Nabokov's opinions

He sounds like a retard

He was memeing you dips

>>7712894
Balzac, Honoré de. Mediocre. Fakes realism with easy platitudes
Camus, Albert. Dislike him. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me. Awful.
Céline, Louis-Ferdinand. Second-rate. A tense-looking but really very loose type of writing
Maupassant, Guy de. Certainly not a genius.
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.

The Double. His best work, though an obvious and shameless imitation of Gogol's "Nose."
The Brothers Karamazov. Dislike it intensely.
Crime and Punishment. Dislike it intensely. Ghastly rigmarole


Nabokov : shit tier genius

>>7712894
Interesting link.

>Melville, Herman. Love him. One would like to have filmed him at breakfast, feeding a sardine to his cat.
Moby Dick is ok, as kid lit.
>Marx, Karl. Loathe him.
Of course. Nabokov is son of russian aristocrats who emigrated when the communists seized power. They sent little Nabokov to Cambridge, England.
>Kafka, Franz.
>The Metamorphosis. Second-greatest masterpiece of 20th century prose.
Metamorphosis is great. But I saw on YT a recording of Nabokov's lecture about it in a fancy College. He behaves as a rockstar, with light effects and everything. Stands very near a good-looking female student, who is obviously ill-at-ease so near Humbert Humbert. And the lecture is really bad. Certainly not a genius. We don't care about his drawings of the insect, whether it had short or long legs, how many, etc.
That being said, I loved Lolita. I tried to read others "masterpieces" from him, it was crap.
But still I'd like to have his way with words.

>>7712975
I only tried Ada or Ardor, tbf, after I read it was his second best work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_or_Ardor:_A_Family_Chronicle

>A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me

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>>7713026
Brecht, Camus, Faulkner, all "nonentities"

>>7712975
>russian aristocrats who emigrated when the communists seized power.
After the 1917 February Revolution, Nabokov's father became a secretary of the Russian Provisional Government and, after the Bolshevik (October) Revolution, the family was forced to flee the city for Crimea, not expecting to be away for very long. They lived at a friend's estate and in September 1918 moved to Livadiya, at the time part of the Ukrainian Republic; Nabokov's father became a minister of justice in the Crimean Regional Government.

After the withdrawal of the German Army (November 1918) and the defeat of the White Army (early 1919), the Nabokovs sought exile in western Europe. They settled briefly in England and Vladimir enrolled in Trinity College, Cambridge, first studying zoology, then Slavic and Romance languages.

Salinger, J. D.
By far one of the finest artists in recent years.
"A Perfect Day for Bananafish." A great story. A particular favorite.

Sartre, Jean-Paul.
Even more awful than Camus.
Nausea. Second-rate. A tense-looking but really very loose type of writing.

War and Peace.
A little too long. A rollicking historical novel written for the general reader, specifically for the young. Artistically unsatisfying. Cumbersome messages, didactic interludes, artificial coincidences. Uncritical of its historical sources.

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>Chesterton, G. K.
>Conrad, Joseph
>A favorite between the ages of 8 and 14. Essentially a writer for very young people.

>>7712894
Nabokov was trolling. He is baiting you from beyond the grave.

>>7713142
it never fails to amuse/exasperate me how people still get baited by trollord nabokov

guy's a legend

A writer can have tongue-in-cheek humor, and still be very conceited.

>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.
>The Killers. Delightful, highly artistic. Admirable.
>The Old Man and the Sea. Wonderful. The description of the iridescent fish and rhythmic urination is superb.

Why does he sound like he browses 4chan? This shit is gold.

>>7712894
Nob was most likely on the spectrum and he had real trouble understanding some authors including Cervantes for writing "cruel humor" he genuinely couldn't not see anything else in don quixote.

>Foster Wallace, David. Awful. Can't think. Can't write. No discernible talent. A non-entity.

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b-but it did happen!
http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2014/11/lolita_isnt_just_a_classic_nov.html

>>7713405
>A non-entity
This seems to be reserved to communists

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>>7713461
http://hazlitt.net/longreads/real-lolita

>>7713266
Most writers sound like that.

All that matters to me is that he likes Updike and Salinger. Triumvirate of stylists right there.

Wells, H. G. A favorite between the ages of 10 and 15, and thereafter. A great artist, my favorite writer when I was a boy. His sociological cogitations can be safely ignored, but his romances and fantasies are superb. A far greater artist than Conrad. A writer for whom I have the deepest admiration.

The Passionate Friends. Better than anything any of Wells' contemporaries would produce.
Ann Veronica. Better than anything any of Wells' contemporaries would produce.
The Time Machine. Better than anything any of Wells' contemporaries would produce. Especially good.
The Country of the Blind. Better than anything any of Wells' contemporaries would produce. Especially good.
The Invisible Man. Especially good.
The War of the Worlds. Especially good.
The First Men on the Moon. Especially good.

