Packet 4 Intro

This packet, I decided to read Lolita as well as The Spot at the start of the month. I also began reading some of Andre Dubus' stories, but am going to wait until I finish them and write on them for the next packet. I had been wanting to read Lolita for a long time, and was delighted when I finally was able to dive into it. Sometimes books like this carry with it so much of a buzz or hype that one has doubts going into it. I'm not sure if "doubt" is the right word, but I was certainly unsure about how I would respond to it. I, of course, knew the story more or less, and had seen the movie years ago as well. It's most likely because of this (seeing the movie already) that I decided to focus on the prose of the novel in my blog entry on it. While the movie is far from being bad or poorly done, it really doesn't have anything to do with the book besides the fact that a man named Humbert Humbert is in love with a very young girl named Lolita. And some of the events are maintained as they happen in the novel(la). But the beauty of the book, the universality, and its ability to stand up to all the controversy around it for the last 50 years is entirely in the mastery of language Nabokov demonstrates. It truly is spellbinding, and, as a writer, I can't imagine making a very long list of books that would inspire me to write better prose than Nabokov's classic did.
Something I found extremely motivating in Means' short story collection was his ability to derive emotion from his descriptions. He has an uncanny knack for not only presenting a scene, but establishing that scene almost entirely by the people he places in it. He would be an MFA dream candidate for a campaign on "Show Don't Tell". Every curve, every breath, every grimace is placed and described so uniquely that every person holds their own place on the page and in the story. This is something I feel I struggle with quite a bit, and I can only hope that his other works do its characters the same justice. I really enjoyed reading it, and I believe that, along with Lolita, I was able to take something away that not only impressed me, but will make my own writing much, much better. I specifically chose to write about "A River in Egypt" because I thought it was a great, provocative story that presented a perfect example of his descriptive character language.