On Those Texts That Have Been Over-Analyzed: Animal Farm

It's hard not to read Animal Farm and immediately offer the fact that it is, with very little ambiguity, an allegory for the 1917 Russian revolution that led to the rise of Josef Stalin, one of the 20th Century's most brutal and callous leaders (in a century that had its fair share of those types).

Vladimir Nabokov labeling him a "mediocre writer" seems reasonable. As has been the charge leveled against Orwell from the beginning, one I doubt very much he'd have disputed, his prose is meant to teach more than it's meant to be any kind of work of art in itself. As a prose stylist, George Orwell's work does indeed leave a great deal to be desired, more often than not.

It happens, though, you can admire both writers for their respective strengths, although I must hand it to Nabokov, for my taste and obvious bias, with novels like Bend Sinister, he did the work of Orwell more than a fair measure beyond what Orwell ever achieved. And of course with that said, George Orwell's work is not to be simply discarded. He saw things about power structures and the human relations within them that, as those who invoke 1984, whether rightly or wrongly, to this day want us to remember, make clear Orwell is (and likely will remain) relevant.

I had the opportunity to read Animal Farm for the third time in my life, with a classroom of summer school students this past month. It's interesting what high school students, what younger readers in general, are liable to become obsessed by when you focus on one dimension of any reading material. It's probably worthwhile as an educator teaching something like Animal Farm, then, to avoid making specific reference to a subtextual aspect of a book, to the extent that that's possible (most of my students were already familiar with some aspect of Animal Farm, for instance). because for the better part of our week reading it, most students were hung up on the obviousness of the allegory.

"Why not just write the story of the Russian Revolution and the terror of Stalin? Why dress it up like this?" That was the question most were concerned with throughout our reading. That and the question of pacing. I was fortunate enough to come upon this quote by the author Jeff Jackson concerning texts of a political nature, which I shared with my students and used as a counterpoint to their line of thinking:

So much commercial and even literary fiction works hard to fill in details for the reader and stage manage their experience of the story. So-called good prose is engineered to ensure you glide effortlessly over its surface without significant disruption. It’s part of a trend of passive consumption throughout the culture. Our critical skills are eroding and we need them more than ever in this era of information overload, nonstop marketing, and political doublespeak.

I was hopeful they'd be equally curious about their assumptions concerning pacing, and a feeling that Animal Farm was overstuffed with ideas, could be streamlined to be more "readable" so they might "glide effortlessly over its surface" and not have to consider the implications of what was there, especially as they relate to not simply the Russian Revolution and Stalinism, but the great, wide world of human beings' gas-lighting, obfuscating and otherwise convincing those beneath them that their impression of how things really are is wrong and they must be mistaken. I wanted them to consider how Animal Farm isn't simply the story of the Russian Revolution but of the USA as it currently exists. And that's not to specifically indict America, but to instead showcase how the world of Animal Farm doesn't exist in the vacuum of one particular ideologue or ideology run amok. There is, instead, something profoundly human in its telling, which were it not told as it is, might be even less apparent to the average reader.

In every friend and colleague I've ever seen who died before they were able to receive the benefits (in the form of a pension or social security, etc.) of the life of work they did I see the betrayal of poor Boxer, who says always, "I must work harder."

In every misrepresentation of the truth perpetuated by Squealer I see our culture of victim-blaming and the ways we tell said victims--without literally saying it--that their experiences are not really so, that they imagined them, that it wasn't rape or assault or some other form of violence like they thought but instead a misunderstanding, or worse, revealing of some deficit in themselves for ever thinking that. It's this systematized approach that has allowed men like Bill Cosby to operate as they did for decades, unchallenged.

In those dogs trained from birth to be ruthless upholders of the system Napoleon has contrived, I see our own culture of systemic racism, misogyny and general oppression and suppression of ideas that fall out of sync with the established order. A police state in which people are reared from birth to respect authority and understand that anyone who at any time seems to have run afoul of it must necessarily have done something to deserve their situation, whether it's rudeness, insubordination, or being where they're not supposed to be, for whatever reason.

In Napoleon himself I see every leader who has ever claimed to be a righteous reformer but who ultimately serves only to do more to uphold the status quo. Certainly this charge could be leveled against a president like President Obama, who campaigned on notions of hope and change, and whose actions, and the absence of those words, have largely proven otherwise (the continuation of No Child Left Behind with Race to the Top, continued export of American hegemony around the globe, little-to-no change in the draconian gun violence our politicians refuse to address (Congress, too) and so forth). Though it would be impossible to indict Obama without likewise indicting the preceding Bush administration, among whose mendacious characteristics were to insist continually that WMDs were in Saddam Hussein's possession and that even though that was almost exclusively the pretext for going to war with Iraq, when no WMDs were found, it was actually not the only reason we had to go to war with Iraq. Humanitarian considerations were an actual reason. All of this obfuscating, gas- lighting and willingness to psychopathically say whatever one thinks needs to be said in order to appease the masses is exactly the kind of leadership Napoleon represents, as relevant to the US today as it was in Stalin's Russia.

And so, while I could belabor the point (I'm good at that!), I'll conclude here simply by saying, to those dubious who questioned the validity of studying an allegory about the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, and any others who might raise an eyebrow to the study of Animal Farm. It's about us, them, and everything. Pay attention to its lessons, please!!!

Triumphantly Returning

I've been gone. Yes. I know. I do that. I'll do it again. You can't count on this blog to be updated regularly. But I'll always come back. I'll always have some new musing that needs an outlet, whether you're looking for me to let it out or not.

Anyway, this summer has been a time for reading old favorites, new (to me) old favorites and wonderful contemporary authors alike. I'll single out several. One has been Henry David Thoreau's classic, "Walden" -- a tremendous read. Really, in these times especially it offers up the kind of refreshing alternative point of view that's really needed. It's also reminded me that the more superficial goals we humans aspire to have always been and continue to be, however the form manages to reinvent itself. But I love the notion that the pursuit of luxury can't be enough, as when Thoreau remarks: "When he has obtained these things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced." And if I can distill a little of what Throeau is getting at in what amounts to his thesis (or one big positing, anyway), he's not really prescribing a specific model of life for everyone, all people. He's aware it's possible to take pleasure in your current circumstances, whatever they be. But for those who have become disenchanted and maybe wish to understand why possessions have not filled the void, he offers his own experience, his ruminative and meditative existence, as a possible alternative. He questions the very notion that seems to be a fundament of present day society: things can be no other way. They can be another way. They can be the way that works best for you. Maybe that's living in the wilderness or maybe it's something altogether different. But go out and find it. Listen to another point of view.

Then there's my longtime favorite, the weaver of intricate sentences that flow so musically you feel you're nearly spellbound, or maybe you are, after reading. That'd be Vladimir Nabokov. And this time around I'm catching up with him by way of "King, Queen, Knave" -- which as alluded to is already shaping up to be an amazing read, at least prosaically. There are signs that the plot will be rewarding, too, but I don't feel enough has been revealed to say with any sincere inkling yet. I'm at the pont where one of the main characters, the presumed titular knave, is wandering the streets of Berlin without his necessary prescription glasses, which he'd previously clumsily destroyed. There's comedy and perhaps something more to that.

In the wake of Patrick Somerville's hilarious recent imbroglio with The New York Times that's been covered well by other people, I have finally gotten off of my hump and begun reading his first novel, "The Cradle." I'm excited by its furious pace, especially given that the essential premise is so deceptively innocuous: a man goes on a quest to retrieve the cradle that had once belonged to his wife when she was a baby. As an avid fan of Somerville's fiction (I can't encourage your reading his short fiction collections anymore than Ialready have), I'm curious to see what shapes and forms his long form writing will take. Certainly there's a more serious tone to his writing here, emotionally stimulating and downright enervating in its weight, which I've experienced after reading just thirty some pages. It's evident Somerville has an amazing range of insight and literary acumen, and I look forward to seeing how these powers reveal themselves further in "The Cradle."

Also, while I've been only slightly better at updating my status there, I've begun blogging for Artifice Books in recent months, which you can find by clicking HERE. There's plenty of other worthwhile things being said, arguably more than the few that I've spoken.

