MAY BOTM: Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov

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Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Welcome goonlings to the Awful Book of the Month!
In this thread, we choose one work of ~~literature~~ absolute crap and read/discuss it over a month. If you have any suggestions of books, choose something that will be appreciated by many people, and has many avenues of discussion. We'd also appreciate if it were a work of ~~literature~~ complete drivel that is easily located from a local library or book shop, as opposed to ordering something second hand off the internet and missing out on a week's worth of reading. Better yet, books available on e-readers.

Resources:

Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org

- A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best.

SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/

- A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.

:siren:

For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM me. :siren:

Past Books of the Month

[for BOTM before 2015, refer to archives]

2015:
January: Italo Calvino -- Invisible Cities
February: Karl Ove Knausgaard -- My Struggle: Book 1.
March: Knut Hamsun -- Hunger
April: Liu Cixin -- 三体 ( The Three-Body Problem)
May: John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row
June: Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood
(Hiatus)
August: Ta-Nehisi Coates -- Between the World and Me
September: Wilkie Collins -- The Moonstone
October:Seth Dickinson -- The Traitor Baru Cormorant
November:Svetlana Alexievich -- Voices from Chernobyl
December: Michael Chabon -- Gentlemen of the Road

2016:
January: Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome
February:The March Up Country (The Anabasis) of Xenophon
March: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
April: Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling
May: Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima
June:The Vegetarian by Han Kang
July:Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
August: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
September:Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
October:Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
November:Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
December: It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

2017:
January: Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut
February: The Plague by Albert Camus
March: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
April: The Conference of the Birds (مقامات الطیور) by Farid ud-Din Attar
May: I, Claudius by Robert Graves
June: Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
July: Ficcionies by Jorge Luis Borges
August: My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber
September: The Peregrine by J.A. Baker
October: Blackwater Vol. I: The Flood by Michael McDowell
November: Aquarium by David Vann
December: Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight [Author Unknown]

2018
January: Njal's Saga [Author Unknown]
February: The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
March: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
April: Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio de Maria

Current:

Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov

Book available here:
https://www.amazon.com/Lectures-Literature-Vladimir-Nabokov/dp/0156027755

(Note there are two of these collections: one on English literature, one on Russian. Feel free to buy either but I expect we'll be focusing on the English one).

About the book:

There has been a lot of discussion of literary analysis and criticism in TBB lately and while this work is not precisely theoretical criticism -- or, at least, not by intent -- it may serve as a useful gateway. Basically, we'll be reading Nabokov's lectures on literature to help us approach and appreciate other great authors that we might not otherwise be familiar with or awaken to the merits of. Most of the authors he's talking about here are ones who take a little introduction and guide-work for modern readers to really appreciate; in some ways, Austen and Forster and Dickens write about a world more alien to the modern American than, say, Tolkien's Middle-Earth. As such, it's easy to get a bit lost if you don't have some help along the way.

Nabokov is here, your guide and torchbearer.

quote:

Not really essays, not genial and general E. M. Forster-ish talks either, nor stirring defenses nor rhetorical destructions, these lectures Nabokov prepared and gave at Cornell in the Fifties are just that: he talks and reads, we listen (the same general approach - heirophant picking out the mystery from the dross - that Nabokov used in his own fiction); and literature is taken apart like a boxful of toys: "impersonal imagination and artistic delight," "the supremacy of the detail over the general, of the part that is more alive than the whole."

There are diagrams and drawings, quiddities made visual: a map of Sotherton Court in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park; exactly what kind of beetle Gregor Samsa turned into in "The Metamorphosis" the facade of 7 Eccles St., Bloom's house in Ulysses; what Odette's orchid looked like in Swann's Way. The more specific and crammed the writer, the more specific and crammed Nabokov's lecture: Dickens, Flaubert, Joyce. He finds Bleak House's tricks delicious, the richness and the pity; in Ulysses he swats away the Freudian interpretations ("a thousand and one nights [made] into a convention of Shriners") in favor of the devilish intricacy of Joycean synchronicity: "the hopeless past, the ridiculous and tragic present, and the pathetic future."