>>7713266
He's actually completely right about Authors like Hemingway and Dostoevsky, and books like War and Peace being for kids. People just don't realize that something being really long or "austere" sounding doesn't make it high level literature.

>>7713266
>>7713522
What's up with comparing everyone to Conrad

>Plato. Not particularly fond of him.

>>7713538
When I hate a classic it always feels good to read online that in its time, it was (often) considered rubbish. Until some college Profs started a cult 100 years later.
Like Moby Dick.

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>>7713546
He's just jealous. This is one of those polandball vs russiaball things.

>>7713579
Idealist : closet commie.

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<= The Rozhdestveno estate 16-year-old Nabokov inherited from his maternal uncle. Nabokov possessed it for less than a year before losing it in the October Revolution.

>Marx, Karl. Loathe him.

>>7713593
>being this pleb

>>7713661
>being this snob

Joyce, James. Great. A favorite between the ages of 20 and 40, and thereafter. Let people compare me to Joyce by all means, but my English is patball to Joyce's champion game. A genius.
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.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Never liked it. A feeble and garrulous book.
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.

So he likes Joyce but only writes about one book he likes and two he doesn't. Why?

>>7713538
>>7713593
Niggas he's either trolling or an autist. Who the fuck would actually give critics like:
>Borges, Jorge Luis. A favorite. How freely one breathes in his marvelous labyrinths! Lucidity of thought, purity of poetry. A man of infinite talent.
Seems like he's making fun of him and his readers.
>Cervantes, Miguel de.
>Don Quixote. A cruel and crude old book.
This reeks of autism from a mile.
>Austen, Jane. Great.
Please.
>Conrad, Joseph. A favorite between the ages of 8 and 14. Essentially a writer for very young people. Certainly inferior to Hemingway and Wells. Intolerable souvenir-shop style, romanticist clichés. Nothing I would care to have written myself. In mentality and emotion, hopelessly juvenile. Romantic in the large sense. Slightly bogus.
This is like the pasta.
>Eliot, T. S. Not quite first-rate.
What kind of fucking critic is this?
>War and Peace. A little too long. A rollicking historical novel written for the general reader, specifically for the young. Artistically unsatisfying. Cumbersome messages, didactic interludes, artificial coincidences. Uncritical of its historical sources.
>a little too long
Come the fuck on, he can't be for real.

>>7713676
Joyce only had four major works and I don't think Dubliners was counted among them until much later on. Dubliners was ignored for a while.

>>7713593
Bartleby was great. Haven't read Moby Dick yet but I think there's a reason why he's remembered.

>>7713703
metametametapostmetapostpostmetametameta

>>7713710
What?

>you will never go back in time and read the entire western canon between 9 and 14 like nabokov did

>>7712894

>Finnegans wake

>conventional

Nabocock should eliminate his map

>Joyce
>a genius
>shits on 2 out of 3 books

>tfw Nabokov will never brutally criticize your magnum opus

>>7712975
>calls moby dick shit li
>but his english is what's actually shit

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just a reminder that Nabokov was known for his post-modernism and unreliable narrators. I think that he meant us to be skeptic about his own views as well.

>>7713794
I'm not writing a novel.

>>7713676
He just likes that one gem of a discography like Dark Side of the Moon or Rubber Soul. He doesn't appreciate the growth of Joyce as an artist. Portrait is a brilliant memoir and Finnegans Wake is like the Irish version of Chaucer. A tremendous feat. Each story in Dubliners is crafted with intelligence and love. Ulysses is an undisputed masterpiece. Joyce had a sensitive, fun-loving, deep, and mystical soul. He would never say something like what Nabokov said about him. That comment is just arrogant, pretentious, rude, and unthoughtful.

>>7713827
Joyce was pretty arrogant himself when he was young. He just mellowed out a lot over the years.

Nabokov was just more of a showman than Joyce because by the time he was making these comments it was already like the 50s or 60s and Hollywood culture was starting to seep into everything. He just established a public persona for himself as a highly opinionated, controversial, and edgy intellectual figure. As opposed to Joyce who only pulled those sorts of pranks on people through his books themselves after a certain age.

>>7712894
>http://wmjas.wikidot.com/nabokov-s-recommendations

Now THIS is shitposting, /tv/ could learn a thing or two from him.

>>7712894
He didn't really hate Dostoevsky, he just wanted to look like he did and distance himself from what he saw as the antithesis of art in Dostoevsky's works (the highly purposeful almost didactic nature and almost urging the reader to identify with the character)

In Invitation to a Beheading (which Nabokov called his personal favorite of his own novels, although Lolita was his "most beloved"), he names 3 separate characters after Raskolnikov and shares a lot of themes with Crime and Punishment (albeit done a lot more artistically)

There's tons of scholarship out there about how Nabokov actually draws a lot on Dostoevsky

>>7713765
the canon was a lot smaller before Bloom got his hands on it. before 14 is an achievement if he actually did.

>>7713862
hey an anon who actually knows what he's talking about that's rare

invitation to a beheading is fucking GOAT desu

>>7713882
It really is senpai

>>7713039
>Camus
I agree with this.

