So lately I've been feeling guilty about all the Great Literature that I haven't read. Partly this is inevitable because there is just too much of it. I'm not sure if it's even possible to be thoroughly 'literate' anymore, much as it becomes increasingly difficult for young doctors to absorb a broad foundation in medicine. Each specialty simply contains too much information for the human mind to retain. Likewise there are only so many books one can read in a given lifetime, yet the total volume of literature in the world multiplies exponentially. It also doesn't help that the average young adult brain is no longer wired to sit down for three or four cozy hours of Proust or what have you. At least mine isn't. I've always had difficulty with reading and sustained attention—I don't think I can blame the Internet either because I was like that from the time I was a kid and preteens didn't have iPads back then, because they didn't exist. I wasn't even allowed to watch much television (although at age 9 I staged a hunger strike until I was allowed to watch the X-Files).

Later, in college, I had a regrettable tendency to write my papers based on secondhand Internet research rather than actually cracking a book. A basic grasp of the English language and a few clever stock phrases will get you a long, long way in an undergrad liberal arts class. I was only caught out once, by my existential philosophy professor, who later asked me on a date, but I digress. The book was "Siddhartha" and I started to read an online plot summary but got distracted by funny cat pictures or something and ended up writing the paper based on 78% of a Wikipedia article (yes, I swear upon Being and Time, I was THAT lazy). My vague conjecture about how the book ended was totally wrong, and it turns out that professors sometimes do read student papers in their entirety.

C-, and I probably only got an A for the course because I managed to finagle the professor into letting me write "a work of existential fiction" in lieu of my final essay. I wrote a rather charming (if I do say) piece about a philosophy grad student (more or less based on my professor) who had an existential crisis while shopping for quiche ingredients at Whole Foods. The lesson I learned from this experience was: Don't write papers based upon neither a book nor its summary, and secondly: At the end of the day it doesn't matter whether you can read if you can write.

The funny thing is, I actually read Siddhartha after the course was over (perversely, I waited until I had received my diploma to read the majority of my assigned texts. I mean, who wants to read a book that you're going to be tested on?) and it ended up becoming one of my favorite books.

Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying that I've decided to patch at least one small gap in my literary education. I decided to choose one Great Author to read in his or her entirety this summer. Thus, my goal is to have read, by the end of August, every published novel and short story of Vladimir Nabokov. All told I am estimating that this will  shave about 250-300 hours from my summer, depending on my reading speed–about two weeks straight if I choose not to sleep or eat during this period, but I'm not quite that devoted. I picked Nabokov because he's impressively literary but actually fun to read as well, and even his more meandering and experimental novels sparkle with his exquisite prose gems: "..". And, most significantly, he hasn't produced any monster 3000-page opuses like certain other authors *cough Proust cough* that I considered. Also, being mostly Russian on my father's side, I was inclined to choose an author of that lineage.

Unfortunately I'm no English major so most of the literary devices and cultural references go whooshing over my head (not to mention that dear V.N. assumes working knowledge of idiomatic French and Russian). But at least I feel all virtuous and stuff, like I'm repairing some of the brain damage inflicted by lolcats, textsfromlastnight, Charlie the Unicorn, and other perils of the age. Actually I'm probably dating myself here—I bet kids today don't even remember Charlie the Unicorn (however I found a Charlie the Unicorn t-shirt in a thrift shop recently and needless to say I squealed like a trodden baby mammal and immediately coughed up the $3 for its purchase).

But right, Nabokov. So far I've finished Lolita; Speak, Memory; Transparent Things; Glory; The Eye; Mary; Despair; Invitation to a Beheading; Pnin; Ada and Look at the Harlequins. I think that leaves nine to go and 65 short stories (!), and possibly a play or two. I suck at novelic analysis so I will spare you my interpretations of said texts (from what I gather Nabokov was contemptuous of comparative literature anyway), but suffice it to say I can feel new neurons forming in my somewhat cobwebbed brain with every page. Maybe it will even induce me to write something—I'd dearly like to be a novelist, but at times I'm afraid my brain can't or won't work with enough efficiency and organization to pull it off. More on that later. Now, Bend Sinister.