Where sheer lush orchestration is less the thing, Nabokov falls back on thematic layering and transformation; before Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" he is almost brief, enchantedly synopsizing although with microscopic attention still. In Nabokov a crankiness is always near the surface (here he rants against movies, even music); and he betrays a certain anxiety by detailing so much, as though a great work might try and fool him: there's something at the same time eccentric and regimental to his appreciation.

But finally there is a personal, fussy, high rapture to these lessons and illustrations, not quite analytical (Nabokov was too defensive and contentious for analysis - maybe too brilliant, too) - more a delight in literature-as-camouflage. Distinctive and demanding.

quote:

The published lectures are, apart from everything else, dutiful, even professorial. They are concrete, efficient, not the wanderings of an imported star who takes off early by way of discussion periods. We are told by Andrew Field that Nabokov's scientific work on butterflies was "painstaking" and marked by a "scale by scale meticulousness." There is something of this also in the approach to the performance before as many as 400 students and the acceptance of certain ever-returning weekends with 150 examination papers to be read.

The young audience is there to hear him, even if he does not know what they may have brought with them. Nabokov stands aside in the beginning, perturbed, it may be imagined, not only by the rarity of literature, but by the rarity of reading, true reading. He solicits rather poignantly from the students the ineffable "tingling spine" and "shiver" of the esthetic response, all that cannot be written down in notebooks and which is as hopeless of definition as the act of composition itself.

. . .

Following these lectures with their determined clinging to detail, and with the insistent foot on each rung of the scaffolding of the plot, is to be asked to experience the novel itself in a kind of thoughtfully assisted re-reading, without interpretation. There is very little ripe, plump, appreciative language. "Beautiful" turns are acknowledged by "note" and "mark." In "Madame Bovary" "note the long fine sunrays through the chinks in the closed shutters" and "mark the insidious daylight that made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace and touched with livid blue the cold cinders." A novel is a rare object. Look at it with a magnifying glass and the earphones turned off. And curiously each work is alone, not milling about among its siblings, "Emma," "Our Mutual Friend," "Portrait of an Artist" and so on and so on.

. . .

Perhaps in the end it is not surprising that this writer who has walked every step of the way in two languages should look upon style as the self in all its being and the novel as a slow, patient construction of a gleaming fairy tale. "Let us look at the web and not the spider," he writes about Dickens. The web, the inimitable web, is what these lectures are about.

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/07/26/specials/hardwick-nabokov.html?mcubz=3

About the Author

quote:

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (/nəˈbɔːkəf, ˈn�bəˌkɔːf, -ˌkɒf/;[1] Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков, pronounced [vɫɐˈdʲimʲɪr nɐˈbokəf] (About this sound listen), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin; 22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1899[a] � 2 July 1977) was a Russian-American novelist, translator and entomologist. His first nine novels were in Russian, but he achieved international prominence after he began writing English prose.

Nabokov's Lolita (1955), his most noted novel in English, was ranked fourth in the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels;[2] Pale Fire (1962) was ranked 53rd on the same list, and his memoir, Speak, Memory (1951), was listed eighth on the publisher's list of the 20th century's greatest nonfiction.[3] He was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction seven times.

Nabokov was an expert lepidopterist and composer of chess problems.

quote:

�It's called color hearing,� Nabokov told the BBC in 1962. �Perhaps one in a thousand has that. But I'm told by psychologists that most children have it, that later they lose that aptitude when they are told by stupid parents that it's all nonsense, an A isn't black, a B isn't brown�now don't be absurd.�

When the interviewer asked what color his own initials were, Nabokov replied that the �V is a kind of pale, transparent pink: I think it's called, technically, quartz pink: this is one of the closest colors that I can connect with the V. And the N, on the other hand, is a greyish-yellowish oatmeal color.�

What�s more is that Nabokov �heard� different colors in different languages:

�The long "a" of the English alphabet has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French "a" evokes polished ebony. This black group also includes hard "g" (vulcanized rubber) and "r" (a sooty rag being ripped). Oatmeal "n", noodle-limp "l", and the ivory-backed hand mirror of an "o" take care of the whites. I am puzzled by my French "on" which I see as the brimming tension-surface of alcohol in a small glass.�

Oddly�though maybe not that odd, as it�s been estimated that 1 in 23 people have some form of the condition�his wife, V�ra, also had synesthesia. So did their son, which is how they discovered this interesting tidbit:

