/lit/ - Literature

>At a party for his students he railed against Laurence Olivier's film adaption of Hamlet. One student asked whether he had actually seen the film, and he replied: "Of course I haven't seen the film. Do you think I would waste my time seeing a film as a bad as I have described?"

>Curiously enough, one cannot read a book; one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, and active and creative reader is a rereader.”

One cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader. And I shall tell you why. When we read a book for the first time the very process of laboriously moving our eyes from left to right, line after line, page after page, this complicated physical work upon the book, the very process of learning in terms of space and time what the book is about, this stands between us and artistic appreciation. When we look at a painting we do not have to move our eyes in a special way even if, as in a book, the picture contains elements of depth and development. The element of time does not really enter in a first contact with a painting. In reading a book, we must have time to acquaint ourselves with it. We have no physical organ (as we have the eye in regard to a painting) that takes in the whole picture and then can enjoy its details. But at a second, or third, or fourth reading we do, in a sense, behave towards a book as we do towards a painting. However, let us not confuse the physical eye, that monstrous masterpiece of evolution, with the mind, an even more monstrous achievement. A book, no matter what it is—a work of fiction or a work of science (the boundary line between the two is not as clear as is generally believed)—a book of fiction appeals first of all to the mind. The mind, the brain, the top of the tingling spine, is, or should be, the only instrument used upon a book.

>>10928996

Authors that would be Trump supporters if they were alive.

He called Dostoevsky "a rather mediocre writer." I mean if you read purely for prose quality, many other writers (including Nabokov) have much more to offer. But does anyone else agree with this? For me clearly Dostoevsky is the more interesting and better writer, though Nabokov had better prose. I can't really get with this complete fixation with "prose quality," where good writer = good prose.

>tfw he fakes realism with easy platitudes

Man this guy is good. Can you think of any other writers who make you feel like a little baby?

>>10029170
You're right to feel empty, this shit is a proper tragedy in the classical Greek sense. That is to say: relentlessly hopeless and intoxicating.

Lolita is, most of all, about obsession, and about how nihilistic the experience of being obsessed is. Even if you aren't a pedo, that experience of vice, of fixation, of powerlessness in the face of our desires isn't strange to any man. That's why Humbert is persuasive, not because he writes pretty words.

>>9459589
Fuck, I hope I can get a better gf than him.

Who is the best prose author and why was it this man?

Has anybody read anything by Nabokov apart from Lolita?

What do you recommend?

>>8341991
>terrible prose

Was he secretly the GOAT?

>Foster Wallace, David
>Lackadaisical smash-dash jibble-jabble, littered with self-indulgent passages that are gold in the eyes of the millenial /lit/erati bores

>Rowling, J.K.
>Oh, how one never tires of being in lust with Watson, Emma!

>Pynchon, Thomas
>He seems oddly familiar, though means nothing to me. A non-entity.

Be reassured that some of the very best had nothing to say.

>Tolstoy, Leo. A favorite between the ages of 10 and 15, and thereafter. Read complete works between 14 and 15. Nobody takes his utilitarian moralism seriously. A genius.

>Anna Karenina. Incomparable prose artistry. The supreme masterpiece of 19th-century literature.
>The Death of Ivan Ilyich. A close second to Anna Karenina.
>Resurrection. Detest it.
>The Kreutzer Sonata. Detest it.
>War and Peace. A little too long. A rollicking historical novel written for the general reader, specifically for the young. Artistically unsatisfying. Cumbersome messages, didactic interludes, artificial coincidences. Uncritical of its historical sources.

>Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Dislike him. A cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar. A prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. Some of his scenes are extraordinarily amusing. Nobody takes his reactionary journalism seriously.

>The Double. His best work, though an obvious and shameless imitation of Gogol's "Nose."
>The Brothers Karamazov. Dislike it intensely.
>Crime and Punishment. Dislike it intensely. Ghastly rigmarole.

Why we read overrated shit at highschool instead of reading Nabokov?

Nabokov is the author with the highest IQ

Nabokov. A very good writer, or a pedophile?
Not everybody can write from a pedo point of view and get awesome results.

>>6518406
I think you'll find that you will let ME tell you about corniness.

>>6479353