Totalitarianism And The Great Masses Fully Roused! (Part I of Hopefully Many Parts)

Great novels keep you thinking. Reading "Bend Sinister"(And while I"m on this tack I might as well include Nabokov's "Invitation to a Beheading," George Orwell's "1984" (much as Nabokov would have disliked being named alongside him) Franz Kafka's "The Trial" and Albert Camus' "The Stranger" to the list of novels that have got me to thinking, especially regarding the leitmotif (word of the day 05/31/11) of this post, but thinking of several things -- aside from Nabokov's being perhaps the great writer of our time.

The first was I've been meaning to read Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" for far too long, and it was high time I got that started. So I've got that started and it has been quite a treat, from the standpoint of keeping me thinking.

The second was that, easy as it is to say otherwise, we've got just as much potential for totalitarianism here in the good ol' USA as any country that's ever existed, and possibly more potential for it considering our great size in terms of population and the falseness of the proposition that democracy inherently breeds free thinking, or embraces it.

I've read Eric Larson's latest book, "In the Garden of Beasts" (concerned primarily with the first U.S. ambassador to Hitler's Germany, and the change in Germany's social complexion in the year's time between Hitler as merely Chancellor to his final ascension to Fuhrer and total control.) So thirdly, in conjunction with the facts of "Bend Sinister" and "Origins," is this: it never ceases to astound me how easily freedom is willfully handed over to a regime (and bureaucratic machinations subordinate to it) that desires anything but the freedom and welfare of its citizens. Hitler and the Nazis' rise provide perfect historical testimony to this fact, and damned if this is something we can sweep under the rug -- isolate to a "crazy" place and time -- and be done with it. You'd have to be crazy to do that. You can't fail to recognize that what happened in Germany was not uniquely German; it was disturbingly human.

Certainly democracy, of whatever you wish to term our current form of government in contemporary America, allows for the possibility of freedom -- but it also invites the opportunity for the contrary, a systematized manacling by those who urge oppression. Its machinations are usually subtle. That is to say, forces such as "The Silent Majority" of President Nixon's famous citation, which is a powerful, capable force. The Silent Majority that tacitly (or not so tacitly) backs the Machiavellian ends of an unscrupulous administration (think justification of Iran Contra, for one notable example), provided it means ends that a statesman can justify. These must somehow be linked to the American way, a certain pursuit. 

It is true there is a large swathe of apolitical denizens in America today. And it's possible to consider this group harmless, consider it to be an aggregate of those whom it would be hard to muster to aspirations above the most basic. But it's precisely these individuals disaffected by the political mechanisms of an entrenched government and its corresponding party system who are, historically speaking, most easily aroused to react forcefully against it. Which actually makes a great deal of sense, purely from a psychological standpoint. As you begin to feel more and more the outsider, holding no advantage, you likewise begin to -- often -- resent the group you see as responsible for your marginalization. For instance, think of how children most often hate bullies and, even if not bullies, the most popular children -- begrudging their privilege. The fact is, though, this isn't in this case without merit. Now, conversely, isn't it true that many times the most popular children, bullies, will turn children against the very lowest on the totem pole, the very weakest of the weak, which helps the popular children or child / bully consolidate power (no one wants to be the lowest on the totem pole, and expend energies mostly on distancing themselves from that person / people). You can see this working on a macro scale, as well. There wouldn't be need for scapegoats in the hugely repressive governments, totalitarian governments especially, were it not for this psychological precondition. Or at least scapegoats are a useful means of deflection. And deflection is a common means of controlling opinion in contemporary America, if not globally.

Herbert Marcuse termed it, in an eponymous essay published in 1965, "Repressive Tolerance," which is to say when tolerance for freedom of speech goes "too far" (quotes around too far quoting the questionable idea of what exactly constitutes too far). I'm inclined to agree with Marcuse. When a line of discussion of a certain heightened vitriol gets to the point where its promulgators are actively speaking of repression, you've got to call attention to, and probably vitiate, this fact. The problem I see with squelching a repressive line of thought is, how do you do so without making martyrs of the people you're silencing? If conservative commentator Glenn Beck, at the height of his popularity, had been silenced by the government for being too provocative, I feel safe in saying it would have compelled a war, or if not that then some kind of violent retaliation by a fringe, fanatical right-wing political group, at least. But I suppose this effect is something to be returned to.

I further agree with Marcuse with respect to a politically inundated society being counterproductive to the free thinking of its members. He puts it more precisely, and in terms of how we are taught to think, when he explains, ". . . learning to know the facts, the whole truth, and to comprehend it is radical criticism throughout, intellectual subversion." Those things which foster control discourage knowledge of the whole truth, and how to find it. You find the whole truth by reading and reacting to / interacting with everything. John Stuart Mill's call to understand the other side's argument as well as your own (which has led me to read a great deal by Ayn Rand, F.A. Hayek Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, William F. Buckley, and Ray Kroc -- hell, even odious talking heads like Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity). Well-roundness, exposure, more holistic education, should make those scapegoats (entities in need of oppression) the masses are trained to dislike in, say, a fascist society, less terrifying and thus less in need of repression. So that my favorite mantra, put forth by Simone de Beauvoir in her seminal work "The Ethics of Ambiguity," offers a kind of axiomatic thesis to Marcuse's essay, viz., "A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied." In other words, a right-wing Christian stating a gay man's freedom to be gay impinges on his/her freedom -- viz., (s)he wishes the gay man be denied his freedoms so as not to be exposed to nor have his/her family be exposed to the "gay lifestyle." This is the standpoint from which repressive tolerance can most properly and reasonably be understood. But still I cannot see how repressive speech would be undermined or stifled without granting martyrdom and probably impelling a violent reaction, perpetrated by those who cannot see the incongruity of imposing their "freedoms" on minorities and so forth. I understand that Marcuse would say children are the focal point from which this battle is won or lost, but how do you achieve that without enraging families who have been told/taught to believe seditious forces are attempting to brainwash their children, that it's done in the schools through re-education. Ironically the real dogmas perpetuated by larger factions of America seem to exist elsewhere. In, yes, my own personal object of bias, the church of modern American Christianity, that right-wing conflation of church with state variety (other places, too, but that's a big one). Is it crazy to say Christianity in these general terms I classify it, as one example of dogma, would be free of the scrutiny it now is subject to were it open to the rights of others to believe / worship / et al as they so choose? And is it not the fundamental opposition to this, to the rights of individuals to live as they choose, free of proselytism, that engenders a real cause for such antipathy?

How about, as long as I'm asking questions, if everyone believed the same thing as this very specific brand of Christianity I describe would that therefore make it true, finally, at long last? What about trees in the forest? At least people'd be able to sleep easier with the question of the righteousness of their beliefs taken off the table and ruled as beyond contest. That'd keep things simple, certainly.

Now, what was my point again? (Digression will be a big theme of blog posts from here on out, if it wasn't before.) Ah yes, this will be an ongoing series. Investigations in philosophy of the state and man, especially as such discussions prove relevant to whatever the hell is going on in our own country, in this day and age. I see a lot of good in opening up a dialogue. I see a lot of good, likewise, in not rambling on and onward in one single post forever.

(If it isn't apparent this is a post I've been building on and expanding for too long. I hope most of what I've written to this point flows well enough and plays off the preceding points I've made in a clear enough way, a way that by itself indicates the purposefulness of things being framed as they have been. If I have failed at this, I'm truly sorry but I hope it was a fruitful read, anyway. I don't want to waste anyone's time, especially by rambling.) 

Pu-neen!

Weird, weirdo . . . weirdy weirdo. Weird! "Pnin" -- well, what the hell is it? It's by Vladimir Nabokov. Certainly that's good. That's a good thing for a book.

But before I get ahead of myself . . .

Consistency on the blog has been difficult lately. This is in part because, believe it or not, I'm student teaching presently. Student teaching is a challenging thing, I've discovered. I'm doing the best I can, but it's odd how try as I might, high school students feel no immediate need to read and enjoy the works of well-known authors and playwrights like Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare. I mean, c'mon, obviously those guys had something to say, and shouldn't it be self-evident? Shouldn't they virtually teach themselves? Well, the answer is that, no, not necessarily on any of those counts, according to high school sophomores.

Don't ask the average high school sophomore what (s)he thinks of most literature if you want to be heartened by where the future of literary appreciation is headed. They won't have an answer, typically.