�My wife has this gift of seeing letters in color, too, but her colors are completely different. There are, perhaps, two or three letters where we coincide, but otherwise the colors are quite different. It turned out, we discovered one day, that my son, who was a little boy at the time�I think he was ten or eleven�sees letters in colors, too. Quite naturally he would say, "Oh, this isn't that color, this is this color," and so on. Then we asked him to list his colors and we discovered that in one case, one letter which he sees as purple, or perhaps mauve, is pink to me and blue to my wife. This is the letter M. So the combination of pink and blue makes lilac in his case. Which is as if genes were painting in aquarelle.�

No doubt the way he saw letters colored the way he wrote�quite beautifully, obviously.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/49442/vladimir-nabokov-talks-synesthesia

Themes

All of them, and none, and everything. Aesthetics.

Pacing

Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law.

Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion.

References and Further Reading

This time this thread is the further reading.

Final Note:

Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book!

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:27 on May 7, 2018

# ? May 7, 2018 17:23

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 06:52

Cloks: Feb 1, 2013; by Azathoth

How much would a reader gain from these essays if they haven't read the novel they're about? I'm debating trying to read the related titles before the essays but there are only so many hours in a day.

# ? May 7, 2018 17:54

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Cloks posted:

How much would a reader gain from these essays if they haven't read the novel they're about? I'm debating trying to read the related titles before the essays but there are only so many hours in a day.

I've only read a few of these essays -- mostly where they've been republished as introductions in copies of the books in question; my copy should be delivered in the next few days -- but the ones I have read were functionally perfect introductions to the books.

Nabokov doesn't really care about "spoilers" as such -- he's concerned with beauty, not suspense -- but basically Nabokov is teaching Literature 101 The Great Novels here.

Because it's an introductory course, they're great introductions if you haven't already read the book(s).

Because it's Nabokov, if you have read the book he will see things you missed, so it's even better if you've already read the book.

Basically this is a tasting tour of Western lit: read the guidebook, then go read in your own, then return again to the guidebook, recursively.

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:34 on May 7, 2018

# ? May 7, 2018 18:26

OscarDiggs: Jun 1, 2011; Those sure are words on pages which are given in a sequential order!

I mentioned in the vote thread that I was recommended this via the recomendation thread. However the poster said that it might be better to read one or two other books first ("How To Read Literature Like A Professor" and "Reading Like A Writer" respectively). I've already got this sitting on my Kindle now but how is it going to read to someone barely literate by Lit Goon standards?

# ? May 7, 2018 20:48

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

OscarDiggs posted:

I mentioned in the vote thread that I was recommended this via the recomendation thread. However the poster said that it might be better to read one or two other books first ("How To Read Literature Like A Professor" and "Reading Like A Writer" respectively). I've already got this sitting on my Kindle now but how is it going to read to someone barely literate by Lit Goon standards?

That was me! You'll be fine reading this. I recommended the other books before this one only because you wanted something very easy and accessible. This one is slightly drier and more scholarly, whereas the other are more conversational. Nabakov has some interesting ideas that might seem daunting to someone who's a little insecure about their lit analysis and critical reading skills, like drawing maps of the locations in a novel, researching insects, etc. He also sometimes comes off as a grouchy uncle. Nabakov was a great writer, he was certainly a genius, and some great writers learned a lot from his college courses, but he isn't the Law when it comes to lit. theory.

The sections in this book are also mostly self-contained essays/lectures, so you can really just pick one and go. Personally, I think that the essay "The Art of Literature and Commonsense" is worth the price of admission alone, and I think it's weird that it's relegated to the back of the book.

As for reading the stories before the essay, I don't think it's necessary. I haven't read Madame Bovary or Ulysses, for instance. It helps, yeah, but the ideas still stand on their own. That said, The Metamorphosis and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are able to be read in one sitting and are widely available.

I'll try and reread the essays throughout the month and contribute as much as I can.

# ? May 7, 2018 21:18

OscarDiggs: Jun 1, 2011; Those sure are words on pages which are given in a sequential order!

