Great story. Makes me wonder how Nabokov, a literary critic himself and also pseudonym user ("Vladimir Sirin") to hide from critics[1], would feel about Metacri

Great story. Makes me wonder how Nabokov, a literary critic himself and also pseudonym user ("Vladimir Sirin") to hide from critics[1], would feel about Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. Many content creators regard critics with disdain, until it comes to valuing their own time! And Nabokov is at least partially right[2] about not needing context if the literature is good. You can pick up Lolita, open to any page and begin reading and I guarantee a smile will flash across your face within three pages. ~~~ [1] Nabokov: "Occasionally I used the little silk mask of an additional pen name in order to deceive this or that captious critic—with most gratifying results ("At last a great writer!" cried my favorite Zoilus in 1939)." [2] There are huge bodies of work that, if you have context, you will get a LOT more out of, especially older works. Just as TV shows like Family Guy are a series of culturally-dependent in-jokes, so was a lot of the humor in Shakespeare, Chaucer, etc. And reading Li Bai and Du Fu's poetry is not the same unless you know the details of the An Lushan Rebellion they lived through, which had one of the highest death tolls (5.5%–15.3% of entire world population) of any event in history.