Subject
Nabokov's worst book (fwd)
Date
Body
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Support for the opinion that _Lolita_ was the worst of Nabokov's
works comes from this writer on uk.misc:
Although it is a crap book, very badly written IMO.
It is the only novel I can think of where I can turn to any page
at random and find a word I don't know the meaning of. The guy
had obviously swallowed a dictionary before writing it. English
isn't Nabokov's native language, so perhaps he was unaware that
he was using so many obscure words; OTOH perhaps he did it
deliberately "look, I've got a big vocabulary". In either case
the book is crap.
It is most certainly not necessary to use multitudes of obscure
words to write a decent book: as a counterexample see Orwell's
_1984_ which is well written and doesn't use overcomplicated
language; it is a true classic, and not a heap of pretentious
shite.
Suellen Stringer-Hye
Special Collections
Jean and Alexander Heard Library
Vanderbilt University
stringers@library.vanderbilt.edu
Support for the opinion that _Lolita_ was the worst of Nabokov's
works comes from this writer on uk.misc:
Although it is a crap book, very badly written IMO.
It is the only novel I can think of where I can turn to any page
at random and find a word I don't know the meaning of. The guy
had obviously swallowed a dictionary before writing it. English
isn't Nabokov's native language, so perhaps he was unaware that
he was using so many obscure words; OTOH perhaps he did it
deliberately "look, I've got a big vocabulary". In either case
the book is crap.
It is most certainly not necessary to use multitudes of obscure
words to write a decent book: as a counterexample see Orwell's
_1984_ which is well written and doesn't use overcomplicated
language; it is a true classic, and not a heap of pretentious
shite.
Suellen Stringer-Hye
Special Collections
Jean and Alexander Heard Library
Vanderbilt University
stringers@library.vanderbilt.edu