Franchescanado posted:

That was me! You'll be fine reading this. I recommended the other books before this one only because you wanted something very easy and accessible. This one is slightly drier and more scholarly, whereas the other are more conversational. Nabakov has some interesting ideas that might seem daunting to someone who's a little insecure about their lit analysis and critical reading skills, like drawing maps of the locations in a novel, researching insects, etc. He also sometimes comes off as a grouchy uncle. Nabakov was a great writer, he was certainly a genius, and some great writers learned a lot from his college courses, but he isn't the Law when it comes to lit. theory.

The sections in this book are also mostly self-contained essays/lectures, so you can really just pick one and go. Personally, I think that the essay "The Art of Literature and Commonsense" is worth the price of admission alone, and I think it's weird that it's relegated to the back of the book.

As for reading the stories before the essay, I don't think it's necessary. I haven't read Madame Bovary or Ulysses, for instance. It helps, yeah, but the ideas still stand on their own. That said, The Metamorphosis and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are able to be read in one sitting and are widely available.

I'll try and reread the essays throughout the month and contribute as much as I can.

Thanks friend!

# ? May 7, 2018 21:30

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

A theme that really came through w/ these is his focus on architecture and space generally. Probably a sign that I should re-read the Nab I've read plotting it out on blueprints.

# ? May 9, 2018 09:55

Oxxidation: Jul 22, 2007

thought I�d already read this but I was getting it confused with his collection of ornery letters to magazine editors

Nabokov was an insufferable know-it-all made even more insufferable by the high probability that he did, in fact, know it all

# ? May 10, 2018 05:26

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Mr. Squishy posted:

A theme that really came through w/ these is his focus on architecture and space generally. Probably a sign that I should re-read the Nab I've read plotting it out on blueprints.

I'm only a few pages in so far (copy just got here) but I'm loving the Austen and Dickens essays. He really brings that lepidopterists' eye for detail. "We know the action of the novel takes place in [year] because the only year between X and Y when the XXth of [month] fell on a Thursday was [year]" etc.

# ? May 10, 2018 15:39

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

I find his interest in architecture and space weird. I work in many visual mediums and my job involves a lot of design work, but I'm very rarely paying attention to layouts and space when it comes to reading fiction. The idea that a house described in a book should logically work when drawn out makes sense from a writer's perspective, but I don't see much insight in doing it as a reader, other than add to the collection of rich details. I took his advice and made sure I had maps of the different areas described in Pride & Prejudice when I read it a few months ago, and that was interesting when tracing Elizabeth's path to Darcy's estate up north, because I knew it would be an annoying and long trip. Still a lot of work with very little benefit.

Maybe he elaborates more on this in a later essay? I've only been rereading the Austen one, and I forgot to bring the book with me on my recent travels.

# ? May 14, 2018 22:51

Guy A. Person: May 23, 2003

My book came in and I'm gonna pick it up tomorrow and get to reading

# ? May 15, 2018 05:44

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Franchescanado posted:

r, other than add to the collection of rich details.

Rich details are everything to Nabokov.

# ? May 15, 2018 05:48

chernobyl kinsman: Mar 18, 2007; a friend of the friendly atom; Soiled Meat

Franchescanado posted:

I find his interest in architecture and space weird. I work in many visual mediums and my job involves a lot of design work, but I'm very rarely paying attention to layouts and space when it comes to reading fiction. The idea that a house described in a book should logically work when drawn out makes sense from a writer's perspective, but I don't see much insight in doing it as a reader, other than add to the collection of rich details. I took his advice and made sure I had maps of the different areas described in Pride & Prejudice when I read it a few months ago, and that was interesting when tracing Elizabeth's path to Darcy's estate up north, because I knew it would be an annoying and long trip. Still a lot of work with very little benefit.

Maybe he elaborates more on this in a later essay? I've only been rereading the Austen one, and I forgot to bring the book with me on my recent travels.

this is particularly evident in the jekyll & hyde lecture, where he diagrams not only jekyll's house but his actual transformation into hyde

# ? May 15, 2018 13:42

Guy A. Person: May 23, 2003

Franchescanado posted:

This one is slightly drier and more scholarly

Boy you ain't kidding about this part! I am finding it a little rough going so far because of this plus not knowing much of the works he's talking about, but there are definitely places where it shines. He can also be surprisingly hilarious at points, in addition to having really clever insights and an amazing attention to detail. I like his repeated point about fiction being fiction and bagging on the idea of "realism" by numerating the anachronisms in Madame Bovary lol. Anyway I am also like halfway through the Jekyll and Hyde essay and it is cool how he diagrammed the transformation with circles.