Don't worry, I'm not naive. I already knew there'd be likely . . . resistance, resistance to being taught. I have ways of making them talk, though, so don't worry. I'm also not jaded, perhaps inclined to cynicism but not jaded.

And just because I'm working harder than I ever have in my life to date, that doesn't mean I haven't had time for some recreational reading. How could I put off some recreational reading? I couldn't and I haven't! "Pnin" by Vladimir Nabokov is just one of those books that I couldn't put off. Sorry to you who might have thought I could have put "Pnin" and other such books off. I will not be foiled. To say that I will is not a true fact.

[So some spoilers will no doubt follow this point.]

One of the things that I noticed about "Pnin" is it's like all ascent story arch. There's no climactic summit, and there's not a "coming down" descent. You just keep learning about the Russian professor, Timofey Pnin, and his exploits first in Europe and then at Waindell College stateside. No tortured souls, no monomania of a telltale variety, no justification or apology of those sorts of things already listed. This is a different kind of Nabokovian tale.

Here's this to get started:

Roy Thayer avoided talking of his subject, avoided, in fact, talking of any subject, had squandered a decade of gray life on an erudite work dealing with a forgotten group of unnecessary poetasters, and kept a detailed diary, in cryptogrammed verse, which he hoped posterity would someday decipher and, in sober backcast, proclaim the greatest literary achievement of our time -- and for all i know, Roy Thayer, you might be right.

And while that quote might not be terribly good for summing up Pnin the character, it does a nice job of articulating the academic setting in which he finds himself. This is good in part for the fact that we don't learn much about Pnin the character. He's certainly given to his many tics and idiosyncrasies; he's an academic of many years and middling esteem, regarded by his colleagues as something of a laughingstock; he's bogged down by an inescapable lack of coherency given the deep-seated quality of his heavy Russian accent (a fact for which Nabokov himself may well have felt some affinity when you hear interviews of the man available on youtube, or consider Thomas Pynchon's recollection of his erstwhile instructor while Pynchon was a student at Cornell University: plainly, that he couldn't make out what Nabokov was saying because of his thick Russian accent); he's a Pollyanna to the extent that he imagines good things could conceivably come his way (facts set forth by the narrator repeatedly seem stacked against good outcomes).

Still the narrative turns strangely, asking you as reader to appreciate the life and times of someone ostensibly insignificant as Pnin appears to be. The unnamed narrator would seem insignificant, almost objectively third-person, were it not for the fact that throughout the story this individual speckles various pronouns such as "I" in reference to itself (or more like himself), which struck me as important. It struck me as a metafictional turn by Nabokov, though I'm inclined to think he'd flatly deny it. Either way, whether he meant to or not, the narrator begins to seem like the voice of Nabokov himself, recalling this Pnin character with strange, obsessive clarity.

And as I say, the narrator whoever he is, makes various references to the fact that he doesn't know Pnin firsthand much at all. He supposedly first came across the youthful Pnin while a child himself, needing to see Pnin's father, Dr. Pavel Pnin, after having a granule of debris become lodged in his eye somehow. "One of those silly incidents that remain forever in a child's receptive mind marked the spaec of time my tutor and I spent in Dr. Pnin's sundust-and-plush waiting room . . ." After the granule was extracted by Dr. Pnin, the narrator reported, ". . . the tender doctor removed from my eyeball the offending black atom! I wonder where that speck is now? The dull, mad fact is that it does exist somewhere." This last line especially impressed me, because you immediately run the idea parallel to the narrator's perception of Pnin himself, a man he acknowledges knowing so very little of personally, as said.

Pnin is the narrator's (or Nabokov's) black speck. A human speck that he wonders about existing someplace. Everything of the narration, with notable exceptions (exceptions for which we need to take the narrator's and thus Nabokov's (either tangentially or at the fore) word), is left up to the great probability of being untrue, of being something the narrator has conjured to fill in the blanks of Pnin's life, the things the narrator couldn't possibly be certain of.

So thanks for that, Nabokov, what another very subtle and sly mind game you weave. How'm I supposed to sleep easy with my own wondering, wondering and wonderment over that.

Reflecting on the Year and Looking to the Future of My Happy Reading

2010 was rife with awesomeness, reading-wise. I've added Philip K. Dick and Vladimir Nabokov to my list of all-time favorite authors. George Saunders remains among my topmost with a really just neat short story, "Escape From Spiderhead," that appeared in the recent issue of The New Yorker. David Markson, though sadly he passed away this year, also left a positive impression on me with "Wittgenstein's Mistress." William Gaddis proved his intangible value in my mind with "J R." Adam Levin and Patrick Somerville are two great young, Chicago-area writers I look forward to continuing things from. I've got "The Instructions" and I'm making headway with that, a really just enjoyable read so far. And I've got "The Cradle" and I'm waiting with bated breath for "The Universe in Miniature in Miniature." A D Jameson is another young Chicago-area writer worthy of note, and not simply because I know him, but because he has produced some damned inventive fiction you ought to check out. (Hell, he introduced me to Philip K. Dick and David Markson's awesomeness, among a great many other things.) Jameson's criticism is always thought-provoking, likewise, and his talent for honest and earnest introspection is unrivaled, as I see it. Lots of men-heavy talk here, but I mustn't forget to mention Lorrie Moore, who has just got lots of stuff that's worth your time. Lindsay Hunter and Karen Russell are two other female authors I've enjoyed in 2010, cannot wait for "Daddy's" to arrive. Oh, and I really enjoyed Shirley Jackson's "The Possibility of Evil," which I look forward to attempting to teach to high school students in 2011.

As for the future, i.e. 2011, well, let's start with several books I've gotten for Christmas. There's "The Physics of Imaginary Objects" by Tina May Hall, and that's just got an awesome title. Then there's "Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls" by Alissa Nutting, which isn't that also an awesome title? "Daddy's" as already mentioned. "The Museum of the Weird" by Amelia Gray. Somerville's titles, "The Cradle" and "The Universe in Miniature in Miniature." Roald Dahl's "My Uncle Oswald." "Pnin" by Vladimir Nabokov. Oh and philosophy by Soren Kierkegaard.

It should be a great year! How was your book haul? What do you look forward to in 2011, book-wise?" I'll probably give Nicole Krauss' "Great House" a try, and Jim Shepard's "You Think That's Bad." "The Pale King" by David Foster Wallace, also, which seems like a good idea, reading-wise.

Bend it Like Nabokov, i.e. Sinisterly (Part II)

So there is more, for starters. I attached "part I" to the title of my II part Nabokov "Bend Sinister" postings for a reason: there are II parts! Also, in this post I'm operating on the assumption that you've at least some familiarity with the previous part of this II parter, ya know? So don't act like you're not following me, especially when I gave you all this good fair warning. Same as before, spoilers are basically a given. Now, less ado and more Nabokov.

Here's what I think:

Nabokov slides in these oh so interesting morsels, narrative digressions that compound his novels with amusing, shrewdly crafted ideas to marvel in wonderment at, and from which to attempt to then divine meaning. Analysis of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" by Adam Krug and his friend, fellow academic and pedant, Ember, is one such instance of this, beginning more or less on page 105 of my edition. The thrust of this narrative digression is: what value might be attributable to pursuing high-minded interests in the midst of widespread suffering? The odd nature of such an endeavor described best here:

Nature had once produced an Englishman whose domed head had been a hive of words; a man who had only to breathe on any particle of his stupendous vocabulary to have that particle live and expand and throw out tremulous tentacles until it became a complex image with a pulsing brain and correlated limbs. Three centuries later, another man, in another country was trying to render these rhythms and metaphors in a different tongue. This process entailed a prodigious amount of labour, for the necessity of which no real reason could be given. It was as if someone, having seen a certain oak tree (further called Individual T) growing in a certain land and casting its own unique shadow on the green and brown ground, had proceeded to erect in his garden a prodigiously intricate piece of machinery which in itself was as unlike that or any other tree as the translator's inspiration and language were unlike those of the original author, but which, by means of ingenious combinations of parts, light effects, breeze-engendering engines, would, when completed, cast a shadow exactly similar to that of Individual T . . .

