What book rivals Lolita in terms of stylistic prowess?

[dfw]

title

[SilvanDitties]

Nabokov was very influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and the French. I'd recommend Madame Bovary, In Search of Lost Time, maybe Balzac's Human Comedy collection.

Oh, I forgot to add The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Wilde's a master of flowery prose.

[Desolation]

I'm just gonna throw out some names -
Proust
Joyce
Woolf
Faulkner
Pynchon
Stein
Beckett
Kafka
Gaddis

[PeterL]

Nabokov was an expert on Ulysses, and I believe that there are some features of Lolita that were pulled from that.

[Cleft]

How about Thomas Mann?

[dfw]

^how about no

[stlukesguild]

How about offering a reason why Thomas Mann is not to be considered among the great writers/stylists of the past century?

By the way... there are brilliant writers/stylists beyond the limitations of the 20th century:

Lawrence Sterne
Virgil
Dante
Edward Gibbon
Flaubert
Theophile Gautier
Henry James
Thomas De Quincey
Robert Burton

Just a few names that come to mind.

[dfw]

flaubert?
i briefly flipped through his madame bovary and his prose seemed very ordinary and simply descriptive

[Cleft]

One might not like Madame Bovary (I haven't), but calling it a "very ordinary and simply descriptive" is just foolish.

[dfw]

haha, be aware that that was based on briefly flipping through it (probably lasted 15 seconds)

briefly flipping through lolita, one is struck immediately by the prose

[stlukesguild]

Madame Bovary has been called by many the "perfect novel". Flaubert wrote with the sort of care usually reserved to the poet. It would seem that before you rush to making any blanket statements about a book, you might do well to have actually read it. How many pages of Mann did you skim over before making your snap judgment about his merits as a writer?

[namenlose]

I find Mann, judging from all the aspects of his work, more limited than many of the greatest novelists who came before his time. However, he was an indisputable master of irony and one of the best smiths of the Bildungsroman genre. I think he more than deserves an apt comparison to Nabokov — he even may, in fact, have a significative advantage.

[Charles Darnay]

How about offering a reason why Thomas Mann is not to be considered among the great writers/stylists of the past century?

By the way... there are brilliant writers/stylists beyond the limitations of the 20th century:

Lawrence Sterne
Virgil
Dante
Edward Gibbon
Flaubert
Theophile Gautier
Henry James
Thomas De Quincey
Robert Burton

Just a few names that come to mind.

Gibbon seems oddly placed in this list if we are talking about style.

[JCamilo]

To be honest, Mann is not someone which style I would put together with Nabokov. I would not call Nabokov flowery either, quite otherwise. Flaubert, Tolstoy, Chekhov are obvious options. Nabokov once claimed to share an empathic link with Borges. Irony make me think of Machado de Assis. Some of Henry James too.


Gibbon seems oddly placed in this list if we are talking about style.

Gibbon is pretty much reckognized as a great prose classicist. Stlukes just ignores (rightfully so) that Gibbons talked about the real world and not the true world.

[namenlose]

I think Nabokov is superior as a stylist, although Mann may be an equal, if not greater novelist. Notwithstanding, his style is not exactly bad either. His use of irony is extremely varied and his prose, although not as focused as Nabokov's, had some strong points, many of which were poetic and lyrical.

[kelby_lake]

I think Fitzgerald's prose is beautiful and Faulkner's has a degree of style to it. Hardy can be pretty good at times as well, particularly in Tess.

[Jackson Richardson]

I don't think I could appreciate style in translation. In fact I'm not usually conscious of style. I'd rather say what I notice is the voice and imaginative personality of the author - which depends not just on style but what is being talked about.

The difference between Gibbon and Burton and the rest isn't that they talk about the "real world" as that they are not writing fiction. They both create highly individual imaginative worlds.

PS Which Fitzgerald did you mean, kelby? Scott or Penelope?

[manuscript]

how about Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince? no no, just kidding.

[kelby_lake]

PS Which Fitzgerald did you mean, kelby? Scott or Penelope?

Scott :)

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Moby Dick.

[OrphanPip]

I a have soft spot for Chinua Achebe's style, when I first read Things Fall Apart it was like a breath of fresh air. He is not like Nabokov, but there's a very carefully crafted simplicity to his prose.

[Lykren]

Brideshead Revisited had beautiful prose in it, and a really touching story to boot.

[ennison]

I'm not a fan of Waugh but he is a stylish writer. Most writers have a style (sometimes pretty bare). I tend not to separate style from content and intention. When a novelist becomes too style conscious perhaps there is little actual content. However an interesting style can be entertaining. James was a stylist but oh my I find him hard going. McCarthy especially in the earlier novels was a very conscious stylist but I really enjoy him. Hemingway's style is pretty easy to parody but it suited his intentions. Joyce become nothing but style. Some prose writers are really frustrated poets, others add the finer elements of style once they have the narrative underway. I am an admirer of Nabokov up to a point. I recall tackling one of his novels (The Gift I think) with a dictionary by my side. The dictionary was singularly unhelpful to me. I didn't need the dictionary for Pnin so I guess he varied his style. Mind you I think The Gift was written first in Russian and I was reading a translation that he had done himself. He was a gifted linguist and smart guy.