>>7712894
Nabokov is a meme author. literally genre tier fiction. no discernible talent.

>>7713808
That's good. You're not even qualified to judge one.

>>7712975
a youtube nabokov lecture? you have a link?

>>7713615
Ok your deep analysis of his attitude has convinced me to become a card carrying communist.

I'd be mad too if some sophist jew convinced the gibs to burgle my birthright

>>7714034
Nabokov married a jew though, so I don't think you'd like him very much, /pol/.

>>7713703
It's compiled from different sources. He didn't actually talk like that.

>>7714034
Your deep post just convinced me to sell my workforce for minimum wage.

>>7713827
>one gem of a discography
>Dark Side of the Moo
>not piper

>>7714077
Notwithstanding the link in OP, if you find the lecture on Metamorphosis I mentioned above, you'll see the guy was quite flamboyant.

>>7713703
>>Austen, Jane. Great.
>Please.

But anon, Austen is one of the greatest novelists of the 19th century.

>>7714088
>>7714077
https://youtu.be/boSFjzWJXcU?t=32

so what the fuck did he likes?
how is recommendations are almost all "dislike him detest him"??? wtf

>>7714095
That's not him, it's from some movie or tv series.

I've always agreed with Nabokov for the most part, besides:
"Faulkner, William. Dislike him. Writer of corncobby chronicles. To consider them masterpieces is an absurd delusion. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me."

I've always thought he was a little rash with his opinions on Faulkner.

>>7712894
he hates anyone who put philosophy and/or ideals before aesthetics

>>7714082
The Wall was the only worthwhile thing those jokers ever made. All the Syd Barret era stuff is interesting in theory but tedious to actually listen to.

>>7714097
He loved Pushkin, Gogol, and the Russian Symbolists for one

>>7714102
this

>>7714098
fug
I smelled something fishy when I found that video again

>>7714099
Faulkner is interesting stylistically, but Nabokov does have a point about him being stuck in the same setting in everything he does.

>>7714102
Not true, he thought Tolstoy succeeded at it because the aesthetics were good anyway.

>>7714107
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdn5SxFAMEg&list=PL0UjK65jqLzfnpnIyKBWp1wtm6gRIjHap&index=35

>>7714110
Certainly, though I feel that's almost admirable in its own right. Building up one kind of setting seems a bit stagnant, but it's what he knew and he knew it well.

>>7714095
I love you, my dear anon.

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>>7714156

>>7714104
>Syd Barret era stuff is interesting in theory
How so, what makes it interesting in theory? Tedious also seems like a weird word to describe it; Syd era was when they were the closest to a conventional pop band.

Speaking of literature, he was pretty good at nonsense poetry, witch is a lot harder than one thinks before one tries to write it oneself.

Trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro', you have no word
Trip, trip to a dream dragon, hide your wings in a ghost tower
Sails cackling at every plate we break
Cracked by scattered needles the little minute gong coughs and clears his throat
Madam you see before you stand, hey ho, never be still
The old original favorite grand, grasshoppers green Herbarian band
And the tune they play is "In Us Confide"
So trip to heave and ho, up down, to and fro', you have no word
Please leave us here, close our eyes to the octopus ride!

Isn't it good to be lost in the wood
Isn't it bad so quiet there, in the wood
Meant even less to me than I thought
With a honey plough of yellow prickly seeds
Clover honey pots and mystic shining feed

Well, the madcap laughed at the man on the border, hey ho, huff the Talbot
"Cheat" he cried shouting kangaroo, it's true in their tree they cried
Please leave us here, close our eyes to the octopus ride!

Please leave us here, close our eyes to the octopus ride!

The madcap laughed at the man on the border, hey ho, huff the Talbot
The winds they blew and the leaves did wag
They'll never put me in their bag, the seas will reach and always seep
So high you go, so low you creep, the wind it blows in tropical heat
The drones they throng on mossy seats, the squeaking door will always squeak
Two up, two down we'll never meet, so merrily trip forgo my side
Please leave us here, close our eyes to the octopus ride!

Was waiting for him to shit on Shakespeare so I could lose all respect for him but he didn't blow it there.

Dostoevsky is better than him.

Nabokov is a joke desu.

>Pound, Ezra. Definitely second-rate. A total fake. A venerable fraud.

Too fucking true

>>7712894
>Pound, Ezra. Definitely second-rate. A total fake. A venerable fraud.
Yep

>Nabokov, Vladimir - Arrogant, puffed-up, second-rate, still better than Conrad.

>>7712933
Ya I'm surprised everyone got memed this hard, if you read the source material it is clear he is joking

>>7712956
>A tense-looking but really very loose type of writing
What did he mean by this?

>>7714104
The Wall is a jerk-off of an album.

>whoa, im like famous and stufff.....but it makes me a jerk and isolates me from society.......in a wall......do you get it......do you get it yet.......first you gotta hit this blunt first