There's more to the above quotation but I think that adequately tells its gist (gist used ironically here). The above is also a quote drawn from the exhaustive analysis of Krug, reacting to the nature of Ember's translating Shakespeare into the native. Yes, it is spectacularly well done, as Krug later remarks to Ember, but its relevance, not just in their society but in any society, is called to question. What is the point of such elaborate simulacra? What about the fact that Ember doesn't even know who's running the country, Paduk, as elucidated by the following quote, "To stress the artist's detachment from life, Ember says he does not know and does not care to know (a telltale dismissal) who this Paduk -- bref, la personne en question -- is." I mean, when does artistic, intellectual esotericism go too far? When it, however indirectly, threatens your life, I should think. Of course, like all those others who surround Krug, Ember is shortly after taken away by Hustav and the state police. Krug, for all his recondite and analytical abilities (which likewise are brought into the realm of ambiguity), does not take heed of the foreboding quality of these arrests. He still believes himself perfectly insulated by his high-standing as a figure of world renown. One suspects a man like Martin Heidegger probably saw himself in a similar sense, even though no one can be bigger than the state in a totalitarian society.

People, academic people mostly, like to imagine that if we aren't presently on such a track than perhaps some day we might transition to a world of perfect enlightenment, of free thought and exchange of ideas without the baggage of personal prejudice, yet without much difficulty, as fiction writers and philosophers have presciently demonstrated, the perpetuation of totalitarian creeds is just as likely a scenario from this vantage of human evolution. We are as susceptible as we were seventy years ago in Nazi Germany (one need only note the popularity of sloganeering in the politics, the shoddy distillation of news and the stultification of the two-party system here in the good ol' USofA to see we, i.e. human beings and specifically Americans, are quite at risk).

As Hannah Arendt notes in her opening line to part three of her seminal work, "The Origins of Totalitarianism," -- "Nothing is more characteristic of the totalitarian movement in general and of the quality of fame of their leaders in particular than the startling swiftness with which they are forgotten and the startling ease with which they can be replaced." In other words, if totalitarian heads of state won't stand the test of time in governments of their personal contrivance or, at least, reflective of their massive influence, how could anyone else hope to maintain an individual identity amid the thronging tide of The Masses, the one and only identity extant under a totalitarian regime. Food for thought, I suppose. I don't want the preceding to be viewed as alarmist or, worse, dripping with cynicism apropos of the human condition, but just simply to point out that no one should assume with the rise of so much grandiose technology and the ability to disseminate information faster and more broadly than ever before, that that necessarily means a more enlightened future for mankind. Quite the opposite is still very possible.

Anyway, to return from the preceding lengthy digression, and to return the lengthy digression into a more clearly applicable aspect of the subject matter at hand (i.e. "Bend Sinister"), Krug is operating on this rather false supposition that insists his personal importance in a totalitarian state. True but not too true, as the inchoate totalitarian state of Padukgrad will soon teach him.

Another of Nabokov's more fascinating digressions is the question of what I'll refer to as the presumed venerability of a well-regarded thinker. As it happens, I read a lot of Ludwig Wittgenstein, a thinker who has forced me to question what is valid, certainly what is certain, more times than I can now list. What's more, he begs by his own skillful linguistic philosophy to be questioned. That's not to say I consider him overrated or anything. In fact, it's for his very ability to question everything, including the correctness of his own personal certainty, and to labor over such ideas in lengthy meditations, that I find him, paradoxically perhaps, one of the most introspectively recondite thinkers of all time.

Krug, if he has any affinity at all to the features of Wittgenstein I note above, it's that he, too, sees a worthy question in his presumed validity. Most evocative of this idea, of this instability of his venerability, is found on pages 172-3, and with the following quotes, "He was constantly being called one of the most eminent philosophers of his time but he knew that nobody could really define what special features his philosophy had, or what 'eminent' meant or what 'his time' exactly was, or who were the other worthies." And then, likewise, ". . . he had begun regarding himself (robust rude Krug) as an illusion or rather as a shareholder in an illusion which was highly appreciated by a great number of cultured people (with a generous sprinkling of semi-cultured ones)." Most likely, in this one can see something relatable to Wittgenstein's reference to his own understanding in "On Certainty" -- "Is my understanding only blindness to my own lack of understanding? It often seems so to me." Is anyone's?

"Bend Sinister" ends in tragedy because it must end in tragedy. There are no two ways about it. Krug has sinned against not only and quite obviously the state but everything that rationality suggests. He is guilty of an abstruse kind of vanity that prevents him from taking the proper course to escaping the country. Yet it is not immediately he who pays for this, or rather, it is only tangentially he who pays for this first. His son, Daniel, the apple of his eye, is the one who first suffers. Daniel comes to great harm when Krug is finally apprehended by the state police. His boy is sent to a state correctional facility for the criminally insane and Krug is presumably sent to a prison for political dissidents. It's expected Krug will hold out indefinitely and refuse to sign whatever document acceding his full endorsement of Padukgrad. But, despite countless examples throughout the novel of the great and selfless lengths Krug will go to protect his child, the Ekwilists do not understand the power of this bond until it is far too late. Krug in no time at all says he will sign whatever they like with the only provision being the immediate return of his son.

As mentioned previously, however, Daniel is sent to a correctional facility for the criminally insane. Krug soon learns that Daniel was made use of in the most callous fashion imaginable, as an expendable unit intended to absorb the release of the inmates' worst desires, violent and so forth. The facility operated on the theory that if an inmate were able to indulge in his / her compulsive needs in measured doses, with the use of individuals of no particular societal importance (orphaned children mostly), then (s)he may be rendered less a threat to society at large. Thus is Daniel murdered, and thus is Krug swallowed up by grief so powerful it drives him to insanity, leading to a darkly, grimly humorous finale demonstrative of all that is best about Nabokov's fantastically unique storytelling.

Holy crap, this is a good book!

Bend it Like Nabokov, i.e. Sinisterly (Part I)

I've acquired a copy of Brian Boyd's "Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years," which will nicely complement my copy of his "The American Years." I can imagine this will mean most reviews of Nabokov's novels will now come complete with some amount of biographical information, too. But it's the decent thing to do seeing as he's one of history's greatest writers. What I'm saying is it might be worth something to know something about his life or something.

He was a Russian, and in perhaps the simplest, most facile terms possible, a White Russian (as direct result of the fact that he wasn't a Red). This notwithstanding, his personal issues with the Soviets were more romantic, of innocence prematurely stripped, than anything else (certainly more than his dislike of their confiscating most every possession his family owned and could have laid claim to, which no matter how magnanimous he is in his writings of it, could not have been something he was A-Okay with). But here, from "Speak, Memory," he says:

My old (since 1917) quarrel with the Soviet dictatorship is wholly unrelated to any question of property. My contempt for emigre de Kickovski, who "hates the Reds" because they "stole" his money and land, is complete. The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes.

More the point, though, is "Bend Sinister" -- which is apparently Nabokov's first "American novel," i.e. the first novel he wrote while living in U.S. America, Land of the Free / Home of Brave. Whether Nabokov the man felt any enmity for the dictatorship that at his writing "Bend Sinister" was at its height of power is beside the point. "Bend Sinister" is, if it shares any affinities with the popular dystopia novels of approximately the same period, circa late 1940s, a peculiar sense of the causation that makes and upholds oppressive regimes. The fascinating character study herein is presented in Adam Krug, a highly regarded, world-famous philosopher. [Spoilers are forthcoming . . .]

Krug is an extremely vulnerable man, because he is a man with a child for whom he cares deeply. This Nabokov fairly expressly points out in his prefatory remarks. I will take him at his words, and leave the meaning to be divined to the story itself. So Krug is a vulnerable man, because he cannot set aside his powerful love for his child. He imagines he is free of the power of the state, in deed and not word so much, for the simple fact that he is an academic and an intellectual, and the world would not stand for his coming to harm. The powers that be seem content to agree to this much. They wish only to persuade Krug to endorse the regime, so that the world will accept it as well. Seems reasonable enough.

But Krug, O, Krug! He is unwilling to put his integrity on the line for a regime that, he more or less observes, has none. Not the least of which belonging to his former schoolmate, now the leader of the ruling Ekwilist Party, Paduk, thus the dictator of the state. (Ekwilism being the ideology of the everyman to which Paduk and his disciples supposedly adhere.) Paduk's forces begin to arrest every cohort of Krug, in an effort presumably to get what they want from him.

