>I have read at least half a dozen Nabokov novels at least half a dozen times. And at least half a dozen times I have tried, and promptly failed, to read Ada ("Or Ardor: A Family Chronicle"). My first attempt took place about three decades ago. I put it down after the first chapter, with a curious sensation, a kind of negative tingle. Every five years or so (this became the pattern), I picked it up again; and after a while I began to articulate the difficulty: "But this is dead," I said to myself. The curious sensation, the negative tingle, is of course miserably familiar to me now: it is the reader's response to what seems to happen to all writers as they overstep the biblical span. The radiance, the life-giving power, begins to fade. Last summer I went away with Ada and locked myself up with it. And I was right. At 600 pages, two or three times Nabokov's usual fighting-weight, the novel is what homicide detectives call "a burster". It is a waterlogged corpse at the stage of maximal bloat.>When Finnegans Wake appeared, in 1939, it was greeted with wary respect – or with "terror-stricken praise", in the words of Jorge Luis Borges. Ada garnered plenty of terror-stricken praise; and the similarities between the two magna opera are in fact profound. Nabokov nominated Ulysses as his novel of the century, but he described Finnegans Wake as, variously, "formless and dull", "a cold pudding of a book", "a tragic failure" and "a frightful bore". Both novels seek to make a virtue of unbounded self-indulgence; they turn away, so to speak, and fold in on themselves. Literary talent has several ways of dying. With Joyce and Nabokov, we see a decisive loss of love for the reader – a loss of comity, of courtesy. The pleasures of writing, Nabokov said, "correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading"; and the two activities are in some sense indivisible. In Ada, that bond loosens and frays.
I do want to read ada at some point
I read Ada back when i was around 17-18. I'm glad i read it back then, when i had so much time and energy to devote to a single focal point. Back then I would wake up in the early hours of the morning, go out for a run, then come back in and read 50-100 pages, then run off to school, come back and read another 50-100 pages, then write terrible poetry into the late night.It is an incredibly indulgent book, and the central characters are incredibly unlikeable when you scratch the surface of their youthful daydream. The sheer art of it, the motive and detail, is enough to drive you: not quite as clever or concentrated as Lolita or Pale Fire, you have to work at untangling yourself from the dark wood of its conceited twins.Someone with a job, someone with a busy schedule, appointments to keep, obligations, isn't going to stand for reading 300 pages of an incestuous, narcissistic, indulgent memoir, especially when it starts throwing things like puzzles, secret languages, occultations with a decidedly po-mo sensibility. You'll indulge in Tolstoy, Stendhal, Balzac, Dumas, Hugo because you know you're in sure hands; but you won't let Nabokov because he's too volatile.
>>24119499>The curious sensation, the negative tingle, is of course miserably familiar to me now: it is the reader's response to what seems to happen to all writers as they overstep the biblical span.What does this mean?
I don't get why people struggle so much with Ada. It's not this self-indulgent mess any more than any other literary work happens to be, it's just a very bittersweet blend of artistic prose through the throes of life set in an erotic and progressively antierotic chronicle, again, depicting an artist's thoughts on the whole. It's more Ulysses than it's Finnegans Wake or something else. It's no more challenging than your Hundred Years of Solitude or Savage Detectives, Kokoros, Chamber Musics, Pale Kings, etc.Helps that it's actually really fucking hot.
Wow, interesting, I had no idea Nabokov had written a book with such a setting. I think I've found my next book, thanks anons>>24119555Oh no won't someone think of the poor people with a job who don't have time to read 600 pages :( (but do have time to binge a netflix show for 15 hours a day on weekends)>>24120018It's an alternate history setting, he just means when writers depart from the normal history of the present day (and the western world maybe) (which for him is epitomized by the bible)
>>24120033It's strange you think people's problem with it is that it seems 'challenging', when Amis explicitly names the problem: the book is dead. The fact you can sum the novel up so succinctly in such book-marketing terms as 'bittersweet blend of artistic prose', whereas any such neat description would bounce of something as vital is Pnin, should be evidence enough.
>>24119499>With Joyce and Nabokov, we see a decisive loss of love for the reader – a loss of comity, of courtesy. The pleasures of writing, Nabokov said, "correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading"; and the two activities are in some sense indivisible. In Ada, that bond loosens and frays."An artist should have respect for his audience" is such an interesting take. I can barely even articulate why I disagree with it so much.
>>24120044>sum the novel up so succintlyI don't think that little blurb does it any justice. But does literature need to be more than the summation of a life and being through eros? To me the artifice is just an excuse, or rather, the richer and more pregnant the artifice happens to be, the better the book.
>>24120046I think it's at the foundation of art. Nothing aesthetic lives that doesn't connect to the culture and extend beyond the solitary walls of your own head.
>>24120068Living is already shared experience. Any takes on it are bound to resonate, especially if they're honest.Art also dies the moment you kill the self for the other and give in to placid servitude.
>>24120068Sure, but you can do that without asking yourself all the time "will my audience understand this or do I have to explain it further?". Obviously it is inherent to writing a book that at least some people will understand it in some way, if there is something you want to get out then making it understandable is part of getting it out, but it does not have to be understood in a way fully foreseeable by the author. We can see an artwork as an artefact that bears witness to a certain process that went on in the author (and the world around him) and I think too much self-consciousness ("better not write this because it would be too self-indulgent") can stand in the way of that.
Are his books any good? The guy strikes me as a complete midwit.>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Amis#Views
>>24120046>>24120076You have to be 18 to post here.
>>24120119This goes for you too. >>24120111
>>24120119Sorry, what exactly is your problem?
>>24120095>"better not write this because it would be too self-indulgent"I assure you that this has never stood in the way of any author ever.
>>24119499I love Amis' writing but this is a funny opinion coming from him. Even though I wouldn't want to lose a single line of his prose, I think his novels fail to keep up the requisite momentum and end up feeling too long, like a drum solo you're impressed by but also wish would end.
>>24120034Wait really? I might read it as well then lol
Can only rec "The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov" if you think his novels bloat too much. It's probably the most inspirational prose fiction to me.
>>24120149I'm near the end of Money and yeah, it's felt like it's gone for too long, overstayed its welcome. I was breezing through the novel but these last 80 pages are a slog.
