Comments on: Clusterbook #2: Lolita

By: Sheila Ryan

Sheila Ryan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:36:38 +0000

I can’t find the specific article you note — but I do know that the Nabokovs would have had an even harder row to hoe than they did if not for Vera’s efforts.

By: Lucy Foley

Lucy Foley — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:20:42 +0000

Have a look down the bottom of the page when you’re done, there are links to other articles. Bastard about it, though, is that they change when you click on one and then go back to the previous page. If you find the one that is summarised by “The Nabokovs were penniless until his wife persuaded him to publish Lolita”, send me the link. I’m currently reading the review of Pnin by David Lodge.

By: Sheila Ryan

Sheila Ryan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:11:51 +0000

I said that only with respect to The Original of Laura.

Just now embarking on the ‘nympholepsy’ section of the Amis piece.

By: Sheila Ryan

Sheila Ryan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:08:16 +0000

Whew. I am still reading.

All I can say now is that my mid-stream retreat from a career as a curator of the ‘literary manuscripts’ of dead writers calls forth no greater regret now than it did then.

By: Sheila Ryan

Sheila Ryan — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:52:50 +0000

Okay. Fixin’ to read a paean.

By: Lucy Foley

Lucy Foley — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:49:40 +0000

I am currently reading this impassioned paean to the genius of Nabokov, written by Martin Amis. I love what he says about nympholepsy and his epiphany on trying several times to read "Ada". Also fantastic for Borges' description of how Finnegan's Wake was received in '39, with "terror stricken praise". Oh God, it's just beautiful.

By: Sheila Ryan

Sheila Ryan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:38:49 +0000

I was a ferocious speed-reader when I was a kidlet. I gobbled up books as though I were bingeing on Hallowe’en candy.

Then, throughout my college years, I began to narrate audio books for a Library of Congress program for the blind, and I gradually came to believe that anything truly worth reading is worth reading aloud — or at least worth hearing in my mind’s ear.

By: Cindy Scroggins

Cindy Scroggins — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:33:15 +0000

I’ve been far out of pocket, but I just want y’all to know how much I’m looking forward to listening to this (this weekend, if I’m lucky).

By: Rick Neece

Rick Neece — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:29:21 +0000

Yes, stepping out for air is a good way to put it. And savoured, yes. I too was compelled to read slowly. I am no speed reader (there are times I wish I was) but I am a steady reader and there is in my nature a compulsion to finish things I start (unless I start to feel the effort becoming hopeless), but one Saturday morning I determined to “power through” and read as far as I could. After an hour I had read 10 pages and was utterly exhausted. I laid it aside, intending to pick it back up later in the day for another “session.” Later I walked by the table where I had laid it. “Nope, not anymore today,” I thought. The next day I felt the same. After a couple more days when I noticed it laying there, I felt a mild contempt. And guilt for walking away from it because I knew I had.

By: Lucy Foley

Lucy Foley — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:26:52 +0000

Well, the way I see this book is that it needs to be savoured. I read a sentence and look around. And another, and another. I have never read more than a few pages of it at a time. It’s probably the slowest I have ever read a book, and I am a slow reader. It’s not about ‘finding out what happens’, so I’m not racing ahead in any way. It’s not much of a page turner, it keeps me fixed on each sentence I’m reading, and rather than creating a meta-narrative in my head, which is often what books can do, it’s a kind of vibrant presence that challenges and makes pause. I wouldn’t say I’m reading it ‘for the language’ either, though, but I think this is probably just a semantic distinction. Any more than I read Shakespeare ‘for the language’, though his use of language is wildly exciting. It’s the insight, the humanity of it, not expressed baldly, not eager to let everybody know how humane it is. It’s the subtlety of it. The book is breathing.