#literature!!!!

[olreid]

I read lolita aswell. I get that its like satire and humbert is shown as a villian and creepy weirdo and thats the point. Some scenes being so graphic about kids bodies though was so hard to read. And how every adult woman (even like a 20 year old) looked like they are rotting and decaying to him. So fucking weird

oh it is absolutely a visceral and horrifying experience to be trapped in humbert's pov and the fact that the novel is elaborating him in order to more thoroughly condemn him does not necessarily make it less painful to read! and yes it's a testament both to the prose and to humbert's deeply violent worldview that a majority of scenes feel graphic and visceral despite the narration's deliberate exclusion of actual sex scenes. humbert's objectifying gaze colonizes the world he describes to the point that even the most benign events become sinister and infested with perverted meanings... the tennis scene in particular is one that sticks with me as like. so chilling and nauseating to read even though on the surface it's a routine sports practice that is only made otherwise through the corrosive power of humbert's observation.

i was having a handmaiden moment the other week and i kept coming across this park chan-wook interview where he talked about the reading hideko gives as a scene in which a group of men hurt a woman without ever touching her. and like. of course, of COURSE, humbert hurts dolores physically early and often and this is not to erase or undercut that, but he also in a very real way is killing her in his mind before he ever touches her simply by looking at her in such a way as to make of her a thing, a dog, a doll he believes should rightfully be his to play with. this is the violence that sanctions the physical violence, and this is a violence he commits not just against dolly but against everyone he meets, mutilating them as he describes them to the reader as crones or nymphets or sluts. so many of the book's most horrifying scenes consist simply of humbert looking at something or someone and telling us what he sees; lolita (novel) has something to say about narration as violence and by god she's going to make her point!

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

– Audrey Hepburn

[prokopetz]

If you're lamenting the fact that you used to be able to shoot through a 500-page novel in like a day when you were in middle school and now you can't, it's worth bearing in mind that a big part of that is because when you were in middle school, your reading comprehension sucked. Yes, mental health and the stresses of adult life can definitely be factors, but it's also the case that reading is typically more effortful as an adult because you've learned to Ponder The Implications. The material isn't just skimming over the surface of your brain anymore, and some of the spoons you used to spend on maximising your daily page count are now spent on actually thinking about what you're reading!

[becomingvecna]

— David Cronenberg, Consumed

[thoughtcascades]

idk how to flirt but i can make things awkward if you're into that

[incohorace]

what studying literature feels like

[deviika]

Lee Krasner // Franz Kafka

[lucidloving]

@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

[poetryforall]

[sleeplessv0id]

what doesn't kill you makes you weird at intimacy

[wedarkacademia]

[joytri]

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

— unknown

[usefulquotes7]

[flowerytale]

Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

[i69bea]

"i wonder if we ever think of each other at the same time."