Lectures on Literature

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• leephillips · Apr 15, 2015 · Recommends

  …all time. Unfortunately, there is probably more garbage (explication, criticism) written about this book than any other, outside of Shakespeare. If you're hesitant to just dive in, I recommend Nabokov's Lectures on Literature (all the lectures are great; the one on Ulysses shows you the hidden machinery turning under the surface of the novel).

  on “Infinite Ulysses” ↗
• leephillips · Jun 3, 2024 · Recommends

  …context...philosophical themes...existential themes... broader historical and social issues...” This dreary approach is likely to miss the point of Kafka’s art. I recommend Nabokov’s lecture on the Metamorphosis in his Lectures on Literature.

  on “The impossibility of translating Franz Kafka (1999)” ↗
• harperlee · Jun 15, 2015 · Recommends

  …read some Proust as his style is completely against the current trend of short, direct sentences à la Hemingway, and that can be refreshing! By the way, I started reading Proust because of Nabokov's Lectures on Literature: http://www.amazon.com/Lectures-Literature-Vladimir-Nabokov/d... Which I recommend wholeheartedly.

  on “Long sentences” ↗
• rabbitonrails · Oct 14, 2012 · Recommends

  …to understand everything you will never finish and become discouraged. 4. While you are listening to Ulysses, read Vladimir Nabokov's Harvard lectures on Ulysses. http://books.google.com/books/about/Lectures_on_Literature.h... This is a wonderful chapter-by-chapter companion that will make sense of the chaos. 5. If you want a warm up, read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

  on “James Joyce's "Ulysses": Why you should read this book” ↗
• leephillips · Oct 23, 2017 · Recommends

  Somewhat similar points were made, decades ago, by Nabokov in his essay on this story in his Lectures on Literature. Of course Nabokov goes, as well, in much deeper and subtler directions.

  on “What Everybody Gets Wrong About Jekyll and Hyde (2012)” ↗
• noobly · Mar 16, 2018 · Recommends

  …quickly in that short read and addressed many problems I've encountered. Imo, it was rather lacking in the techniques for reading fiction, and Nabokov has some excellent insight in this domain in his "Lectures on Literature" series (which I have admittedly only yet read small portions of). There's an algorithm[0] I stumbled upon that I refer to often that was derived from Adler's book, might as well share it. 0: https://pastebin.com/wGFMM1pZ

  on “Memoirs of an Ass” ↗