Nabokov is the second most overrated writer in historyHis favorite Tolstoy is Anna Karenina. He doesn't really like anything else. 'Nuff saidIf he wasn't a pedophile, he was at the very least latently gay or transgender. And if you like him, so are you (any of the 3 or all of them at once)
>>25020566His favorite Tolstoy is the greatest novel of all time? Damn, he must have great taste.
>>25020571or rather you must have shit tasteas above:>If he wasn't a pedophile, he was at the very least latently gay or transgender. >And if you like him, so are you (any of the 3 or all of them at once)
>The Original of Laura joins The Enchanter (1939), Lolita (1955), Ada (1970), Transparent Things (1972), and Look at the Harlequins! (1974) in unignorably concerning itself with the sexual despoiliation of very young girls.>Six fictions: six fictions, two or perhaps three of which are spectacular masterpieces. Youwill, I hope, admit that the hellish problem is at least Nabokovian in its complexity andticklishness. For no human being in the history of the world has done more to vivify thecruelty, the violence, and the dismal squalor of this particular crime. Unironically what was wrong with him? And why are his fans adamant he was not a pedo when he literally wrote not 1, not 2, but 6 books about child sex?
I read the pedo book for pedos. He literally never outright fucks her and it's just purple prose overload.You fucking perverts are weird.
>>25020804there's child sex in Ada or Ardor
>>25021327Yeah, nah. No thanks. Sickfuck.
>>25020566>> His favorite Tolstoy is Anna Karenina.This is ironic because he hates Dosto for doing the same thing which AK does - making political and religious statements dressed as a novel. The ending of Levin’s story is so embarrassing from how crude it is in conveying its message. Levin good, Anna bad. Anyone telling you there is more depth to the novel than this is lying.
>>25021458it's between two consenting siblings tho! you dont get it its a masterpiece check it out!
Rorty says he is really good so I picked up lolita and pale fire. What am I in for bros
>>25020566Who's number 1 most overrated? Dostoevsky? Fitzgerald?
>>25020566He was an aristocrat. That explains everything about him. It's no wonder self-identified "aristocrats of the soul" largely hate him.
>>25021706Dostoevsky, Orwell, and Tolkien going off the latest top 100 and general prevailing attitudes. Fitzgerald is only really overrated by how much he's taught in school, and in that regard Harper Lee, Zora Neale Hurston, etc, are far more overrated than he is. The Great Gatsby is no masterpiece, but it has memorable enough characters for the melodrama it is. Austen and Mary Shelley are overrated outside of this site, for reasons that should be obviousMost underrated authors are Hawthorne and Marlowe, imo. Hawthorne is essentially just the American Dostoevsky if less violent, inasmuch as they both write what more or less amount to moral fables and Christian warnings. Hawthorne has great prose, incredible short stories, and better allegories than Dostoevsky, however, if lacking in the psychological department.Marlowe is Shakespeare's main inspiration, and his poetry and influence have been too long underrepresented considering that they truly are not that far off from Shakespeare's level.
>>25021706Orwell>>25022565Truly Hawthorne is really underrated.
Death to all pedophiles.
>>25020796>And why are his fans adamant he was not a pedo when he literally wrote not 1, not 2, but 6 books about child sex?because if you read those books, all those characters are portrayed as terrible otherwise anyways. he was interested in cruelty and pity, and he found the ruining of someone's childhood to be particularly cruel and that circumstance to be particularly pitiful.
>>25022918Why?
Why do so many people seethe over Nabokov on this board?
>>25022986in Ada in the sex between siblings the younger sister was like 7-10 years old, and the descriptions are completely free from negativity, youre not supposed to be disgusted afaik, i mean its written differently than lolita, its sick
>>25024453It may not rub it in your face as hard as Humbert Humbert or Kinbote but Van is a terrible person in many other ways. And there are other instances of pedophilia in the book that are really grotesque yet are told about in an airy nonjudgmental way. You're not meant to take it at face value.I think Nabokov was obsessed more with pedophiles than with little kids.
