Vladimir Nabokov

I kind of think it's a shame the way authors are often characterized solely by their most influential or controversial novel. Seriously, how many times have you heard of George Orwell except in direct relation to "1984?" I mean, no doubt it's incredibly good, and a major fixture of 1900s fiction, but by no means constitutes the full scope of his writing. How many people do you know who've really read Burmese Days or Down and Out in Paris and London?

I bring up Vladimir Nabokov because I just finished Pale Fire, one of his English works, which is a great book, but also very representative of his mastery of meta-fiction. No other work of his than Lolita would get any response out of a high school student, or indeed most college students, and it would likely be either a half-hearted "huhuhu pedo" or at most an automatic assumption that HE was a pedophile, and all his works involve pedophilia. Just because it's the most controversial and talked-about of his novels, it doesn't automatically make it the best, nor representative of his body of work.

At the risk of tying this post in with my ongoing diatribe about schools and the inadequacy thereof, I think it's terrible especially that young readers are exposed to only a tiny portion of the literary spectrum, in that not only is it stunting to their development as people, but contributes to the widely-held snobbery that I find so prevalent in high school and beyond. Having read only the "heart-rending masterpieces of modern literature," I see two negative paths that the student might take:

First, the emo side, where any work of literature not involving sadness, lameness and overly flowery prose is condemned as not serious enough for the printed word. These are the teachers' pets, the students we all know and hate who have a question for everything and look at you like a mental deficient when you mention having read the latest schlocky sci-fi space marine piece. The simple fact is that to these people reading isn't fun, and they mask it by only reading tiny amounts, but of things that can be endlessly expounded upon, making them seem well-read overall.

Second is the type that thinks of reading as a chore which has to be got out of the way. Combined with overteaching, common in the modern classroom, this can be especially toxic, considering how few children are taught to love reading early on. Indeed, when you read The Great Gatsby with more of an eye towards the potential metaphor involved in the coloring of Gatsby's car, how can you not form a hatred of reading as a whole? Then when they DON'T like it, that's taken as a disinterest in reading as a whole, when most likely a simple genre change would be most beneficial.


The root of it is that, as currently taught, reading at school is not enjoyable, and society's attitude towards literature is mostly to blame. It's sort of a self-perpetuating, chicken/egg debate between incompetent classroom techniques and societal pressure to mature childrens' taste in books prematurely. As it stands, I read Vladimir Nabokov, and I read about space marines, and I read detective novels. Yeah, I read a lot, but certainly a more varied literary diet should be encouraged! And certainly, people should read to their kids a LOT more, and not just classic kids' books, and not just when they're really small. To my mind, kids should be read to, and it should be a regular fmaily activity, into the teenage years. It makes me sad to think of all the media that people aren't consuming, that they would potentially enjoy immensely, because it's contained in little black characters on paper, and they associate that with work, school, persecution and disapproval. GAH it makes me so angry! Really though, things should be different.

Also, Leo Tolstoy is stupid. There, I said it. Long and boring doesn't make you an excellent writer, it just means you have more stamina.