# ? May 18, 2018 04:08

AngusPodgorny: Jun 3, 2004; Please to be restful, it is only a puffin that has from the puffin place outbroken.

I was hesitant to read this because I haven�t read any of the books he�s discussing, but de does a good job of including long enough quotes that I can follow along anyway. (Or the editor did, since I'm not sure Nabokov was the type to cater to students who didn�t read ahead of time.) He also completely spoils the entire plot of the books, but now I want to read Bleak House more than before despite that.

He�s definitely comes across as a curmudgeon, but it�s interesting when he says things like �this is where Austen got tired of writing the book� or �this is where Dickens messed up.� And he can back it up, rather than just disagreeing for the sake of it.

My favorite thing so far has been how he details the efforts in getting the right people into the right places to tell the story, including Flaubert's letters describing his efforts doing so. I should chart out the movements of cardboard supporting characters in some trashy novel I read sometime as well, just to see how they freeze in place or cease to exist when the main character isn't around.

# ? May 18, 2018 15:51

Guy A. Person: May 23, 2003

The essay on the Metamorphosis has been fantastic especially because that's (unfortunately the only) one I've read.

Oh I also like him bagging on the Moncrieff translation of Proust, and there's an included page where he is correcting the translation with pen and ink and then the word "Idiot!" is circled next to it lol

# ? May 18, 2018 16:46

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

He definitely was a crank.

# ? May 18, 2018 22:47

Guy A. Person: May 23, 2003

I kind of wish I had read these out of order and just done the Metamorphosis first because now that I have I am really flowing in the Joyce essay which makes me want to read Ulysses

I will probably go back and reread at least the Bleak House essay

# ? May 19, 2018 00:33

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

Also Dr Jekyll is like, 30 pages.

# ? May 19, 2018 13:38

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

The Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde essay and The Metamorphosis essays have been my favorite as well. I especially like Dr. Jekyll, because there is a lot of emphasis on style, word choice, alliteration without Nabakov's esoteric redefinition of the words personal "flavor" to his synthetic mind. I found all of Nabakov's notes on Stevenson's Essays in the Art of Writing to be interesting, and there is a lot of overlap in what Stevenson believes is good writing and what I enjoy reading.

I also just love Nabakov's enthusiasm for the characters and stories. He loving loves Dickens. He loving loves Stevenson's prose. He loving loves Gregor. It's kind of adorable reading the curmudgeon go on about how great the stories are. The only thing I find more fascinating is when he says an interpretation is wrong and can back it up, or when he just says "The author is great and this story is great but they did this wrong, let's look how we could improve it," and he sticks the landing.

I really need to read Madam Bovary.

# ? May 21, 2018 13:13

anilEhilated: Feb 17, 2014; But I say fuck the rain.; Grimey Drawer

Might be just me being a philistine, but so far the most mindblowing revelation was that "embargo" backwards is "o grab me".

# ? May 21, 2018 15:46

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Need suggestions for next month.

# ? May 21, 2018 15:52

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

anilEhilated posted:

Might be just me being a philistine, but so far the most mindblowing revelation was that "embargo" backwards is "o grab me".

I don't think anything about it is "mind-blowing", and I don't think that's what it's trying to accomplish.

Nabakov thinks that a book can qualify as "good" to "great" to "masterwork" if it can stand the scrutiny of close reading. It's not really interested in interpretations or exploring the story through abstract terms, partially because that is better saved for discussion in a classroom and partially because you can't really grade interpretations, only the evidence that goes into them.

That's what the concentration of his lectures and this book is: setting up a system for a student to read/re-read a book that will objectively show the book is substantial or falls apart under scrutiny and provide evidence that for them to use in their interpretations, and why that is valuable information for the reader to explore (and for a writer to provide).

Which is why he doesn't really share interpretations of a story beyond the detail it provides, but is willing to denounce interpretations that ignore the story's details (that Jekyll and Hyde is a morality tale, for instance; within the same section he doesn't seem so quick to denounce the idea that it's exploring homosexuality in Victorian literature).

