Hemingway, Ernest. A writer of books for boys. Certainly better than Conrad. Has at least a voice of his own...

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Hemingway, Ernest. A writer of books for boys. Certainly better than Conrad. Has at least a voice of his own. Nothing I would care to have written myself. In mentality and emotion, hopelessly juvenile. Loathe his works about bells, balls, and bulls.

Wonder why you stopped short. He liked The Old Man and the Sea, The Killers, and A Clean Well Lighted Place

Based.

Surprised he considers Austen 'great' though? Pretty sure I remember reading him saying that women are 'in another class'. etc.

Also I'd like his opinion on Woolf.

>Also I'd like his opinion on Woolf.
He called her books poshlost.

>Pound, Ezra. Definitely second-rate. A total fake. A venerable fraud.
As phenomenal a writer he was, Nabokov was a huge faggot.

>saying that women are 'in another class'. etc.
he absolutely did, but he was pretty apt at separating his personal opinions from his work as an artist/critic/public intellectual and so on. He was also a raving homophobe, but Charles Kinbote is probably my favourite gay character in literature

I hate to break it to you Larkin, he would have hated DFW too

>Don Quixote.A cruel and crude old book.
What did he mean by this?

This must be ironic. I know the connotations of the word, he doesn't mean it in the smutty sense, but his books are the epitome of poshlost - aristocratic flamboyancy of it. How the fuck?

Pound wrote utter garbage.

Would also be interested in his opinion on Fitzgerald. This is some quality content though.

>Ulysses. A divine work of art. Greatest masterpiece of 20th century prose. Towers above the rest of Joyce's writing. Noble originality, unique lucidity of thought and style. Molly's monologue is the weakest chapter in the book. Love it for its lucidity and precision.
>Finnegans Wake. A formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a cold pudding of a book. Conventional and drab, redeemed from utter insipidity only by infrequent snatches of heavenly intonations. Detest it. A cancerous growth of fancy word-tissue hardly redeems the dreadful joviality of the folklore and the easy, too easy, allegory. Indifferent to it, as to all regional literature written in dialect. A tragic failure and a frightful bore.
Nabokov is dropping truth bombs here.

..what does 'poshlost' mean?

The definition of a smokes and mirrors writer. Full of rhetoric without any discernible meaning. And he's proud of it!

« Moi non plus je n’avais jamais supporté ce pseudo-poète médiocre et maniéré, ce malhabile imitateur de Joyce qui n’avait même pas eu la chance de disposer de l’élan qui, chez l’Irlandais insane, permet parfois de passer sur l’accumulation de lourdeurs. Une pâte feuilletée ratée, voilà à quoi m’avait toujours fait penser le style de Nabokov. »

>pseudo-poète médiocre et maniéré

kek

He means that Pnin is better than Don Quijote

I disagree with his opinion of Faulkner, but he got Finnegans Wake right.

>Finnegans Wake. A formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a cold pudding of a book. Conventional and drab, redeemed from utter insipidity only by infrequent snatches of heavenly intonations. Detest it. A cancerous growth of fancy word-tissue hardly redeems the dreadful joviality of the folklore and the easy, too easy, allegory. Indifferent to it, as to all regional literature written in dialect. A tragic failure and a frightful bore.

I tought of the same passage!

That's bullshit, and you should feel bad that you don't understand that. Modernism wouldn't have existed without Pound and his writings.

None of these criticisms even mean anything. They're just insults, and not particularly well-aimed either.

Something vulgar or banal, but the word is one of many Nabokov deems untranslatable. It can also mean a thing plebian, obvious, overstated, contrarian, appealing to the lowest denominator. Local favorite John Green is described by this word perfectly.

Literally all these quoted are taken out of context it's quite memey and funny but sad at the same time.

Nabokov gave some invaluable criticism/praise on many works which is hard to find so gathered up and not scattered in letters like most other authors.

That quote would've carried more weight had it not come from Michel Whereistheprose

Thanks.

Where does the word even come from? Google doesn't really help.

Why did Hemingway say this?

It's just the word пoшлocть, transliterated.

It has an article on Wiki. Poshlost. It came from a Russian term I couldn't read.

>Nabokov gave some invaluable criticism/praise on many works which is hard to find so gathered up and not scattered in letters like most other authors.
Very true, but he also talked a lot of shit as a person and in his prose, had no sense of spirituality or humanity, and was ultimately more obsessed with how something was said than what was being said, all of which make him as open to attack and criticism as anyone else.

Thank you very much.

Because it's true. For Christ's sake, the whole of the literary landscape was changed by him; his influence cannot be overstated.

>had no sense of spirituality

You have to admit, 'Symbols and Signs' was fucking brilliant, though. You made a nice point regarding his obsession with 'how something was said than what was being said,' but he trolled us very well with that short story. The point was that there was really no point.

Those are all reasons to respect him. Spirituality is for morons.

I'd like to correct this, however. I haven't read Lolita yet, but in Bend Sinister Nabokov actually saves the protagonist from despair by making him insane and acts as the omniscient character and storyteller at the end of the novel.

In effect, his allusion to the storyteller as God possesses elements of spirituality.

>Plato. Not particularly fond of him.

Not surprising, really.

Nabokov jacked off endlessly over aesthetics and put important ideas on the back burner. Plato did the exact opposite; heavy focus on ideas, style second.

>Poe, Edgar Allan. A favorite between the ages of 10 and 15, but no longer. One would like to have filmed his wedding.
Keke

>This must be ironic.
lolno

>Melville, Herman. Love him.

Good lad

I feel like I see that list here everyday.

he thought mansfield park was good and taught it in his courses

>Updike, John. By far one of the finest artists in recent years. Like so many of his stories that it is difficult to choose one.
"The Happiest I've Been." A particular favorite.

intothetrashitgoes.jpg

philistine detected

has updike been removed from the canon?

>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.

Fads like "modernism" and "postmodernism" are pure wankery. Pound was clinically batshit insane.

I can't tell if he's a patrician beyond comprehension or a over-opinionated bitter old man.

He's just a Lepidopterist bro.

Ah so he's a fag. I understand now.

>Melville, Herman. Love him. One would like to have filmed him at breakfast, feeding a sardine to his cat.

wat

Even in the endnotes of his translation of lermontov's a hero of out time, he takes jabs a Balzac and others for being overrated.

corncobby chronicles

superiority complex? what superiority complex?

what an achievement

kek, several of his prefaces have nothing to do with the novels themselves, they're just five or ten pages of shitting on people he hates

exactly. its fucking with me

>Melville, Herman. Love him. One would like to have filmed him at breakfast, feeding a sardine to his cat.

With this, Vlad is fine in my book

A bit of both, probably.

Nabokov is confirmed voyeur