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Books and Intelligence
- Thread starter Usagi
- Start date
Stewart said:I think the victim is one of those people who can't read a sentence without a smilie on the end.
There’s a really good simile joke in here somewhere, but I’m too tired to find it…
SFG75 said:
It’s my opinion that I upped the level and did no stooping, while staying on topic even. This may be a potato/patahto situation though…
As for the wicked witch under the house, I hope that she has life insurance.
Oddly enough the Lollypop Kids are _still_ negotiating this one.
Debating or leaving or just staying ‘round the clock now…
j
MonkeyCatcher
New Member
jay said:
Yes I agree that posts would be /better/ if they stated WHY the book was great, but I don't think that stating makes it more /valid/ and that was the point that I was trying to make. Both posts still say the same thing, that the book was good and is worth reading, it's just that one goes into more depth of WHY the book was great and so is therefore "better".
jay said:
Yeah, I understand this and did not even think for a second that this is what you had tried to do. Just for the record, I don't think that you should leave the boards because you do contribute to the forums with your in depth - yet highly sarcastic - "reviews".
MonkeyCatcher
New Member
novella said:
Hehe nope, I'm pretty sure that I'm not
. What makes you say that?jay said:
A bit of Jekyll & Hyde, quoting myself, but that is the Lollypop *Guild*.
A little purposeful slip which I will reveal why later.
MonkeyCatcher said:
Not at all. Not at all. On the ‘required reading’ thread you yourself were the one to make a statement that what is “good/bad” is *subjective*. Which it is, to a certain degree.
And my exact specifying of _Lolita_, I think, clearly makes this point.
Again.
Picture three different post to ‘just finished reading’:
1) I just finished _Lolita_. I loved it! Two thumbs up!!
2) I just finished _Lolita_, amazing stuff. EVERYONE (especially men) should read this book! I was more turned on throughout this book than watching porno for an entire month straight! I now have a new literary hero! Admin, how can I go about changing my user-name to “Humbert”?? I’ll post again later; I’m off to hang out in the little girl’s section of Macy’s!!
3) I just finished _Lolita_. I’ve read some of Nabokov’s earlier works, translated from Russian, most notably _The Enchanter_ (his last book in Russian) -which is very much a precursor to some of the themes explored in _Lolita_. I can’t tell you how astounded I am by Nabokov’s precise configurations of words in a language that isn’t his native. And yes, while the book is seen as controversial, this should not hamper one’s pleasure in this wonderscape of a novel. I can’t recommend it enough.
I can’t see these 3 posts “saying the same thing”.
Someone may recommend the aforementioned ‘Narnia Chronicles’ and say they “love” them. But if I were to accept that statement as-is and decided to go out and buy book 1, my distaste for overbearing religious iconography and fiction characters based on quasi-fictional characters (i.e. the lion/jezuz) would have me driving nails into the book.
I wouldn’t “love” it.
Another may “love” all things Stephen King, not because he’s a rock-solid writer but simply because of the nostalgia effect that he was reading _Thinner_ when he met his wife. Without this little anecdote, I’d be lead to believe that I too should “love” Stephen King even though I got no booty and potential/probable alimony case out of it.
It’s all in the perspective.
We’re not charged by the font here; let’s try to give some background and information.
Yes, I wasn’t being defensive [about the edits that made it onto this thread versus ones that stayed], just trying to fill in the void as not everyone was following the previous thread.
Today I shall do some work.
Ciao,
j
As I think The Death of Reading is still an apt title, along with the thread ‘what should be required reading’ and since I really need to get some work done, here’s an uplifting article (that’s sarcasm) for us to ponder.
http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i43/43a02701.htm
http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i43/43a02701.htm
Shade
New Member
jay said:
Exactly right. Not all opinions are worthy of the same attention, and giving reasons provides evidence that enables us to decide which opinions to heed. But we had a similar discussion to this in the Mainstream Blockbuster thread...
clueless
New Member
Reading exclusively a certain type of book says nothing about a person’s intelligence. It only reflects on one’s linguistic intelligence but does not imply the person lacks in one of the other 8 types mentioned by Gardner.
