Nabokov, s/d, c/d, etc.

He doesn't deny the existence of the fussy mandarin smarty pants - indeed he is often annoyed by him - but he hints at the existence of, not so much an empathic humanist - but a writer whose aestheticism was a conscious construction, an evasion or swerve or scaffold to protect him from a personal history that was full of terrible loss and pain and grief. And this sensitivity to suffering, ironised through authorial voice and unreliable narrators, once you're looking for it, seems to be the great theme of his work. The Lolita we meet in Graystar at the end of the novel; the daughter in 'Pale Fire', the victims of torture or madness in so many books and stories... even funny old Pnin.

The last phrase has a Nabokovian shimmer, recalling the final lines of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight or Pale Fire: it begs to be deflected and reapplied to the review itself, as well as to its author.

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1243205.ece

amazing article, not sure where it belongs.

oh its in the tls thread.

search his monograph on Gogol. i'm re-reading it now and it is really great stuff. the opening chapter -- the description of gogol's own diary of a madman like final days -- are very masterfully written, haunting really. gogol is one of my favorite writers though so i am biased toward this book.

gave up four goals on fifteen shots tonight

that article was totally incredible yeah.

both nabokov's "lectures on" books are absolutely required even if occasionally terrific bullshit.

Miss Jane

i want to officially disagree with akmonday and say Search: Speak, Memory. i like that book and nabokov's non-fiction because i think his kind of bitchy, unapologetically mandarin non-fiction voice is great, even though his prejudices against like, any kind of political or psychological reading of anything are a bit maddening, especially since he breaks his own rules and talks about that stuff -- in his own way -- all the time. but yeah speak, memory is beautiful

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1948/05/15/1948_05_15_031_TNY_CARDS_000214135

not sure if this has always been free, but here it is. still need to start wading through his story collection i got last christmas

started re-reading Pale Fire last night cuz why not

I remember there being some funny business about the contents of a closet. Tell me if you find the treasure.

honestly I remember very little about it beyond something about a deposed king of some obscure nation being involved in a murder and the secret/treasure alluded to in the poem, which tbh I have probably mixed up with the King in Yellow

Even better the second time.

Eh. I tried a few years ago. I loved it in college though

Third times the charm

Missing apostrophe makes me an unreliable witness.

write a poem in heroic couplets

loved pale fire when i first read it a few years ago but haven't revisited it since. always sort of wanted to do a close-reading of it, comparing it with a photocopy of the poem, etc., to figure out what was "really" happening, but never got around to it.

very rewarding reread imo, espesh if you do it in a way you didn't do it the last time

my powerful kramler

i.e. skipping the poem

Ha, yes, exactly. And referring to it when desired or needed.

Perhaps the same can be said for all the "extra," out of sequence chapters in Rayuela.

i love mary gaitskill's description of pale fire:

"a tragicomedy about the dream world shimmering under corporeal life, and the skulking hero's equally ardent and ridiculous attempt to find a bridge to that world through a misdirected love -- a strange misconnection harboring an imaginary connection more real than reality."

lol @ classic dick move: http://www.openculture.com/2015/10/franz-kafka-says-the-insect-in-the-metamorphosis-should-never-be-drawn.html

Oh well, Nabokov never wanted pictures of sexy young girls on the front of Lolita

http://chipkidd.com/journal/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/lolita-book-covers-jackets-design-2.jpg

^that Penguin cover seems to split the difference. the young girl depicted is clearly still a child, and without secondary sexual characteristics such as breasts, but the implied sexuality is also there and unavoidable, so the image is equivocal and disturbing. I'd call it a defensible choice. the other three are just straight up pandering to adult fantasies.

the first and second are clearly spinoffs of the kubrick film

fourth is from the adrian lyne movie.

this one

http://bookcoverarchive.com/wp-content/uploads/amazon/lolita.jpg

supposedly originally submitted in vertical orientation, which would have been vacantly titillating in comparison to that earlier penguin cover but which still prob would have been better than just some lips. really of course the cover should be the bars of a cage.

nabokov's metamorphosis reading is a lot of fun, iirc he makes a sketch of the apartment with measurements and suggests that all true readers must do this or smth

haha funny man

btw penguin cover is disturbing, but kind of cool maybe

mine has this one, kind of boring

http://zaaxa.com/in/shop/image/cache/data/product_images/books/publisher01/9780141182537-750x1000.jpg

The first Penguin cover above is a painting by Balthus - as Wikipedia puts it

Many of his paintings show young girls in an erotic context. Balthus insisted that his work was not erotic but that it recognized the discomforting facts of children's sexuality. In 2013, Balthus's paintings of adolescent girls were described by Roberta Smith in the New York Times as both "alluring and disturbing".

nabokov's metamorphosis reading is a lot of fun, iirc he makes a sketch of the apartment with measurements and suggests that all true readers must do this or smth

for anna karenina you have to know the precise dimensions of a c-1870 russian railway carriage

really of course the cover should be the bars of a cage.

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i talk in a daze, i walk in a maze / i cannot get out, said the starling

a settlement in the remotest northwest