Still, he refuses the Ekwilist's cause. But all the while, and made with such abundant implication and outright explication as to be almost ribald in approach, Krug is shown to be nothing short of a doting father of his young son, David, whom he cares for more than anything in the world. Therein lies the rub.

But before I get to that, let me say the black comedy abounding in this novel is truly astoundingly among the best I've ever read. Nabokov in all his works shows a talent for this unrivaled by, really, anyone. Such is true of the following passage, which to give a little background information, is an anecdote told by Linda, an Ekwilist, relaying the facts of her lover's (Hustav is his name) being necessarily murdered by the state and the effect this had on her daily routine:

I had to be at my dentist's at ten, and there they were in the bathroom making simply hideous noises -- especially Hustav. They must have been at it for at least twenty minutes. He had an Adam's apple as hard as a heel, they said -- and of course I was late.

In my annotations my initial reaction to this passage led me to regard this as "the most hideous and lyrical description of violent death I've ever read." I would add to that the descriptor humorous, as well. It's not hard to imagine a modern American dystopia as emotionally more relatable to the representative ideas Linda's attitude embodies than the synthetic happiness of "A Brave New World" or the scheduled outlet of pathos -- engendered almost exclusively with hate -- in "1984." In other words, pharmaceutical or psychological means needn't be used (though of course you could make the argument that both are already in place), people will wish only to not be inconvenienced themselves by the draconian measures of the state.

Nabokov's Memory Speaks To Me, "Speak, Memory" Speak!

It bears mentioning that Vladimir Nabokov has in less than a year's time become one of my top five favorite authors. Honestly, I couldn't imagine listing my favorites without his inclusion. He's just that good, that indefinable. He's a historical weirdo (in the best sense). He wrote things that a man of his ostensible literary decorum should never have written (of which "Lolita" is merely the best known example, and a strange novel to be sure). Also, to begin, this post will be riddled with excerpts and, so, oodles of spoilers. You have been warned.

"Speak, Memory" is more a memoir than a work of fiction. I welcomed the opportunity to get a clearer glimpse of the personal life of this preeminent and unusual 20th century author, however fleeting a glimpse his "Speak, Memory" affords. And though not terribly long, a mere 240 pages, it turned out to be loaded with memory gems, even if one must wonder how possibly those gems were embellished by poetic license and the need to fill in gaps of time obscured. Although Nabokov does end his memoir with a rather poetic epitaph, which runs both contrary to my considered opinion and, to a certain extent, in concert with it (as such will be the case with writers, romantically capricious writers):

The garden was what the French call, phonetically, skwarr and the Russians skver, perhaps because it is the kind of thing usually found in or near public squares in England. Laid out on the last limit of the past and on the verge of the present, it remains in my memory merely as a geometrical design which no doubt I could easily fill in with the colors of plausible flowers, if I were careless enough to break the hush of pure memory that (except, perhaps, from some chance tinnitus due to the pressure of my own tired blood) I have left undisturbed, and humbly listened to, from the beginning.

I might also mention that my copy of "Speak, Memory" literally fell apart as I read it, which I decided was completely appropriate given the subject matter. I feel Nabokov would have wanted it that way. Like the beliefs of many east Asian traditions, Nabokov seems with his anecdotes to repeatedly suggest nothing lasts forever, no matter how "good" or "valuable" it may be. Certainly, it was a worthy tangible adjutant to his telling of losing Russia, following the revolution and the fall of interim liberal government of Kerensky and the duma, in which Russian government his father was active.

Brian Boyd's very good "Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years" has rapidly proven a great companion piece to "Speak, Memory," in which biography Boyd notes, ". . . unlike his egomaniacal narrators, his Hermanns and his Kinbotes, he does not assume that his life, because it is his, ought to be of interest or concern to others." Boyd also seems comfortable enough assuming the veracity of Nabokov's memories, which I like this tack as another way of interpreting the text, taking its truth on a kind of aesthetic faith that transcends what might be knowable. Certain biographical notes about Nabokov are extant in public record, especially those concerning his father, Vladimir Dimitrievich Nabokov, the Russian liberal politician, who was an outspoken critic of both the Czar and Bolshevism. And, for the sake of argument and a complete disinclination to get into the finer points of New Historicism, I will join Boyd in accepting "the truth" of Nabokov's memoir and his recollections. A better way of putting it is, I believe the memoir comprises events Nabokov believed happened as he remembered them. There was no purposeful

Nabokov devotes an entire chapter to his governess, Mademoiselle, a Swiss woman who spoke only French. He prefaces the chapter with exposition like, "I have often noticed that after I had bestowed on the characters of my novels some treasured item of my past, it would pine away in the artificial world where I had so abruptly placed it." He goes on to then note, ". . . the portrait of my old French governess, whom I once lent to a boy in one of my books, is fading fast, now that it is engulfed in the description of a childhood entirely unrelated to my own." -- which I think that's an especially fascinating depiction of how an author culls from his personal experiences, and how those lived experiences, in transference to fiction, lose something of their personal authenticity, are thus rendered distant and intangible, emigres of consciousness. He concludes his preface deftly, I think: "The man in me revolts against the fictionist, and here is my desperate attempt to save what is left of poor Mademoiselle."

Here's one particularly humorous anecdote concerning the French -- and only French -- speaking Mademoiselle at the dinner table, who labors to get a French word in edgewise amidst the cacophony of indecipherable Russian (apparently it was a common problem, but should not have been entirely surprising considering she lived in Russia and worked for Russians):

Little by little the truth would come out. The general talk had turned, say, on the subject of the warship my uncle commanded, and she had perceived in this a sly dig at her Switzerland that had no navy.

To be sure, Nabokov candid is a strange reading experience. His lamentations of his early writing (akin to Thomas Pynchon disparaging his own apprentice efforts in "Slow Learner") are often hilariously self-deprecating, as I think is well evidenced with this following excerpt and the analogy therein:

It did not occur to me then that far from being a veil, those poor words were so opaque that, in fact, they formed a wall in which all one could distinguish were the well-worn bits of the major and minor poets I imitated. Years later, in the squalid suburb of a foreign town, I remember seeing a paling, the boards of which had been brought from some other place where they had been used, apparently, as the inclosure of an itinerant circus. Animals had been painted on it by a versatile barker; but whoever had removed the boards, and then knocked them together again, must have been blind or insane, for now the fence showed only disjointed parts of animals ( some of them, moreover, upside down) -- a tawny haunch, a zebra's head, the leg of an elephant.

And, with his jejune Petrarchen fixation:

It seems hardly worth while to add that, as themes go, my elegy dealt with the loss of a beloved mistress -- Delia, Tamara or Lenore -- whom I had never lost, never loved, never met but was all set to meet, love, lose.

Or recalling his experiences at Cambridge, playing soccer with his Cambridge compatriots, but all the while musing on something very different, and, self-indulgent:

. . . [T]hink[ing] of my self as of a fabulous exotic being in an English footballer's disguise, composing verse in a tongue nobody understood about a remote country nobody knew. Small wonder I was not very popular with my teammates.

His eventual forced exile from Russia, which was pretty heavy with harrowing experiences that mottled the trek to western Europe.

We had a shotgun and a Belgian automatic; and did our best to pooh-pooh the decree which said that anyone unlawfully possessing firearms would be executed on the spot.

Still, once again he finds good ways to describe the naive and inchoate figure he cut in humorous ways, with for example the following (describing his wandering a train station platform at one of its stops on his voyage to Crimea, which had not yet fallen to Soviet hands after the October coup):

Had I been one of the tragic bums who lurked in the mist of that station platform where a brittle young fop [i.e. Nabokov] was pacing back and forth, I would not have withstood the temptations to destroy him.