[tonywalt]

I really like Murakami: 1Q84, Kafka on the Shore, and After Dark

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I a have soft spot for Chinua Achebe's style, when I first read Things Fall Apart it was like a breath of fresh air. He is not like Nabokov, but there's a very carefully crafted simplicity to his prose.

That's an interesting choice, Pip, and one I agree with. The simple style of TFA is perfect for the subject, and the story is just chilling (by the end, at least). I didn't like it the first time I read it, but had to reread it for a class an really dug it that time. I guess I "got" what Achebe was doing.

[manuscript]

is style inextricably inherent to meaning, or are they separate?

[ennison]

I think it is tied to meaning but not inextricably. In English anyway there are several
ways to say the same thing and any choices an author makes are mixtures of intention, irrational personal taste, general linguistic ability and unconscious impulse. It is interesting to take sometimes the numerical linguistic features of a text and then ask ourselves why does writer X use so many of Y linguistic features. ' Course we may have worked it out as we read without going to that analytical extent.

[Seasider]

I like Sir Thomas Browne.16th Century...really before prose was the usual medium chosen for creative writing in English. Just as much of a stylist as Nabokov. And as unmistakable.

[JBI]

haha, be aware that that was based on briefly flipping through it (probably lasted 15 seconds)

briefly flipping through lolita, one is struck immediately by the prose

In French I trust.

[Alexander III]

I like Sir Thomas Browne.16th Century...really before prose was the usual medium chosen for creative writing in English. Just as much of a stylist as Nabokov. And as unmistakable.

I discovered the man by chance while roaming about wikipedia, and I read Hydriotaphia, and it was unique and pleasing. Completely glad you are of the same opinion.

[manuscript]

I think it is tied to meaning but not inextricably. In English anyway there are several
ways to say the same thing and any choices an author makes are mixtures of intention, irrational personal taste, general linguistic ability and unconscious impulse. It is interesting to take sometimes the numerical linguistic features of a text and then ask ourselves why does writer X use so many of Y linguistic features. ' Course we may have worked it out as we read without going to that analytical extent.

maybe the meanings in some texts depend more on style than that in others. like catcher in the rye for example. but i remember once trying to paraphrase a piece of middle english poetry for a class and realising that the point of the exercise was understanding its futility; the meaning absolutely refused to transpose. and usually when i am reading a really great novel i get the feeling that nothing about it has been left to chance. but youre right, its silly to believe that an author can control everything.

if it is only a question of style there are many works of literature to rival Lolita. two that i think have not been mentioned on the thread are E M Forster's A Room With A View and Austen's Persuasion, both master works in their way. but where style has been specifically constructed as an important interdependent component of meaning in a text then i think Lolita might be more special. but as i write this i find that i am considering other possibilities, some very unusual! it is really interesting to think about.

[TheFifthElement]

Angela Carter
Don DeLillo

[dfw]

what else

[skyrise]

I'm not sure if rival is the right word but the Irish author John Banville is a foremost prose stylist in the english language and an admirer of Nabokov. I'm surprised that I can't find any discussion on this site about Banville.

[aaron stark]

Don't forget Italo Calvino

[Hal]

One might not like Madame Bovary (I haven't), but calling it a "very ordinary and simply descriptive" is just foolish.

literature should not be briefly flipped through. Good literature is not the equivalent of a copy of the latest National Geographic.

[Cleft]

literature should not be briefly flipped through. Good literature is not the equivalent of a copy of the latest National Geographic.
I agree. Your point being?

[LaMaga]

Interesting question because I've often wondered the same thing.

I can't say I agree that Kafka or Stein come close to possessing Nabokov's style. Not to say they aren't tremendous writers in their own right, I just don't see how they compare. And as much as I love Faulkner, I don't see it either.

[dfw]

^yeah

banville i kind of see actually

martin amis is a self-proclaimed nabokov follower i believe

there must be other modern guys

[Ser Nevarc]

:yikes:
I consider Nabokov to be the 20th century's best prose stylist, myself. Please don't say I'm not well-read, those of you who shout down from the academic peaks. It's not from a lack of exposure, but from a personal response to the most basic levels of his writing. He had a very strong proficiency of language not as something that simply replicates experience, but seems to contain it.

[LaMaga]

I absolutely agree with you, Ser.

[Gregory Samsa]

Joseph Conrad and Gustave Flaubert.

"Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars."

From Madame Bovary.

[ladderandbucket]

Some of Cormac Mccarthy's earlier work -Outer Dark, Suttree and Blood Meridian.

Not the same as Nabokov but he is clearly contesting for the title of supreme prose stylist.

[PeterL]

SInce the responses to the question have already become humorous, I suggest that Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and Mark Twain both had prose styles that compared favorably with Nabokov's style, and they had themes that were as odd.

[TaxMan]

flaubert?
i briefly flipped through his madame bovary and his prose seemed very ordinary and simply descriptive

Were you reading the original translation, because you can't really judge accurately anything other than the translation, if the latter.

[LaMaga]

I read Bovary and I also don't see it.

[tonywalt]

Don Delillo (mao ii, cosmopolis, underworld ) he's the king of sentences

[Rwconner]

Nobody has mentioned James Joyce, master of not just one style, but of many! And how about Hemingway?--short but craftily crafted sentences. And if you like longer sentences, Henry James is certainly admired for his style, and we shouldn't omit the world champion of the long sentence--Marcel Proust!