>>25025326lmfao the copehe wrote not 1, not 2 but 6 books with child sex in itcome the fuck oni can get his more surface-level fans coping because they don't know about all the other pedophilic books but youre something else
>>25023986Ol' Nabby has many qualities in common with the average /lit/ poster>narcissistic>misanthropic>more or less a loner>astoundingly pretentious>worships The Tradition>idiosyncratic literary opinions>unrepentant aesthete >oddly concerned with little girls but unlike the average /lit/poster Ol Nabby can actually back up everything he's saying because of his body of work, which demonstrates real genius, and which the average /lit/poster knows they'll never achieve
>>25025782How does that conflict with anything I said
>>25025796he was first and foremost an academic, something many of his fans forgetalso for the first 50 years of his life he and his wife essentially lived in poverty and completely unknown and irrelevant, he himself had only his russian books to back him up and let's be honest (IMHO) theyre very mediocre... in the 1940s he was teaching at some third rate private women's college... then he moved up and was professor at Cornell and could establish what was probably to him a frustratingly middle class existence (my grandma's distant relative was an aristocrat who had everything stolen by the communists, and yet til the end of his days, under communism, never used public transport and always moved around everywhere by taxi & used it to dine at the restaurant of a luxurious hotel near the old town--old habits die hard)he basically didn't achieve real wealth and stardom until he was already 60 years old, and then died barely over 15 years later. for most of his life he was an impoverished teacher. when you find out about this perspective it changes everything. for the worse for Nabokov in my opinion, as i said i think he's the 2nd most overrated writer (after dostoevsky), i mean his ivory tower academic background and pedanticism really shows in the writing, he didn't get that out of thin air
>>25025829You are confusing him with someone else. He was neither an academic, nor a poor person.>he himself had only his russian books to back him up and let's be honest (IMHO) theyre very mediocre.Wdym to "back him up"? Life is not LinkedIn CV. He was all about poetry and literature since he was a teenager, and his russian works of his European era are not one bit inferior to his american prose. Seems like you just don't understand it, and that's absolutely ok.If not for the war, he would have never had to move to the US in the first place. Being already a senior person out of his prime, bro just en passant brought out some of the greatest pieces of american literature, and you think he was just a poor professor trying to pay his bills. That's brilliant, lol.
>>25025909>He was neither an academicyes he was, taught at cornell and womens colleges + worked as a lepidopterist/translator >nor a poor personhe was born into wealth and became destitute after the russian revolution, supporting himself by stringing together translating jobs, private tutoring, boxing lessons, tennis lessons, adjuncting, etc >you think he was just a poor professor trying to pay his billsthis is exactly what he was until Lolita became a bestseller. You don't really know anything about Nabokov
>>25025909>You are confusing him with someone else. He was neither an academic, nor a poor person.Nabokov joined the staff of Wellesley College in 1941 as resident lecturer in comparative literature. The position, created specifically for him, provided an income and free time to write creatively and pursue his lepidoptery. Nabokov is remembered as the founder of Wellesley's Russian department. The Nabokovs resided in Wellesley, Massachusetts, during the 1941–42 academic year. In September 1942, they moved to nearby Cambridge, where they lived until June 1948. Following a lecture tour through the United States, Nabokov returned to Wellesley for the 1944–45 academic year as a lecturer in Russian. In 1945, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He served through the 1947–48 term as Wellesley's one-man Russian department, offering courses in Russian language and literature.
>>25025921Man, I can name a bunch of russian dudes that escaped bolsheviks and were given some position in american universities. Thant's not something uncommon. >The position, created specifically for him, provided an income and free time to write creatively and pursue his lepidopteryBasically a sinecure to get a prestigious well-known writer from Europe. He had his fortune in swiss banks, where he returned later in life btw.>>25025915>yes he was, taught at cornell and womens colleges + worked as a lepidopterist/translatorAnd what academic degree did he have?>became destitute after the russian revolution.Yeah, a broke guy living in luxurious apartments in Berlin and studying in Cambridge.Being a part of pan-european aristocracy, and not being a moron, his father didn't put all the eggs in one basket.