But the memoir gets particularly strange when Nabokov references Sirin, and "Among the young writers produced in exile he turned out to be the only major one." Sirin's earliest works were forgettable, according to Nabokov, only getting truly worthy of reading at "Invitation to a Beheading" and "Luzhin's Defense" but then ". . . Sirin passed, to use a simile of a more conservative nature, like a meteor, and disappeared, leaving nothing much else behind him than a vague sense of uneasiness." Never heard of Sirin the major author? Well, he was Nabokov and Nabokov was he. "Sirin" was Nabokov's nom de plume in the European literary world (Berlin and France), or "V. Sirin" more precisely. You might call this a pretentious scene, then, self-indulgent to say the least. And in that you might be correct, but I think Nabokov's pretentiousness or maybe, more fairly said, elitism is a part of his incongruous writer-aspect that makes him so enjoyable to read. Certainly, it's entertaining to hear what he thinks of other writers both of the past and contemporaneous to himself, but it's further entertaining to see how he views (even past incarnations of) his authorial persona.

As Boyd notes:

Nabokov describes his life in terms of his helical version of Hegel's triad, as "a colored spiral in a small ball of glass": his first twenty years in Russia form the thesis, the next twenty-one of emigration the antithesis, his years in America the synthesis (and, as he would later add in the revised Speak, Memory, a new thesis).

So pretentious though it may well be (and how many great writers / artists other than George Saunders are at least a smidge pretentious?), it also makes sense in the context of this greater notion of how his life has been broken into discrete sections of three a la Hegel's triad (apparently more accurately attributed to Fichte, so says wiki). Who doesn't feel like a vastly different person than the one they were ten years ago or fifteen or twenty or more? (I confess I haven't lived quite long enough to make this as compelling as it could be.) If you don't, you probably should, just saying (especially true as I continue my observation of high school students, on my path to becoming a teacher).

Thus my love for Nabokov, again, a strange figure, only grows fuller with this read. More needs to be said of him, and all in due time. Adieu for the meanwhile. Adieu, adieu for now and auf wiedersehen, Nabokov.

"Pale Fire" and its manifold weirdness which makes it unlike the others: Part II - A Dash of Plot Summary

In part because Kevin asked for it and in part because I can't stop thinking about this friggin' book, I have opted to write a second, follow up post about "Pale Fire." This time, as the title suggests, concerning primarily a few main points of its plot (because I really wish to not give all that much about it away, seeing as reading the novel is, without a doubt, better than my rehashing of it).

But before I get to that I wanted to mention I've found it really interesting that there's a debate about Nabokov's intent with respect to the earnestness of the poem "Pale Fire" itself. I'm told that previously it was considered a satire and John Shade himself a stand-in parody of various notable 19th-2oth century American poets mentioned in Kinbote's notes, one of whom in specific was Robert Frost (and the stygian quality of each poet's surname seems awfully coincidental, if nothing else). But there's a new school of thought, which it seems Nabokov might well have agreed with -- if his son is to be believed, that argues the poem was done with no such satire in mind. It was meant to be interpreted as a sincere attempt, whether one thinks it hit the mark or not. Although I wasn't completely taken with the poem myself (especially in a more lyrical sense), I can say I thought it was interesting how it told its story, with a lucidity of pith that wasn't -- by all I've read of him -- Nabokov's default mode, writing-wise. (Though the poem's still characteristically Nabokovian, I do believe.)

All right, so to at last get down to the point of this post, let's run through the key story line points that define "Pale Fire," shall we? Dr. Kinbote is, as far as we know, a real person, an academic who admires the poetry of John Shade, a canonical poet. (I say "as far as we know" because there are those who speculate about his reality, of whether he is a conjuration of Shade or any number of different possibilities.) The novel is broken up as mentioned in the earlier post by three sections, Kinbote's foreward, the poem itself, and Kinbote's subsequent notes which tell the bulk of the story. That story mainly involves Kinbote's homeland, Zembla. He makes it very clear his hope in John Shade's poem was that Zembla would be realized in wonderful prose, which is why he went to such lengths to tell its many stories and describe its scenery with persistence to the venerable poet during the pair's walks. It's also clear, frequently, that despite his fluency, Kinbote hardly understands the finer points of human interaction. He rarely gets hints that he's not wanted. And when he does pick up on them, he's usually contrived an excuse for Shade, disparaging whoever else (usually Sybil, Shade's wife) is culpable enough to attach blame.

Zembla's king, of whom Kinbote makes no bones he is a devoted subject, has been forced into exile in a recent uprising by ostensibly proletarian forces more or less supported by the USSR. This then leads to the parallel running narrative of Gradus, a villainous anti-royalist, sent after the king to, apparently, kill him. Fairly early on it's said that Gradus is John Shade's murderer (and yes, the climax of the story leads to the death of John Shade, but I don't consider this a spoiler; Shade's being dead is revealed in the foreward), and so in Kinbote's notes the two men's narratives run parallel, with Kinbote noting where each was in relation to the other (Shade completing his epic poem and Gradus' movement about Europe and elsewhere abroad) as they moved towards their fatal collision. All of this, believe me, has one questioning the sanity of Kinbote, who seems rather loony, I don't mind saying.

Another final point as regards plot and narrative structure is how unconcerned, almost dismissive, Kinbote seems to be apropos of the poem's real content. I began to feel, and there should be no mistaking this, that Nabokov was pointing out the absurdity of any serious literary critique, certainly of the academic variety, and his notes were principally meant to showcase how much of oneself said academics put into their "objective" analyses of authors' works. (Make no mistake, I see that I myself am doing the very same thing, here and now, even; but I do hope it's clear likewise that I am aware of how much of myself I cloyingly put into these analyses. The point is: please do not reject me).

Have a very great Sunday everybody!

"Pale Fire" and its manifold weirdness which makes it unlike the others

Others of Vladimir Nabokov's novels is how I mean "unlike the others," to clarify. -- Ed. Matt's note.

"Pale Fire" isn't just different structurally, although it is different in that way (set up to resemble a critical edition of an epic poem), but it's wildly different in shear scope of its introspection, given the strange mania of the narrator, Dr. Kinbote, who is, similar to a great many other Nabokovian characters, an obsessive. Nabokov's novels are never short on introspection, to be sure, yet this one is brimming with it. In fact, it's that strange detachedness belonging to the erudite narrators of Nabokov's stories, with their simultaneous zeal for the things that they find interesting, that keeps me coming back. All great writers are, of course, uncommon, and Nabokov's novels demonstrate time and again exactly how true that is of him, as well.

But to return to structure for a moment, it is the novel of an epic poem, but only as that's been rooted at its epicenter. The epic poem, which is also featured in its entirety, has the eponymous title, "Pale Fire," and is penned by the introverted but seemingly magnanimous poet laureate of Nabokov's imagination, John Shade. (Suddenly Paul Auster's characters' names appear to have a recognizable antecedent.) Shade is, meanwhile, the embodiment of Dr. Charles Kinbote's obsession, an affliction that has numerous layers, most of which still in one way or another return to his preoccupation with Shade and Shade's oeuvre. As is alluded to with the introduction, penned by Kinbote, and made undeniably clear with Kinbote's subsequent "notes," the story's true focus concerns not Shade but his ebullient biographer and one-time neighbor, i.e. Kinbote himself. Sybil Shade, John's wife, alternatively, struck me as representing the interests of John with respect to his dislike of Kinbote and people who act like him. People who find their way into one's life with fairly self-serving purposes at the heart of this endeavor. The whole "where were you before I made my money" sort of phenomenon.

Still, to be fair to Kinbote, I don't think that notion accurately describes his motivation, or at least not entirely. What he wants is something deeper, perhaps more nefarious, than basking in the reflected light of John Shade (no irony very intentionally intended). Maybe a more apt comparison would be to say Kinbote is a learned, slightly less cartoonish hanger-on like Bill Murray's ludicrously multi-phobic, dependent Bob was to Richard Dreyfuss' pompus psychiatrist and straight-man foil in the movie "What About Bob?" He's a man who has produced his own narrative, of a strange land called Zembla, which he deeply wishes would resonate with Shade, so that in some form or another it manifests itself in the poet's work. This desire shows itself to be something akin to the way we find meaning in all the terms we come across in life, and even more so to the minutely detailed way in which scholars of any discipline parse meaning from the important works of genius considered venerable-nearing-sacrosanct in their respective fields of study. Kinbote also proves that the line between the artist's culling a reality and one's own attempt at crafting a reality, as I guess would be the case of certain kinds of madmen, is -- as the adage sort of goes -- very thin. (you know, more precisely the line between genius and madness, which is specifically the old adage.)

