Zhivago was more of a popular phenomena than a literary one. Lolita is still read and still very relevant.
I agree with both points, although Zhivago is being judged through translation. Lolita is brilliantly constructed and a model for all the unreliable narrator novels to come. Atlas Shrugged is nowhere near that polished gem - Publius and I wrote THIS about it and didn't spare Rand a single criticism. She should have listened to her editor, Bennett Cerf, and it would have been a better constructed novel, but a poorer polemic.
Zhivago, though, I find somewhat episodic, but with a sort of melancholic Russian beauty to it. It seems a bit ironic that the events Pasternak chronicled included Rand's family's flight from Russia in the real world.
“Zhivago was more of a popular phenomena than a literary on”
Someone explain what “literary quality” is.
I haven’t read Lolita but am curious why it’s considered by many as a literary masterpiece.