That's why I like the final essay on common sense with reading. He's providing techniques and examples of close reading, which most readers just do not engage in. Hell, most of TBB's posters can barely read a post without misunderstanding stuff, let alone one criticizing or analyzing a story.

# ? May 21, 2018 16:04

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Franchescanado posted:

That's what the concentration of his lectures and this book is: setting up a system for a student to read/re-read a book that will objectively show the book is substantial or falls apart under scrutiny and provide evidence that for them to use in their interpretations, and why that is valuable information for the reader to explore (and for a writer to provide). . . .

That's why I like the final essay on common sense with reading. He's providing techniques and examples of close reading, which most readers just do not engage in. Hell, most of TBB's posters can barely read a post without misunderstanding stuff, let alone one criticizing or analyzing a story.

Shhh, people will figure out I'm trying to trick them into reading an English 101 textbook!

# ? May 21, 2018 16:07

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Need suggestions for next month.

High-Rise or Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard. He's mostly known for his novel Crash, but his novel High-Rise heavily inspired David Cronenberg to make his first horror film "Shivers". Both of these novels are short (200 pages), and should be weird enough to be entertaining while providing us nerds stuff to analyze.

quote:

For High-Rise: When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on "enemy" floors. In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.[/url]

[quote]For Concrete IslandOn a day in April, just after three o'clock in the afternoon, Robert Maitland's car crashes over the concrete parapet of a high-speed highway onto the island below, where he is injured and, finally, trapped. What begins as an almost ludicrous predicament in Concrete Island soon turns into horror as Maitland - a wickedly modern Robinson Crusoe - realizes that, despite evidence of other inhabitants, this doomed terrain has become a mirror of his own mind. Seeking the dark outer rim of the everyday, Ballard weaves private catastrophe into an intensely specular allegory.

Warlock by Oakley Hall. We don't do Westerns very often, and they seem appropriate for summer.

quote:

Oakley Hall's legendary Warlock revisits and reworks the traditional conventions of the Western to present a raw, funny, hypnotic, ultimately devastating picture of American unreality. First published in the 1950s, at the height of the McCarthy era, Warlock is not only one of the most original and entertaining of modern American novels but a lasting contribution to American fiction. (500ish pages)

"Tombstone, Arizona, during the 1880's is, in ways, our national Camelot: a never-never land where American virtues are embodied in the Earps, and the opposite evils in the Clanton gang; where the confrontation at the OK Corral takes on some of the dry purity of the Arthurian joust. Oakley Hall, in his very fine novel Warlock has restored to the myth of Tombstone its full, mortal, blooded humanity. Wyatt Earp is transmogrified into a gunfighter named Blaisdell who . . . is summoned to the embattled town of Warlock by a committee of nervous citizens expressly to be a hero, but finds that he cannot, at last, live up to his image; that there is a flaw not only in him, but also, we feel, in the entire set of assumptions that have allowed the image to exist. . . . Before the agonized epic of Warlock is over with--the rebellion of the proto-Wobblies working in the mines, the struggling for political control of the area, the gunfighting, mob violence, the personal crises of those in power--the collective awareness that is Warlock must face its own inescapable Horror: that what is called society, with its law and order, is as frail, as precarious, as flesh and can be snuffed out and assimilated back into the desert as easily as a corpse can. It is the deep sensitivity to abysses that makes Warlock one of our best American novels. For we are a nation that can, many of us, toss with all aplomb our candy wrapper into the Grand Canyon itself, snap a color shot and drive away; and we need voices like Oakley Hall's to remind us how far that piece of paper, still fluttering brightly behind us, has to fall." --Thomas Pynchon

If we want to test the literary skills Nabakov has taught us, maybe Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor?

quote:

Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate faith. He falls under the spell of a "blind" street preacher names Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Lily Sabbath. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Hazel Motes founds the The Church Without Christ, but is still thwarted in his efforts to lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with "wise blood," who leads him to a mummified holy child, and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Hazel's existential struggles. This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdom gives us one of the most consuming characters in modern fiction.

# ? May 21, 2018 17:54

The Belgian: Oct 28, 2008

The selfmade Jekyll & Hyde cover is adorable.