Vocabulary is not a prerequisite of reasoning. One can reason perfectly well about ‘whatsitsnames’, ‘thingys’ and ‘doings’.
Sorry, Jay, but English was Nabokov’s native language, even though he pretended it was otherwise. English was the language spoken in his household –French went out of favour as upper class Russians means of communication after Napoleon’s little visit- and Russian was only used with the servants. It was harder for him to write in Russian
Vocabulary is not a prerequisite of reasoning. One can reason perfectly well about ‘whatsitsnames’, ‘thingys’ and ‘doings’.
Sorry, Jay, but English was Nabokov’s native language, even though he pretended it was otherwise. English was the language spoken in his household –French went out of favour as upper class Russians means of communication after Napoleon’s little visit- and Russian was only used with the servants. It was harder for him to write in Russian
Stewart
Active Member
clueless said:
For a thread about nit-picking and not reading into what's been said, it's a shame about this one. While you may be correct - Nabokov doesn't interest me at the moment - Jay only said picture three responses; he never claimed any as his.
You may be right and he wrong and I don't, frankly, care. I doubt he would either.
novella
Active Member
jay said:
jay, the only 'review' here that says anything concrete about the content and experience of reading Lolita is the second one. You say absolutely nothing in the third 'review'; it's the same as the first, except with more words.
What the heck is a 'precise configuration of words' if not 'writing'?
What is a 'wonderscape of a novel' if not a 'great novel'?
Who cares what his native language is? It has no bearing on the experience of the reader. You say nothing about why it's 'controversial,' or what those mysterious 'themes' are. It just has no content.
At least reading no. 2 I know that the reviewer got his rocks off reading the book. The third review is the worst kind of empty bullshit.
Shade
New Member
Fair points. jay is having his afternoon nap, so allow me offer another version.
1) I just finished Lolita. I loved it! Two thumbs up!!
2) I just finished Lolita, amazing stuff. EVERYONE (especially men) should read this book! I was more turned on throughout this book than watching porno for an entire month straight! I now have a new literary hero! Admin, how can I go about changing my user-name to “Humbert”?? I’ll post again later; I’m off to hang out in the little girl’s section of Macy’s!!
3) I have definitely read Lolita before but when I re-read it this week I realised that I had only a very vague memory of it - it's, like, about this guy, right? - and that it had mostly faded into an impressionistic blur. I hope that won't happen again because I realised this time that it's a staggering and brilliant masterpiece which definitely now hunkers around the edges of my top ten, if not actually in there.
It's also a phenomenon, for all sorts of reasons. It is one of the few literary novels of the 20th century (along with the likes of Catch-22 and Nineteen Eighty Four) that has put a new word or phrase into the common language. It is the work of a man writing in not his first or second, but third language. It is responsible for the worst rhyming couplet in musical history*. And its subject matter, of a paedophile 'relationship' is utterly contemporary - so it doesn't fade and date like other fifty-year-old books (Lucky Jim, anyone?) - and also makes it hard to believe that it was published in the prudish 1950s. Of course, it almost wasn't: like that other great "obscene" novel Ulysses, it was first published in Paris. Nabokov in his afterword writes:
The other reason why it has not dated is because of its innovative language, which while nowhere near Joycean - or even, to me, Marquezian - complexity, does take a bit of getting used to. (Nabokov described it as "a record of my love affair with the English language.") The supple and witty language is never better displayed than in the scene at the end between Humbert and Quilty, which comes at the start of Kubrick's film version (another distinction: great book becomes great film shocker), and which I had presumed was mostly Peter Sellers' improvisation ("You will only wound me hideously and then rot in jail while I recuperate in a tropical setting"): but it's all there on the page.
