I just finished Lolita, amazing. Where do I go to next with Nabokov?

>>9157468
Pnin -> Pale Fire -> Sebastian Knight -> Invitation to a Beheading -> Collected Short Stories -> (Lectures on Literature & Strong Opinions so you can better understand what he's trying to do in Ada) -> Ada, or Ardor -> Speak, Memory

The order of this doesn't matter in terms of accessibility (outside of Ada) as much as to maintain interest in Nabokov's corpus with variety and quality.

>>9157468
The Real Life of Seb. Knight. The most noir, and perhaps fun, is Laughter in the Dark. Pale Fire is nearly in a class by itself, but wait on that one. Bend Sinister is his one political novel, stark, Kafkaesque.

>>9157483
Pnin, absolutely. Subtle, heartbreaking-

Ada

>>9157504
dude, pnin sucked balls.

>>9157870
How so?

>>9157909
it was just incredibly dull.

>>9158019
dude, [insert novel] sucked balls.

How so?

it was just incredibly dull.

>>9158123
i'm sorry that my reasons aren't sufficient for you. seems like a personal problem though.

>>9158019
Pleb

>>9158130
>seems like a personal problem though.
You are fine until you said this. Don't revert to lines like this.

>>9158187
oh please. i'm fine with whatever i say. you may not be. seems like a personal problem.

>>9158166
good one, ooh it burns.

>>9158292
>this pleb mucking up the best thread on /lit/

>>9157483

Ada is impenetrable. The fictional setting makes it strange and the the manifold names are impossible to keep track of.

>>9157468
Pnin
Bend Sinister
Despair
Speak, Memory
Pale Fire
Transparent Things
the collected short stories

All of the above are very much worth reading

Buy a rope to make a noose instead, Nabokov is trash and was always unable to see past his own nose

>>9158811
This. dub dubs confirm Nabokov is shit
/lit/ btfo

>>9158662
This is why I recommend first starting with "Lectures on Literature" and "Strong Opinions." It's clear Nabokov wants the reader to draw maps and diagrams when experiencing Ada, both on its geography and non-linear narrative structure.

And no, I won't share mine.

>>9158911
Forgot: One understands this by looking at the way Nabokov read and taught Ulysses, Anna Karenin, and The Metamorphosis (the shape of the family estate matters, just like the train in AK and the manor in Jekyll and Hyde).

>>9157468
Lolita is his only """adequate""" """novel"""

>>9158911
god, what an autist that guy was. no wonder so many people can't write for shit, looking up to autismos like this, as though they have some grasp on humanity through diagrams and maps. what bullshit. nah nah nah no no no we need emotion and lies and shit that never goes anywhere and big glaring flaws and loose ends and plot holes and meaningless torn aphorisms. otherwise we'll write boring shit like pnin, for chrissakes.

and don't go all "oh but muh masterpiece" on me, no one on the fucking planet read that shit and moaned of nabokov's genius, they fucking read it after they were all hopped up on childfuckery after seeing The Penguin hobble around complaining about jazz and moving his fucking fatass tuckus over to another couch to lean on while capturing butterflies and writing about incest.

>>9158963
this desu

>>9158963
>god, what an autist that guy was.
True.

>as though they have some grasp on humanity through diagrams and maps.
Well, he only ever claims caressing and savoring the details provides a grasp on the work of art at hand, and explicitly not humanity or history or whatever.

>>9158963
are you trying to say he doesn't care about plot?

>>9157468
>Where do I go to next?
Hopefully to prison with the other pedophiles.

I can't wait until it's popular to shit on Nabokov on /lit/ so I can start defending him.

>>9159000
kek

>>9158963
Kill yourself

>>9159100
no.
also, how mean. is that all you can really say? you're just an awful person. I really wish you hadn't been so rude.

>>9158662
>Ada is impenetrable

Only the opening section. Plough through that and you're in the clear.

>>9159108
Kill yourself dork

>>9159349
but i'd really rather not! i exercise dominion over my actions to some extent and i refuse to be compelled to do something that would be against my best interests, especially by mean people who like nabokov.