# ? May 22, 2018 18:51

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

The Belgian posted:

The selfmade Jekyll & Hyde cover is adorable.

You'd think he'd eventually learn how to draw a horse.

# ? May 23, 2018 13:52

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

What about Wolf or Roth for next month?

# ? May 23, 2018 15:31

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for Wolfe would be fun.

I haven't read any Roth, but I have had Portnoy's Complaint, The Plot Against America and American Pastoral floating on my to-read lists for a while.

# ? May 23, 2018 15:43

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Franchescanado posted:

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for Wolfe would be fun.

I haven't read any Roth, but I have had Portnoy's Complaint, The Plot Against America and American Pastoral floating on my to-read lists for a while.

Yeah, I've never gotten around to Roth. I tend to get him confused with John Irving.

For some reason I thought we'd already drank the Kool-Aid, but I might just have included it in some polls.

# ? May 23, 2018 15:48

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

We should not read Wolfe because Wolfe is loving trash

# ? May 23, 2018 15:55

OscarDiggs: Jun 1, 2011; Those sure are words on pages which are given in a sequential order!

Way late, but I figure I may as well while the thread is still around.

I've got to say I'm not really far into the lectures, since I'm mostly using them as an excuse to read the other books in tandem and I don't think I'm really enjoying the experience so far. It's not what I thought it would be, which was some degree of instruction in how to read better. It feels much more like "You are bad, and should feel awful about that. Now watch as I, a true reader, tell you how bad you are."

The most confusing part being how we need to be both really into the book we're reading, while also being aloof. Well how? The two states seem pretty opposed to each other. How can someone paw over every detail while keeping the work at arms length? I've had to restart Mansfield Park so many times because I get to drawn in... but is that what I should be doing? Maybe Franchescanado was right in that I should have come to this way later.

# ? May 26, 2018 22:31

Mr. Squishy: Mar 22, 2010; A country where you can always get richer.

I think the maxim about only needing attention and a dictionary is good. The tuttutting about political readings is tiresome but that's Nab for you.

# ? May 27, 2018 08:01

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

OscarDiggs posted:

The most confusing part being how we need to be both really into the book we're reading, while also being aloof. Well how? The two states seem pretty opposed to each other. How can someone paw over every detail while keeping the work at arms length? I've had to restart Mansfield Park so many times because I get to drawn in... but is that what I should be doing? Maybe Franchescanado was right in that I should have come to this way later.

This is mainly against shallow readings based on emotions. It isn't enough to say "Mansfield Park is literature because it makes me cry and feel like I'm in love", because that is so subjective that no real criticism or analysis can grow from that.

That's why the details, the word choice, the characterization become important to the reading. There are many details that are important but not written plainly, like how Jane Austen will use carraiges to show the social status of the characters.

For example, you might read a chapter in a story about a house in a neighborhood, and emotionally you feel unsettled. Something is creepy about the section you're reading. However, if you reread the section and pay attention to all the word choices, you may reveal a pattern that the author has used verbs that imply danger and gruesome nouns and creepy adjectives.

When I was discussing the book with a friend, he made the analogy that it's like being a production designer on a film. You're reading it for the details so you can accurately construct the story on a visual level. That involves locations, costumes, characters, etc. By collecting all of the details, the depth of the story starts opening up.

To be fair, this was a re-read for me after having read more of the authors that are reviewed. And to Nabakov's credit, he states in a lecture that this is an evolving process, that this type of working through a book happens on mulitple readings. And it's very much like a muscle that grows as you exercise it.

You will undoubtedly enjoy the other books I recommended more than this one, but come back to this one after you read the books mentioned, as there are a lot of great moments where he explores an author's prose or techniques.

# ? May 27, 2018 14:50

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# ? Apr 26, 2024 06:52

Hieronymous Alloy: Jan 30, 2009; Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!; Morbid Hound

Tim Burns Effect posted:

Posting this here since Nabokov's lectures aren't BotM anymore: i was just searching to see if the text of the Kafka lecture was online so i could send it to a friend and lo and behold, someone decided to film that lecture with Christopher Plummer playing Nabokov. I have no idea what compelled anyone to make this but i'm glad they did:

https://vimeo.com/87523667

the threads don't close, man

# ? Aug 12, 2018 04:02

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > MAY BOTM: Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov