Reading
Recently Finished: Lolita
Wow.
What a brilliant, twisted, astonishing, freaky mind trip of a book. I don't have much of a head for literature, unfortunately, and to my great shame I've never had a real lit class. So my review will be peurile and inarticulate:
Holy crap.
That Vlad, he sure can write, huh?
Recently Finished: Lolita
Wow.
What a brilliant, twisted, astonishing, freaky mind trip of a book. I don't have much of a head for literature, unfortunately, and to my great shame I've never had a real lit class. So my review will be peurile and inarticulate:
Holy crap.
That Vlad, he sure can write, huh?
posted by Winston Smith at
3:36 PM
3 Comments:
If you don't have it already, be sure to get hold of the little memroirish essay that is sometimes tacked on at the end, "On a book Entitled Lolita." VN always has a way with words, and in that essay he really opens fire on the publishing world, bad writing, and prudishness generally. Choice phrases that spring to mind (and sorry for the inncuracies, but this is memory): "...typed out by the thumbs of tense mediocrities and called 'stark' by the reviewing hack." "[spoofing Steinbeck/Hemingway] He acts crazy. We all act crazy, I guess. God acts crazy. Etc." "Who are these experts that position the necklines of the fair young mammals that grace our national magazines, just so as to make the past master chuckle and avoid the postmaster's frown?" "It just so happened that my book treated of one of the three topics that are unnacceptable in America today. The other two are: A Negro/White marriage which is a glorious success and results in many children and grandchildren, and the complete atheist who lives a happy and useful life and dies in his sleep at a hundred and six."
But seriously, this little essay also discusses the idea of obscenity and convincingly argues that it was his treating the topic seriously that caused him such trouble, that a bit of exploitation would have passed more easily.
Next stop: Invitation to a Beheading and Pale Fire.
I'm currently re-reading the former. It's a bloody tough read, but rewarding.
I remain amazed at Nabokov's ability to write a sentence that goes for a full page but isn't a run-on.
A:
I'll get it.
J:
I had an unsuccessful tussle with Pale Fire once before...but now am motivated to take another whack at it.
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