Lolita is, as you surely know, and whatever the naysayers may claim, a love story. And there are plenty of naysayers, even in the 21st century, where you might expect sophistication enough to understand the difference between writer, or reader, and character. One saddened Amazon reviewer states "If you want to read erotic descriptions of children and sickeningly-detailed depictions of child molesting, the law is apparently powerless (or at least unwilling) to stop you, but please, please, don't hide behind "art." Admit, at least to yourself, what you're really doing; admit what you are." Needless to say, there are no sickeningly-detaileds in Lolita. Yes, unsurprisingly, it's all in his mind.
Humbert Humbert relates his love story from jail, where he awaits trial for murder. It has been edited by "John Ray, Jr." after Humbert's death, who also provides a foreword where he gives away all the protagonists' fates without the reader realising. The name Humbert Humbert is significant: it is the narrator's own choice of fictional name - the "double rumble" which Nabokov felt carried the right amount of sinister intent - and reflects his two personas. There is Humbert the rapacious paedophile, with his authentic attention to detail and planning, and his enormous cruelty - the last sentence of Part 1 of the novel packed a punch like I hadn't felt since A Handful of Dust. And there is Humbert the repentant regretter: filled with self-loathing and longing at the end of the book, in an exceptionally moving scene where he realises that he really loves the grown-up Lolita.
Humbert is a mesmerising narrator, charming, repellent, pitiable and witty. Despite its occasional forays into picaresque road-movie territory, there is not a single boring page in the book, for now I know where Martin Amis gets his ambition never to write a sentence that someone else could have written. (As Humbert warns us at the start: "You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.") If you're going to read Lolita - and why wouldn't you? - I recommend the annotated version, which will not only give you more background and notation than you will ever require, but also enable you to identify who the hell they're talking about at one crucial point of the plot, and to spot the same character's preshadowings, as he appears and vanishes and vanishes and appears throughout the book's first two-hundred-and-fifty pages before he actually comes centre stage, rather like Brad Pitt in Fight Club.
Time, then, to reacquaint myself with the other Nabokovs I have, and have surely read, but which I can't remember anything about either. They will hardly match the perfection of Lolita, a novel for which I reserve the highest praise: that is, to shut up about it, and leave it to Little Mart:
* "He sees her / He starts to shake and cough / Just like the old man in / That book by Nabokov" - The Police, Don't Stand So Close To Me. For shame!
1) I just finished Lolita. I loved it! Two thumbs up!!
2) I just finished Lolita, amazing stuff. EVERYONE (especially men) should read this book! I was more turned on throughout this book than watching porno for an entire month straight! I now have a new literary hero! Admin, how can I go about changing my user-name to “Humbert”?? I’ll post again later; I’m off to hang out in the little girl’s section of Macy’s!!
3) I have definitely read Lolita before but when I re-read it this week I realised that I had only a very vague memory of it - it's, like, about this guy, right? - and that it had mostly faded into an impressionistic blur. I hope that won't happen again because I realised this time that it's a staggering and brilliant masterpiece which definitely now hunkers around the edges of my top ten, if not actually in there.
It's also a phenomenon, for all sorts of reasons. It is one of the few literary novels of the 20th century (along with the likes of Catch-22 and Nineteen Eighty Four) that has put a new word or phrase into the common language. It is the work of a man writing in not his first or second, but third language. It is responsible for the worst rhyming couplet in musical history*. And its subject matter, of a paedophile 'relationship' is utterly contemporary - so it doesn't fade and date like other fifty-year-old books (Lucky Jim, anyone?) - and also makes it hard to believe that it was published in the prudish 1950s. Of course, it almost wasn't: like that other great "obscene" novel Ulysses, it was first published in Paris. Nabokov in his afterword writes:
The other reason why it has not dated is because of its innovative language, which while nowhere near Joycean - or even, to me, Marquezian - complexity, does take a bit of getting used to. (Nabokov described it as "a record of my love affair with the English language.") The supple and witty language is never better displayed than in the scene at the end between Humbert and Quilty, which comes at the start of Kubrick's film version (another distinction: great book becomes great film shocker), and which I had presumed was mostly Peter Sellers' improvisation ("You will only wound me hideously and then rot in jail while I recuperate in a tropical setting"): but it's all there on the page.