Pale Fireis brilliant and hilarious. It's a puzzle you'll want to dive into again right after finishing

>>9159354
Kill yourself.

>>9159487
man, you guys are all so mean. is this what nabokov does to people? make them mean spirited jerks?

The Eye followed by ada or ardor (his opus) imo

>>9158662
kill yourself, pleb

>>9159377
This THIS this THIS this this, this THIS this THIS [1]
[1] This.

>>9158662
Rather, you've hit on something. I find the N-style overwrought in Ada, almost a self-parody-- annoying. Kind of like the Cormac in Cities-- it's just tooo Cormacky if youre familiar with his work. It's a little nerve wracking criticizing 2 great writers, but there. I did it. But note both lighten up after just these books, i.e. stylistically.

>>9159517
>opus

You mean 'magnum opus' I assume.

Nabokov's opinions in a nutshell?
Thought everything written by James Joyce was completely mediocre except for "Ulysses," which towered above the rest of his ouvre as one of the supreme literary masterpieces of the 20th century. Loved Flaubert and Proust and Chateaubriand, did not like Stendhal (simple and full of cliches) or Balzac (full of absurdities). Loved Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" (considered it the greatest novel of the 19th century) and "Death of Ivan Illych," hated "Resurrection" and "Kreutzer sonata." Liked Gogol, despised Dostoevsky as a melodramatic mystic (he even once gave a student an F in his course for disagreeing with him). Loathed Conrad and Hemingway, but liked the description of the fish in "Old Man and the Sea" and the short story "Killers." Hated Andre Gide, T.S.Eliot, Faulkner, Thomas Mann and D.H.Lawrence and considered them all frauds. Thought Kafka was great, Orwell mediocre. Despised Camus and Sartre, considered Celine a second rater, but liked H.G.Wells. Loved Kubrick's film of Lolita (thought it was absolutely first-rate in every way) but later in the '70s regretted that Sue Lyon (though instantly picked by Nabokov himself along with Kubrick out of a list of thousands) had been too old for the part & suggested that Catherine Demongeot, the boyish looking 11 year old who appeared in Louis Malle's 1960 film "Zazie dans le Metro" would've been just about perfect to induce the right amount of moral repulsion in the audience towards Humbert (and prevent them from enjoying the work on any superficial level other than the purely artistic). Liked avant-garde writers like Borges and Robbe-Grillet and even went out of his way to see Alain Resnais' film with Robbe-Grillet: "Last Year at Marienband." Didn't care for the films of von Sternberg or Fritz Lang, loved Laurel and Hardy. Made a point of saying how much he hated Lenin when it was fashionable to blame the disasters of the Soviet Union on Stalin. Supported the War in Vietnam and sent President Johnson a note saying he appreciated the good job he was doing bombing Vietnam. Never drove an automobile in his life & his wife was the one who drove him through the United States on scientific butterfly-hunting expeditions, all through the many locales & motels & lodges that later appeared in "Lolita."

>>9161550
That probably sums up 10% of him

>>9161550
>gave an F to a student for liking Dostoevsky
what a petty cunt. The Pedo Penguin strikes again.

i started with Pale Fire

>>9158944
I'm starting with Pale Fire. Try and stop me.

>>9162210
Go straight to the index and look up 'word golf'

> Ctrl-F "gift"
> no match

You're nothing but a pack of cards.

>ctrl+f gift
>1 result
Well, I don't know why I expected more

>>9163202
Despair > Gift

Checkmate faggots

>>9163281
In "Despair", he flexes his muscles on Dostoyevky's field.

In "Gift", he deals with the whole Russian literature tradition he belongs to, reflects on his personal and biographical topics, and writes damn fine "novelized biography" of a (completely) different writer (that work of fiction within fiction still caused some uproar in real life emigre circles, and still made Nabokov study the subject and work in archives a lot).

Threads like these, especially in their OPs, seem to always mysteriously avoid talking about the books being read...