I don't know why Burgers and Leafs are so obsessed with Dostoyevsky. Bely and Mayakovsky are much better representatives of high Russian writing.
>>25025960no, he was a teacher in prewar germany and france tooits why a lot of his books revolve around literary professors and the academic milieuhe had nothing to himself when he landed in germany and he had nothing when he landed in the US>https://www.theguardian.com/books/1999/aug/01/vladimirnabokov>Nabokov was miserable and poor. Then his wife made him publish Lolita...
>>25025969wrong thread?
>>25025969>Bely and Mayakovsky are much better representatives of high Russian writing.They are, but one should learn russian to near-native level to read russian poetry. It doesn't translate well into eng without loosing its form.
Friendly reminded that Nabokov got diddled by his pedophile rich uncle called the "booty-snatcher" by the peasants, which his family allowed to happen hoping he become the uncle's heir (he did). (him on left)>https://sci-hub.box/https://www.jstor.org/stable/40754944further more Nabokov:>wrote about young girls in every single one of his books>has a poem in which explicitly talks about raping a female child in heaven, but then gets cockblocked and turns out he was in hellYou can look at any single one of his books and it is about his experience being raped he even admitted that "he had no homosexual experience before 12 (like Lolita)>humbert humbert was 37, rapist uncle waas 37 in the book, lolita and nabokov both 12>nabokov cant describe the sexual acts in lolita but once and briefly, in which he is describing a little boy and not a girl>had an obsession with catching, killing, and inspecting and dissecting the genitals of butterflies, doing this for tens of thousands of hours>Humber Humbert, Cinnicatus C. are stand in names for Vladimir (Vladimirovich) Nabokov.>Humbert Humbert (i.e. Vladimir Vladmirovich) loves "killing butterflies", little girls. He kills a fritiliary (nymphet butterfly)>obsession with puzzles, already hinted at his works being a maze.>lied about the origins of the book, tried to publish it under a pen name.>loves the little girls on the coversHow can a guy that got raped as a child, that writes about wanting to rape children overtly, and has references in every single one of his books to children, not be a pedophile?
>>25026102case study: Invitation to a Beheading>the individual prisoner is sentenced with an absurd crime>no clear date of execution>everybody maintaining the prison is telling him to enjoy the amenities provided (i.e. enjoy life)>Cincinattus C. (Nabokov) can't because he can't fulfil his one desire (little girls)>his wife is a whore that visits him, but does not offer any escape>a little girl offers Nabokov to escape constantly>is described sexually and intimately>society is described as unable to understand, fat, ugly, etc. Only the little perfect girl isn ot In this book the analogy is almost overt.
>>25026102his fans continue to defend him i even found 1 cope saying that Lolita was like therapy for him, oh poor boy molested by his uncle...when in reality>his focus is on little girls, not boys like him>many if not most pedophiles were victims of pedophilia themselves and the disease often multiplies through a vicious cyclebtw>>has a poem in which explicitly talks about raping a female child in heaven, but then gets cockblocked and turns out he was in helljust found out about this, holy shit, so there's more! he's so fckin guilty it's crazy people still defend himbtw check this out>In April 1947, Nabokov wrote to Edmund Wilson: "I am writing ... a short novel about a man who liked little girls—and it's going to be called The Kingdom by the Sea."[70]yeah, totally normal enterprise... not eyebrow raising, at all
>>25025980no.>>25025995agreed, but no matter whether you're reading translations or original, the shit burgers obsess over is never the truly good stuff
>>25026140Pale Fire is about young boys
>>25020685You're dumb and annoying. Failthread.
>>25021468you need to levinmaxx. a regular dude appreciates his morality for its usefulness, not for its complexity. you're a fag who wants a 3D morality full of relativity and theories, not something that works.
>>25020566Has anyone shopped a bunch of knives pointed at Vlad for this pic?
>>25026188youre gayi win
I bought the complete LoA set because of you guys, he better not be shit like this thread seems to be making him out to be
>>25023279Death to all who question my earlier statement too.