhere near the same league as Homer, Virgil, Dante.

>> No.6662485
File: 22 KB, 256x273, schath.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6662485

>tfw reading Don Quixote as an allegory, Don Quixote is the Christian/Platonic soul ensnared by sin/false ideas, Panza is his guardian angel, all the people he meets are devils encouraging him in his sin/delusion.
>tfw Don Quixote is not just some individual delinquent, but a type of all of us who are ruled by fantasy.

>> No.6662488

What's wrong with reading something for muh prose and muh prose alone? Why does literature always have to be more then that?

>> No.6662530

>>6662488
Because that equals whatever you are reading with masturbation or warhammer novels both of which are done and read just because.

>> No.6662539

>>6656675
It's pretty retarded. Books with only style are garbage exactly because they are missing the most important part. If Dante was style only he would be worthless, but he has something to say in every verse which is exactly what makes him so amazing.

>> No.6662549

how on earth do people think prose is the only thing Nabokov has to offer. the guy was a consummate aesthetic dork supreme, and that includes story structure. Pale Fire is so carefully structured to mete out information exactly when you need it. Lolita is two novels and the latter one is basically plotted like fuckin Ian Fleming or something. Pnin is the most meticulously laid out collection of linked short stories possibly ever published

>> No.6662704

>>6662465
buttmad Celine fan detected

>> No.6662761

>>6656094
>It is evil, like racial prejudice.
What? How is this relevant at all? Do SJW fags really need to bring up the evil of racism in every.fucking.context?

>The second is that it is repulsive.
So you shouldn't read well-written books because you disagree with the content? People better stop reading A song of fire and ice books!

>However monumental may be its message, it takes on a triviality simply by virtue of being fiction in a time that does not want it
The message isn't monumental. Why does the time not want fiction?

Nothing makes sense here, OP. Stop being a faggot.

>> No.6663253

>>6662473

You dont know nothing about literature.

>> No.6663265

>>6662465
>the poetic idea.

What is a "poetic idea"?

Why there is no poetry in the tragedy of Lolita?

Also: if you want real and true knowledge, study science.

>> No.6663286

>>6662465
The only way to honestly say that Nabokov was all style and no substance would be to not actually get anything he wrote.

Though besides that, what exactly makes pursuing "the poetic idea" any less of an egotistical and self-indulgent act than "trying to impress people wit" unique styles?

>> No.6663383

>>6662473
>As for Shakespeare. It's a crime that he's put anywhere near the same league as Homer, Virgil, Dante.

>More characters (actually many more characters);
>More situations, settings and different atmospheres;
>Can create all sorts of different humans (including a lot of women, who are mostly absent from the other quoted poets, unless in the form of artificial goddess and saints);
>Greater use of the figures of speech;
>Greater (actually much greater) use of metaphors (the soul of poetry), in a degree never seen in any other writer (or even in a large number of other writers combined);
>Greater (actually much greater) use of similes, in a degree never seen in any other writer (or even in a large number of other writers combined);
>Use of several different verse forms, including blank-verse, rhymed couplets, small-meter songs;
>Use of prose, in several different styles;
>Use of an enormous variety of source-material to feed his imagery, in so opulent a wealth that nobody to this day was able to equal;
>Ability to write both comedy and tragedy with great mastery (being comedy harder to handle than tragedy, and comedy, not strange, is the thing that Virgil, Homer and Dante lack in their works).

Actually, to put Shakespeare in the same level of Homer, Virgil and Dante is the crime. Those are all great artists, no doubt about that, but Shakespeare is far greater. There is really something awe-inspiring about his achievement.

>> No.6663400

>>6656094
If you disagree with the OP, read Pale Fire. It's philistine garbage. The humor is awful.

>> No.6663413

>>6663400
>Judging a high-concept book where the premise itself is the joke by "the humor" in it
Maximum Overpleb

>> No.6663419

>>6662539
He doesn't mean you can merely say anything. What he's saying is that the style, the story, and the characters should not be subordinated to the author's beliefs, be them political, religious, or philosophical. In other words, it is not the novelist's job to teach us how to live. Their job is to show us how we live, to flirt with some ideas perhaps, and to do so with beauty and grace. You, like many others, may have a difficult time adequately describing a favorite book or movie of yours to other people. This is because WHAT it's about -- that is, the ideas and the plot -- are second to how the work is executed. That, my boy, is what men like Robbe-Grillet meant. It is what Nabokov understood. And it is why books that put ideas first, like Atlas Shrugged or The Stranger, ultimately fail as works of art.

