|
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
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 18, 2024 00:30 |
|
|
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
|
|
|
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 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 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] 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) 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 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
|
|
|
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
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 18, 2024 00:30 |
|
|
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
|
|