I'm very curious on how Nabokov developed his contrarian

>>9115320
I don't have any insight into Nabokov's 'formative moments' re his literary outlook, but I have this link, with Nabokov offering some rather pithy/acerbic appraisals of his contemporaries (and predecessors):

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

>>9115352
I have read these, and his lecture on Kafka's The Metamorphosis. These are what led me to my curiousity.

I'm interested in his aversion to the concept of 'big ideas' e.g. blanket terms like Existentialism or Realism or Romanticism & focusing more on the merit of the work as a standalone aesthetic.

Nabokov's deal is that he appraises other literary works by standards that aren't really applicable, leading him to deductions that are often negative but occasionally illuminating in truly inventive ways. For instance when teaching Ulysses he placed a huge emphasis on geographic relationships with an almost pedantic approach to tracking the setting of each scene. I also recommend his lecture on The Metamorphosis. If you want to learn more I direct you to his book "Strong Opinions". Overall Nabokov saw a potential for literary aesthetics and formal invention that he pursued doggedly in his own work, and used as a criterion when judging the work of others.

>>9115380
>he appraises other literary works by standards that aren't really applicable

What makes you think they are not applicable?

>>9115352
>re

>>9115320
>How does someone have the confidence to vehemently criticise other well-regarded writers?

Some people are psychopaths and don't care.

Lots of people fake confidence to survive. These people are more concerned about what people are thinking about them--how they look--than they are concerned about "who they are."

Some people are learned. They don't fear their own words because they are thoughtful people with valuable input; and they see when not to say something because some people assault over mere words (principal in US that asked a student to turn down his music and the guy beat him so bad he ended up in hospital).

>>9115685
Which category does Nabokov fit into?

Someone post the saxophone toot toot green text to explain it to OP

>>9115320
>>9115370
If I had to offer an answer, I might say that his education in multiple languages from a hired tutor and then eventual exile from Russia made him really disconnected from the literary movements occurring during in various countries at the time. It could be hard to sympathize with specific movements given that they're usually tied to a nation/specific group of writers, so instead he focused on his self-directed ideas for aesthetics.

>>9115352
>Ulysses and The Metamorphosis are the greatest works of the 20th Century
>has incredibly contrarian opinions, bordering on stupid
Was he /ourguy/?

>>9115811
That might be a fair assumption for the movements flourishing in his time, i.e. Modernism, but I can't float that idea with movements before his time.

>>9115821
Yes

>>9115821
Yah except he loved lolis

boring pedo

Of course, no matter how keenly, how admirably, a story, a piece of music, a picture is discussed and analyzed, there will be minds that remain blank and spines that remain unkindled. "To take upon us the mystery of things"—what King Lear so wistfully says for himself and for Cordelia—this is also my suggestion for everyone who takes art seriously. A poor man is robbed of his overcoat (Gogol's "The Greatcoat," or more correctly "The Carrick"); another poor fellow is turned into a beetle (Kafka's "The Metamorphosis)—so what? There is no rational answer to "so what." We can take the story apart, we can find out how the bits fit, how one part of the pattern responds to the other; but you have to have in you some cell, some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you can neither define, nor dismiss. Beauty plus pity—that is the closest we can get to a definition of art. Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual. If Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of good and great readers.

GOAT

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>>9115981
>except

>>9116002
Baited for this exact response

>>9115370
Read this playboy interview, Nabokov expatiates for a couple paragraphs on his "view" of art:

http://reprints.longform.org/playboy-interview-vladimir-nabokov

Also here's a sublime quote from Nabokov at the end, in case you need a further impetus to read the interview (it is worth it):
>Playboy: Man’s understanding of these mysteries is embodied in his concept of a Divine Being. As a final question, do you believe in God?

>Nabokov: To be quite candid—and what I am going to say now is something I never said before, and I hope it provokes a salutary little chill: I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.

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>>9115352

>Tfw Nabokov will never call you a genius

Lads he was taking the piss.

>>9116025
someone please explain this quote to my tiny brain

>>9116101
He didn't want to answer the question so he shat out an empty aphorism.

>>9116108
fuck, really?

>>9115999
The Metamorphosis is a comedy sketch. I laughed till my bowels expelled gas, so I had to call my friend who was a petroleum engineering, and he said to me: "never give in to temptations of the mind." Now, I'm a drug counselor. Drugs are bad for you.

>>9116101
He is saying that fiction is born from the ineffable, aka God is a fiction

>>9116025
>im avoiding the question with semantics

>>9115352
why does every great writer love Borges?

>>9116161
Not really. He is just avoiding the question because he can't express in words what he does not know. Clearly an statement favoring agnosticism over faith in the negation or confirmation of God.

>>9116207
He's pretty fun Anon. Do you not like him? I understand that a lot of his stories recycle the same themes (i.e. Knife fights, gauchos, labyrinths, strange books/supernatural authorship, etc) but he does have some masterful stories. Circular Ruins, The Library of Babel, The Immortal, etc are all stellar. Plus he's really precise and efficient

>>9115938
Right, so he could pick and choose aesthetically from different past movements according to whatever struck his fancy, rather than due to an ideological justification that the movements themselves tried to promote.

>>9116312
i dont understand

>>9116281
i like Borges, but Pynchon was obsessed with him, picky old fucks like Harold Blom and Nabokov love him, even DFW wrote a nice article about Borges saying he was the bridge between modernism and post-modernism

i think Borges is great, i think his work is totally centered in the subject of books and writing and that's why so many writers like him and his unique type of metametametametametafiction that never needed more than a few pages to fry your brain

>>9115352
>Describes Finnegan's Wake as conventional
uh

>How does someone have the confidence to vehemently criticise other well-regarded writers?
Uh, how not? Critics and ordinary people hold relatively contrarian opinions all the time. Why would an author be any different?

And it is not rare at all for famous writers to sometimes use very harsh words when talking about the work of some other famous writer.

>>9116025
That's a nice quote indeed. It reminds me of his Invitation to a Beheading.
>>9116118
No. That guy doesn't seem able to parse it although Nabokov's language is very clear.

>>9115352
>Anna Karenina. Incomparable prose artistry. The supreme masterpiece of 19th-century literature.
I'm assuming he read it in russian?

>>9115352
guess I don't have to feel bad about not wanting to read Finnegan's Wake anymore