the book bum

Tragedies make me so happy      Merely reading and reviewing Lolita was not enough for me...I had to go and write a 10-page senior project about the book, as well!  Writing this paper has obliged me to research and read Nabokov-centric literary criticism, interviews, annotations, and more. So if any of you are looking to learn more about Lolita , here is a list of resources I've used in the process of writing my paper. Enjoy! (Or don't...not everyone likes MLA citations.) Books Nabokov, Vladimir.  The Annotated Lolita.  Ed. Alfred Appel, Jr. New York: Vintage Books, 1991. Criticism Hall, Chris. “The Significance of Names In The Fiction of Martine Amis, Vladimir Nabokov, John Kennedy Toole, Joseph Heller, Samuel Beckett, John Updike, Will Self, Umberto Eco: Waiting for Go.Dot.”  Spike Magazine . Spike Magazine, 1 Aug. 1996. Web. 29 Mar. 2016. Lemay, Eric. “Dolorous Laughter.”  Zemlarchive . Zemlarchive, n.d. Interviews Br...

The book + my sweaty post-jog self      I stepped outside my comfort zone this month and read... another Nabokov novel!      This book messes with you.  The overall feeling is one of creepiness.  It begins with a death sentence and ends with a beheading, and in between, the protagonist, Cincinnatus C., wrestles with the suspicion that his world isn't real.  There is lots of evidence to back up his suspicion - the crime for which he has been sentenced, "gnostical turpitude," defies any definition, and his fellow characters are ridiculous.  For example, his jailers are offended when Cincinnatus doesn't express gratitude for their hospitality.  There are a lot of funny moments throughout the story, but even the humor is unsettling.      Much of this creepiness comes from the fact that Nabokov makes his influence as the writer known within the story.  He does something similar in Lolita , but here the invo...

     Now that I've finished applying to colleges, I'm back to blogging!  Sorry for the hiatus.          I read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, the tragic story of a pedophile's obsession with a little girl, this fall and it blew my mind.  I read it twice before purchasing an annotated version, which revealed to me how intricate the book really is.  I picked up on the protagonist's manipulation of language in order to warp the truth on my own, but not until I read the annotations did I notice Nabokov's use of involution or literary allusions.  This may sound a bit pretentious, but it was so satisfying to understand all the tricks at work in the writing.  So I've compiled a cheat sheet/list of some motifs, devices, and patterns to look for when reading  Lolita.     1. Colors: Especially patterns of colors surrounding certain characters or emotions. 2. Quilty: It's an important name and it appears in dif...