Lolita is, as you surely know, and whatever the naysayers may claim, a love story. And there are plenty of naysayers, even in the 21st century, where you might expect sophistication enough to understand the difference between writer, or reader, and character. One saddened Amazon reviewer states "If you want to read erotic descriptions of children and sickeningly-detailed depictions of child molesting, the law is apparently powerless (or at least unwilling) to stop you, but please, please, don't hide behind "art." Admit, at least to yourself, what you're really doing; admit what you are." Needless to say, there are no sickeningly-detaileds in Lolita. Yes, unsurprisingly, it's all in his mind.
Humbert Humbert relates his love story from jail, where he awaits trial for murder. It has been edited by "John Ray, Jr." after Humbert's death, who also provides a foreword where he gives away all the protagonists' fates without the reader realising. The name Humbert Humbert is significant: it is the narrator's own choice of fictional name - the "double rumble" which Nabokov felt carried the right amount of sinister intent - and reflects his two personas. There is Humbert the rapacious paedophile, with his authentic attention to detail and planning, and his enormous cruelty - the last sentence of Part 1 of the novel packed a punch like I hadn't felt since A Handful of Dust. And there is Humbert the repentant regretter: filled with self-loathing and longing at the end of the book, in an exceptionally moving scene where he realises that he really loves the grown-up Lolita.
Humbert is a mesmerising narrator, charming, repellent, pitiable and witty. Despite its occasional forays into picaresque road-movie territory, there is not a single boring page in the book, for now I know where Martin Amis gets his ambition never to write a sentence that someone else could have written. (As Humbert warns us at the start: "You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.") If you're going to read Lolita - and why wouldn't you? - I recommend the annotated version, which will not only give you more background and notation than you will ever require, but also enable you to identify who the hell they're talking about at one crucial point of the plot, and to spot the same character's preshadowings, as he appears and vanishes and vanishes and appears throughout the book's first two-hundred-and-fifty pages before he actually comes centre stage, rather like Brad Pitt in Fight Club.
Time, then, to reacquaint myself with the other Nabokovs I have, and have surely read, but which I can't remember anything about either. They will hardly match the perfection of Lolita, a novel for which I reserve the highest praise: that is, to shut up about it, and leave it to Little Mart:
---
* "He sees her / He starts to shake and cough / Just like the old man in / That book by Nabokov" - The Police, Don't Stand So Close To Me. For shame!
clueless said:
You may be right but….I’m still thinking Russian was his native. He grew up in St. Petersburg and then moved to England later. Maybe his pretending tricked me.
novella said:
I never called it a ‘review’.
The whole point –and this really isn’t difficult, and I certainly didn’t think it would really be lost on you of all posters- is the reason for liking (or “loving”).
Which #1 gives none.
And that easily illuminates and “sameness”.
So, sorry.
Hmmm, I’d think it probably means, um, precise configuration of words, which probably means ‘pretty good writing’.
One who cares about the craft and process of writing. There are still a couple of us left.
Funny that. Sounds like a problem.
It was an example.
A primitive, few lined one.
Not a review as such.
A post in comparison to the general ‘I just finished reading’ post, a theme which you yourself have griped about in the past, in memory serves.
And when controversy is stated as not being important, well, then it’s really not important to write about (!) fer chrissake.
As I hinted, this type of review may get some to look into the book.
I’m sure the Nabokov Estate will appreciate your purchase.
Whatever you say...
novella said:
!!??
Please, my dear Novella, in the past you’ve tried to put me in check and haven’t even captured a pawn. Bail me out?
I think my “semi-reviews” (which I’ve always called them) are a bit different then the “examples of posts” I gave above.
Why do so many people love to bloody misquote around here? And then people get bent out of shape when I bring up the difference between reading and comprehension…
Sorry Novella, while this thread *has* bounced around a bit I never intended it to a be “how to write a review” tangent.
Nice writer up, Shade. I only wish I were napping…more and more.
j