LOLITA

Honest thoughts?

I read the first ten pages in high school, I had to look up words every paragraph. So 10/10 on vocab.

3rd place for the 20th century's best behind Ulysses and GR. Some of the greatest prose passages ever.

Second part's too long.

The most beautiful prose in literary history.

Same, but with the french parts.

I'm getting through part 2 right now and honestly it hasn't really taken my breath away. There were some beautiful passages of prose but everything in between felt banal. A lot of the prose feels like autistic over-description rather than carefully chosen, artful and "indirect" writing.

Why do you want it to be "indirect"

I suppose I enjoy writing that tends more to metaphor and simile than Nabokov's does.

It's fantastic. Humbert is one of the best narrators/protagonists ever devised, and as everyone knows the prose is beautiful.

I haven't read Nabokov, but I love metaphor. Simile not so much since it's very simple compared to metaphor. I'll have to read him though to see.

It bored me when I read it a while ago, although I wouldn't have been so concerned with the 'prose' then. I want to read another Nabokov.

nabokov's ~5th best book

Why did they make her jewish for that cover?

>really dope
>great narrator
>very funny
>strangely comfy
>mentions poplar trees a dozen times for no reason

Some of the best prose I've ever read. Generates a feeling of "aesthetic bliss", just as Nabokov described was his goal for all of his work. Lolita to me reads as a description of the experience of an artist: an obsession with, and almost pain resulting from, the exorbitant detail of the world, and wanting to "freeze time" in order to preserve that impossibly detailed, harmonic aesthetic unity; and how the impossibility of this act and its attempt results only in destruction. Beautiful, beautiful book.

Read Pale Fire. Aside from being my favorite Nabokov book, it's also my favorite book. The prose is, of course, beautiful, and the structure really does serve it well for what it's expressing.

Not that user, but I've read Lolita, and started Pale Fire, but Pale Fire just felt soulless to me. Lolita is filled with emotion and the prose and all the little games always felt like they were set to a story which had actual feeling. Pale Fire seemed to be a fun game for the sake of it, without much feeling at all.
Can anyone tell me if Lolita or Pale fire are outliers compared to Nabokov's other books when it comes to this?
Also do I just have bad opinions?

A lot of people apparently feel that way about Pale Fire and its games. I had a teacher once tell me it was a "mirthless hoax". Pale Fire does have depth, though. There is feeling there. It was apparent to me but I can understand why it seems like Pale Fire is just a riddle in book form to others. If you want to really get something out of Pale Fire, read which concepts such as synchronicity and time / space in mind. Those aspects of the story are the strongest and most beautiful to me. In my reading, Pale Fire is a story inherently concerned with the nature of a transcendent reality, and it's very beautiful.

it's anoying. same thing with blood meridan and spanish parts.

One of my favorite books, my benis got a bit wet while reading it though.

>ps: He raped her.

...

I can't read this book because pedos read it

you've ruined this book for me /tv/-Veeky Forums

can probably guarantee some rpetty bad people have read most the books you like

and written them as well.

Everyone's so quick to write this novel off: it's an aesthete's wet dream, it's a pervert's absolution, it's a soulless cash-grab. Can we, for just a moment, agree that Nabokov took time and pleasure in creating a road book that easily out-classed Kerouac, a confessional that raised the hairs on a few clerical collars, released in the middle of a decade so flushed with success it could not feel the lines of morbidity which were its bones; that this book is a work of art is a no-brainer is a non-entity, right?

this book is anti-pedo if anything
main character is only a pedo due to childhood trauma, and his desire leads to a bad end for both the girl and himself

can you learn to use spoiler bars plese

Pedophilia-normalizing garbage.

My favorite book

It's kinda hard for me to read because of vocab. I gave up.

it's too overrated
the best of his works is despair

I want to get it out of the library but the edition they have has a big close up of some little girl's face and being seen with it makes me nervous.

I accidently loaned that from my small town library, when I was twelve. It even had a (questionable) "EROTIC" sticker on it, I noticed way to late.
I survived ... so can you

Don't worry, he's lying anyway.

I kind of wish I didn't read it.

>an obsession with, and almost pain resulting from, the exorbitant detail of the world, and wanting to "freeze time" in order to preserve that impossibly detailed, harmonic aesthetic unity; and how the impossibility of this act and its attempt results only in destruction.
Interesting perspective. Thanks, user.

Needs more child fuggin

>it's too overrated
Nah. It's under-overrated, at best.

Nice

One of the worst books of a genius.

Clare Quilty is Kinbote.

Meme, shallow posturing, good prose in a technical sense but nothing worth telling

fantastic read. disgusting, beautiful, absolutely hilarious at times. nabokov was a mad man.

Was it a critical response to pedophilia in Hollywood i.e. Shirley Temple?

simile can be just as beautiful and striking as metaphor

Not Temple, but Charlie Chaplin (Humbert)

Is Pale Fire any good?

No it can't, back up statement.

yes.

its good but this
is true. the nosedive begins when lolita's mom gets hit by a car.

People talk about the "games" in the book. Can someone explain what they are talking about to a brainlet like myself?