I can say it's very hard for me to restrain myself from giving away crucial plot points (twists and so forth), even though with Nabokov, I think, twists are less important as a plot device (as a method of keeping the reader reading) than what they mean to the individual (as he seems to prefer the first-person narration) laying out the tale, whatever it be. Twists in that respect then, seem more a way of conveying how perception is the truth of any revelation, because what is the case is only the case insofar as you believe it to be thus. It's hard not to get a sense of the unreliability of Nabokov's usually self-interested narrators. Kinbote is no exception.

Perhaps in a separate post I will more carefully analyze the various principal plot points that define this masterwork. I haven't decided. I don't know if that's really necessary for my own self, in terms of feeling I've adequately gripped the text. But it is one of those novels that leaves you feeling there are so many places in which to invest your attention. A certain kind of madness has that effect on me, compulsion to continue to wrestle with its "meaning."

Novels and so forth are Rorschach Tests, by the way.

No "Despair"-ing Nabokov's Being So Good

More puns! Ah, ok I'll shut the hell up about that. But I read Vladimir Nabokov . . . again! "Despair" this time. Alfred Hitchcock and Edgar Allan Poe would likely have appreciated this literary effort, too. It's rife with all the usual depth of a Nabokov tale: a hyper-aware protagonist, Hermann, attempts to explain away his monomania and the violence it leads him to commit, with many of the elements of a thriller masterminded by one or both of the two artists previously mentioned.

Hermann begins his narrative exposition with a wide array of dithering and seemingly extraneous background information, coming in weird clips and decisive backsliding (as to almost appear overwrought to the point of being premeditated / too carefully crafted to fit the image he's creating for himself), expressing thoughts in an oddly whimsical way at times (e.g. "Tum-tee-tum. And once more -- TUM! No, I have not gone mad. I am merely producing gleeful sounds."), and all of which supposedly written as such for the simple fact of his culling it totally and completely from memory. Anything he knows is speculation he goes to great pains to make it abundantly clear that that is just what it is, speculative -- thus leaving everything to be doubted more so than usual when offered from the point of view of an unreliable first person narrator. His emphatic conviction makes him an untrustworthy individual, indeed. It's also a very nice bit of story-craft by Nabokov in those early, tone-setting few chapters.

The substance of the story, meanwhile, begins in the midst of everything else (his relationship with his wife, her cousin, his parents and so forth), when he describes coming upon a complete stranger named Felix, a man on the 180-degree opposite end of the socio-economic spectrum, a drifter and a panhandler whom Hermann believes to be his exact, perfect double -- uncannily resembling him in near every way, including countenance and stature. So is the seed of Hermann's obsession planted. Whatever logical end or imperative Hermann contrives to justify his plans, it's rendered moot and arbitrary when juxtaposed against his interest in the world perceiving his double as he does, i.e. possessing a flawlessly similar likeness. It takes a special kind of lunacy to aspire to this sort of social affirmation, going to the length of declaring ". . . I longed, to the point of pain, for that masterpiece of mine . . . to be appreciated by men . . ." And as the plot becomes more involved you sometimes wonder if Hermann thought Felix was handsome. I myself couldn't shake the joke of any person's flattering him or herself with the belief that they look like a certain celebrity or other-type beautiful person, even if the resemblance is tenuous at best.

Ultimately, it's beside the point whether there is something in Felix's physical appearance that Hermann admires. The real issue at stake is what possesses Hermann to prove to the world that their likeness is exact, to go to the extreme he hints at throughout the first many chapters of his tale. That's difficult even to theorize about. But it certainly invites your hypotheses. I'm always interested in the process by which humans either reject or accept someone into their fold, what sorts of traits one needs to possess to be accepted by one or an entire group at large. So accepted was Felix by Hermann, you might say, that the latter wished to adopt the life of the former, which is no small thing when you consider the difference of each man's social standing. There were facts about Felix that Hermann at least implicitly admires, even if more overtly he considers him a buffoon and a moron. His anonymity, in itself, seems to be a virtue. Felix travels all over with little more than a few personal items to show for it, to tangibly testify to his ever existing. Hermann wants a live evanescence, to become a shadow. Felix's being listed on his passport by occupation as a "musician" has a certain appeal to Hermann, as well. He might then be able to rid himself of his dislike of mirrors, which I'm sure there's some serious psycho-analysis to be done with that aspect of his character, in and of itself.

But Hermann is undone in his plans. I won't get into precisely how, but things don't go quite the way he'd hoped, or contrived. Instead, he is forced to deal with the little that is made of his "masterpiece" and the shame that no one but himself seems to think it is a striking resemblance.

But where Hermann especially fails is with his assumption that he is the smartest man in the room, when in truth many of the others whom he assumed to be fools, reprobates and / or oblivious were in fact on to him more or less the whole time (this seems especially true in the case of Ardalion, his wife's cousin). That and, basically, there no such thing as an exact double, so don't get any murderous ideas.

Nabokov's Beheading Invite; Kafka Guest of Honor

Cordially invited to witness something like a beheading. It's fair to say Vladimir Nabokov's "Invitation to a Beheading" is not your usual story involving the issuance of keenly violent corporal punishment. Nabokov wouldn't be Nabokov if he had a habit of doing that, or moreover suggested the possibility that his writing was derivative of whatever it is I'm describing.

Stylistic similarities are notable, though, and a name does come to mind: Kafka. This work is not lock, stock & barrel reminiscent but reminiscent nonetheless of everyone's favorite modernist, Franz Kafka. The (possibly kneejerk or wanton) comparisons I've heard were made are, for good or ill, both reasonable and apt. Actually, if I had any issue with the novel it was that I could not find a way to shed this obvious comparison from what is a typically enjoyable read by Nabokov.

I know those who are familiar are familiar with The Term, but I refuse to use it, REFUSE! Nevertheless, I can think of no more appropriate novel to apply it, The Term, than "Invitation to a Beheading." That now said, there are differences, distinct and notable differences, of course, concerning the styles of Kafka and Nabokov. (I also won't delve further into the fact that Nabokov claims not to have read anything by the famed Prague writer at the time of his penning "Invitation" -- which may certainly be true, but changes not a bit of its kindredness, in any case.)

The descriptions of sexuality, in euphemism and in more overt exhortation, is definitely apparent in "Beheading" where if extant in Kafka, it was far more on the latent (or cryptic) side of regard. Here for example is a reflection of the main character, Cinncinatus C., who is entreating in a letter his estranged wife, Marthe, to visit him anon, after their first visit together went poorly. He understands she has betrayed him; she has always been fairly cavalier about it. But he writes to her the following lurid if metaphorical description of his witnessed understanding:

Your and his kisses, which most resembled some sort of feeding, intent, untidy, and noisy. Or when you, with eyes closed tight, devoured a spurting peach and then, having finished but still swallowing, with your mouth still full, you cannibal, your glazed eyes wandered, your fingers were spread, your inflamed lips were all glossy, your chin trembled, all covered with drops of the cloudy juice, which trickled down onto your bared bosom, while the Priapus who had nourished you suddenly, with a convulsive oath, turned his bent back to me, who had entered the room at the wrong moment.

Huh? Well it was just a peach -- except that, wait a minute (NSFW) a peach kind of looks like the head of a penis, if you want to start invoking Fraudian theory and why I like peaches so much (which I'd prefer we cease with the digging into my own psyche and focus on Nabokov's really excellent and let's face it well known perversion). I don't think there's much reading between the lines here that's necessary -- Nabokov is describing in arguably the most eloquent terms I've heard it described the aftermath of a really effusive fellating. Lucky Priapus.

Can I speak to the ambiguity of each great writer for a moment? Yes? It's my blog? Oh, well right. Anyway, both Kafka (whom I plan to discuss in closer detail soon, having recently read and enjoyed his short story "The Village Schoolmaster") and Nabokov use the ambiguity of power, of its exercise, of the notion that there's a real lack of institutional oversight from an institution we might ought not to invest very much trust in, to express a kind of deficit in the variances of human relation, that there is a grievous lack of understanding and empathy threatening to widen an already-too-wide gap extant between us. Moreover, through humor (satirical elements but also plain old oddball irony) they illustrate the great lack of a brain, of a consciously evil presence that seeks to destroy the members of its society that are deemed anathematical. Instead, what you get is bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake, and whatever some abstraction of tradition and its oft inexplicable purpose has set forth as The Way of conduct in any society that at its core seeks either to normalize or expel.

