Word: reader
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...extraordinary inside-outside-inside exploration of the process of composition, like a photograph of a man taking a photograph. Whitehead said that literature is that which embodies what it indicates. When that which is embodied is the act of embodiment, there is bound to be a bang, probably the reader slamming shut the book...
...unlike the other stories, is about love, however abstractly that compact may be presented. There is, though, a basic flaw in the piece: In fantastic literature, the author is allowed to make any conditions he likes, but once these are established, the action must be within their limits. The reader will allow Barth to allow a spermatazoa to meditate, but he cannot allow that spermatazoa to record theories about his purpose (correct in every detail)--which theories no spermatazoa could ever have conceived...
...rather with his own intrusive role as author. Mabye this is not wrong, but there can be no interest in the substance of the stories, because there is no substance, only style. For my money, that is not enough, and I find it annoying. It is easy, dear reader, to play games with the reader, usually addressed "dear reader" (or by Barth "dogged, uninsultable, print-oriented bastard"), and extend these games until neither the dear reader nor the dear writer has any idea where...
Nabokov's prose is elegant and lucid, easy to read, and amusing. He is one of the few writers who can make a reader laugh out loud, even with "serious criticism" like his delightful essay "On a Book Entitled Lolita." In that essay he says, "After all we are not children, .not illiterate juvenile delinquents..."And that is one of the best reasons for liking Nabokov--he treats the reader as a sensitive, literate person. He sets out to tell amusing and moving stories, and this he does. He says, "For me a work of fiction exists only insofar...
Nakogov's Congeries is not a "Complete Nakobov," but it does offer from that tomb-like quality of the Collected Works of Dead Dull Author. There is not much point in printing selections from novels, and the poems are better forgotten. For the reader who knows Nakobov, Congeries is redundant; for the reader who does not, the many paperback editions of Nabokov are a better introduction...