>> No.6663493

>>6663413
"High concept" is a gimmicky footnote book where the humor is Nabokov stroking himself to getting called "The Beaver"? It's not funny, it's not good. Go get the Barnes and Noble edition where the footnotes are put into a separate box and you read them like trading cards.

That book is all the flaws of being a shut-in academic and trying to write a novel about real-life. Lolita was great, and there are parts of the poem that are really beautiful, but be honest with yourself and quit parroting some English adjunct that convinced you it was a good book. It's not.

>> No.6663511

>>6663383
so where's his epic then? What's so impressive about making many whimsical flights of fancy bereft of the ideological commitment and gravity of an epic poem

>> No.6663584

>>6663511

>Ideological commitment?

Man, it's much more easy to be committed to some form of ideology and philosophy of life, to let your own thoughts and opinions, your own view of the world and political rites to leak into your writing than to avoid such leaking. The majority of writers, even if they policy themselves, end up soaking their works with their own opinions: it's an easy fault to commit. It is much harder (and nobler) to hide any of your private believes and toughs and simply let the work be itself; let all the characters be themselves and don't try to offer your morals and your wisdom as solutions for the world. Shakespeare was very good in restraining his own opinions, and that's actually a virtue ( rare virtue).

>gravity of an epic poem

Epic poems are but a genre of fiction. You might prefer this genre, but there are lots of other people who prefer Tragedy and Comedy, for example.

As for epic, Shakespeare wrote several epic-scale works, like Henry V and Anthony and Cleopatra. Se simply didn't choose to work on a vast poem about some particular subject, but made smaller scale epics. Whoever it's all in there: the war, the speeches about courage and honor; the tragedies of the fall of empires and kingdoms - he could write about "major themes" as well as any epic writer. But he could also satirize this same themes, for he knew that what is honor and value to some is just politics and oppression to others, and he also knew that, in a word where there are rich kings and powerful ladies and landowners there are still, breathing under the same sun, a great cloud of fleas that we call the poor, the slaves, the low-life slum residents and the simple folk of the country, the peasants.

>> No.6663607

>>6663493
>That book is all the flaws of being a shut-in academic and trying to write a novel about real-life.
>a novel about real-life.
Except that's not what it was about at all. Try again after you've learned how to read.

>> No.6663670
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6663670

>>6663493

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4310/the-art-of-fiction-no-40-vladimir-nabokov

INTERVIEWER

Another critic has written that your “worlds are static. They may become tense with obsession, but they do not break apart like the worlds of everyday reality.” Do you agree? Is there a static quality in your view of things?

NABOKOV

Whose “reality”? “Everyday” where? Let me suggest that the very term “everyday reality” is utterly static since it presupposes a situation that is permanently observable, essentially objective, and universally known. I suspect you have invented that expert on “everyday reality.” Neither exists.

INTERVIEWER

He does [names him]. A third critic has said that you “diminish” your characters “to the point where they become ciphers in a cosmic farce.” I disagree; Humbert, while comic, retains a touching and insistent quality—that of the spoiled artist.

NABOKOV

I would put it differently: Humbert Humbert is a vain and cruel wretch who manages to appear “touching.” That epithet, in its true, tear-iridized sense, can only apply to my poor little girl. Besides, how can I “diminish” to the level of ciphers, et cetera, characters that I have invented myself? One can “diminish” a biographee, but not an eidolon.

>> No.6665412

>>6662704
you're deluding yourself if you think celine wasn't concerned with style. if you had ever seen one of his interviews he goes into great detail dismissing writers because they had an insignificant style and that they didn't contribute anything

>> No.6665423

>>6665412
does he go into great detail about why he uses ellipsis like tumblr pseudo intellectual slut as well?

>> No.6665426

>>6665423
honestly, if you've seen the way celine talks, it's pretty similar to the way he writes