If you have a taste for Joyce, Vonnegut and Dostoevsky, it makes me wonder what you think of Vladimir Nabokov?
Never tried him, but I'll put him on the ol' list. I have spring break, so besides surfing (I just lost enough weight to squeeze my fat ass into my wetsuit), I'm going to be doing a bunch of reading. If I didn't have Damon Runyon's Guys and Dolls to read, I'd hit up the used book store and check him out. As is, I'll probably have to wait until school lets out. Thanks for the recommendation, man, I appreciate it.
My pleasure. I would suggest
not starting with
Lolita, as that book has too much cultural baggage and erotic expectation that it would likely be impossible to divorce those distractions from the work itself, making it hard to get a fair impression of the writer and his style, as well as an unfiltered experience of the narrative. Many have mentioned
Pale Fire as his best work, but it is also apparently rather experimental, so it may not be best to get an idea of his style (I haven't gotten to that one yet). Others suggest
Pnin,
Bend Sinister, and
Ada as among both his best and most accessible.
Ada might be a good choice since it includes themes similar to
Lolita, and then some (incest, too), if that interests you, and since its general story line is not universally known as is
Lolita's, it might be easier to allow the story to unfold as the author intends. The detailed descriptions of pubescent beauty and desire in
Ada make it pretty clear (along with occasional flashes such as the unmistakably erotic undertones of the prepubescent Emmie in
Invitation to a Beheading) that
Lolita was not a mere intellectual exercise on Nabokov's part, he was describing feelings and desires with which he was quite familiar. But there is so very, very much more to Nabokov than that, it's a shame that all most people know of him is
Lolita, which itself is generally misjudged. It is much more comic tragedy than it is pornography. I have also enjoyed Nabokov's nonfiction writing. His autobiogrophy
Speak, Memory is brilliant, and I devoured his
Lectures on Russian Literature, despite knowing very little about the subject, in awe of his wit and humor. Even the introductions to his books I find more interesting than the actual books by some authors. By all means, read
Lolita, but consider my advice to try something else by the author first. I would have enjoyed
Lolita so much more if I had been familiar with and had gained an appreciation for Nabokov's style, and realized clearly going in that it wasn't going to be merely a modern
Lady Chatterly.