I won't presume to know what the thought process of these two famously great writers was in writing their stories, nor in specific "Invitation to a Beheading." What I will say is that while I see both share a brooding manner in their work (nonplussed but detachedly so, angry in a sense but with the futility of a wildlife documentarian allowing nature to take its course, and thus showcasing this course taken, doing so wryly, too, as if it were not a documentary with animal subjects all of a sudden but switched to a human subject), the difference to me is that where Kafka will explicate the subtleties of the human relational experience, the distrust to be found between compatriots who mince words and regard each other with skepticism of a contemptuous but unspoken degree, which is deflected nicely to the issues that exist beside the case and are used to ably justify the contempt and contention that is ultimately unrelated and unspoken, smoke and mirrors to unconsciously muddle relational progress. This is of course only one way to dissect relational patterns in Kafka, but I think it is one he showcased with frequency. Some of his short stories stand out in my mind as evidence of this narrative streak, "The Penal Colony," "The Village Schoolmaster," and "The Judgment."

Nabokov reflects a greater solipsism or emptiness of relational gratification. His character Cinncinatus C. is unable to ever express his point to anyone, and his life has been riddled with nothing but abject failure and betrayal at the moments he lets his guard down. Every person with whom he associates in "An Invitation to a Beheading" is quick to list his flaws and quick to prescribe solutions to them. One chapter that was especially good at demonstrating this nature of Cinncinatus' circumstances was chapter thirteen in which the above cited quote is to be found, and which concludes with a game of chess played between Cinncinatus and his fellow prisoner Pierre, whose motives are for much of the story ambiguous but always questionable. The game is narrated by Pierre who humorously and constantly amends his moves and questions the logic of Cinncinatus' -- whose moves are definitely effective and thus constantly necessitate Pierre's unfair move retractions and so forth. And while a humorous episode, it also describes a fundament, I think, of the novel's ethos, of whatever higher motivation there was to describing Cinncinatus' plight. The owner of all the moves, whoever he is, is not Cinncinatus, and he is not a benign and loving god, either.

The Strange Experience: Reading "Lolita"

The first thing you should know I didn't know about Vladimir Nabokov is he was funny. This humorous bent shows itself especially in the tongue-in-cheek portrayal of his narrator in "Lolita," the woeful, ostentatious pedophile Humbert Humbert. The novel as a whole is surprisingly funny, too. I guess I'd always had Nabokov pegged as a writer too stodgy and turgid (this was without actually reading him) to make such complete mockery of his protagonist, but evidently I had him pegged incorrectly. The ostensible skepticism with which he proffers Hum's claims, usually these acting as segues to subtle boasts, is scorching. Don't let the people who don't know tell you otherwise, because they're liars whereas I'm telling you the truth. Comedy abounds in "Lolita."

Humbert's eventual tutelage and subsequent journeys with his nymphetic ward, Lolita, provide countless situations one could rightfully construe as being hilarious. I'm glad Nabokov takes full advantage of this interplay between father and daughter, and the forbidden lovers they are in private. It relieves tension in one sense, and provides the story with important dimension in another. It also undermines the seriousness of Humbert's arguments, which has him seeming much more unreliable in his telling the story than most first-person narrators seem. He is much more compromised by his own poetic interpretation of events, a fact that does come to light more clearly as the novel reaches its climax.

First, the relationship, which starts with Lolita, or Dolores Haze, as a girl of about 12 and spans her coming of age to her late teens, is one that provides the reader frequent moments of discomfort and confusion. Their physical intercourse, described in terms more florid than truly graphic by Humbert Humbert, impels a response -- at least in this reader -- that is deeply conflicting. Call it arousal, call it titillation, call it whatever makes you comfortable, any scene in fiction depicting sex or sexuality usually inspires one of the aforementioned terms as reaction. I think we can all agree it's a deeply human reaction. I at least can agree for you all, and you're free to lie and say that it isn't. Go right ahead.

The great fun of Lolita is at any moment that this sensation would typically occur you're left to remember that this is a pubescent girl -- if you somehow manage to lose yourself in the narrative and forget this fact (very hard to do), Humbert is always there to avail you with a reminder that Lolita is still categorically in every way not a woman. The book forces you to consider your visceral urges much more forthrightly, and consider them while reminding yourself that pedophilia simply is not your thing, hence the discomfort. (Similarly, a friend recently reminded me that Chabon's "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh" forces you to consider whether being gay or bisexual is your thing.) At the risk of sounding a little glib, Nabokov writes pedophilia as tastefully but as comprehensively as I suspect is possible.

But what's stranger than that is how funny Nabokov manages to be, making good use of the desired seriousness Humbert wishes the reader will take him with, oozing from his every sentence . "Lolita" is definitely in part a fantastic black comedy. I know I'm probably beginning to sound overly surprised by this fact, that humor has any place in "Lolita," but what needs to be clarified is I'm someone who first became acquainted with "Lolita" by watching the previews on TV for the 1997 film version starring Jeremy Irons. My dim memory of this is filled primarily with images of stuffy romance, and I was made mildly curious by the significant margin of age separating Lolita from Humbert. But that's it. So after about 12 years of letting that idea ferment, and for some reason never conversing with anyone about the story beyond a superficial understanding of the pair's sordid relationship, I had a deep-rooted impression of what the story must be. Nabokov then turned my notions of his novel upside down, which was a nice surprise.

Comedy can be used as an effective build up to the acme of tragedy. This is especially true when one character (e.g. Humbert Humbert) proves hopelessly in denial about the harm his actions are doing to another character (e.g. Lolita). "Lolita" may be the best tragedy I've ever read as well as being one of the best black comedies, then. Not to give the ending away (and so a SPOILER ALERT!!! BIG TIME FROM HERE ON OUT!!! is appropriate), but after Humbert tracks down Lolita following their long separation at the meddling hands of Clare "Cue" Quilty, an interesting subplot I nevertheless won't veer into, he discovers her much as he left her. She's visibly the same, with the noted differences of being three years older, seventeen, and made gravid by her husband, Dick Schiller, a veteran who is hard of hearing because of injuries inflicted during whatever conflict he participated in. So she's actually considerably different, but externally isn't the half of it. She's clearly more mature than when we left her, at that time still a precocious youth possessing a sharp and acerbic wit. She now has an idea of what she wants in life, to move with Dick to his nebulous employ with an unnamed agency somewhere in Alaska. (Does appear like a voluntary exile, yes.)

Humbert is instead confronted with the fact that Lolita honestly wants nothing to do with him. He begins to realize that if she ever thought anything of their relationship it was purely transactional, a quid pro quo. He meanwhile understands that she longed covetously for a relationship with a father like that which her friends enjoyed. Humbert describes the example of her friend Avis and Avis's father, and one particular visit of theirs, as follows:

Suddenly, as Avis clung to her father's neck and ear while, with a casual arm, the man enveloped his lumpy and large offspring, I saw Lolita's smile lose all its light and become a frozen little shadow of itself, and the fruit knife slipped off the table and struck her with its silver handle a freak blow on the ankle which made her gasp, and crouch head forward, and then, jumping on one leg, her face awful with the preparatory grimace which children hold till the tears gush, she was gone -- to be followed at once and consoled in the kitchen by Avis who had such a wonderful fat pink dad and a small chubby brother, and a brand-new baby sister, and a home, and two grinning dogs, and Lolita had nothing.

Humbert concludes this candidly deprecating but simultaneously immodest show of delayed sympathy for his ward with the following remarks, which sums their relationship up fairly well:

It had become gradually clear to my conventional Lolita during our singular and bestial cohabitation that even the most miserable of family lives was better than the parody of incest, which, in the long run, was the best I could offer the waif.

Now if you want my opinion, what proves Humbert's insincerity or, at least, vanity is his insistence on getting his revenge against Cue Quilty, whom he only knows as the man who lured Lolita away while his back was effectively turned. Were Humbert truly sorry and sure of his own certain culpability he would never waste time looking for the straw man Quilty inevitably becomes. He wouldn't need to destroy the embodiment of all he loathes in himself because he would understand that there is no extricating the one from the other, that what he has done to Lolita is inextricably who he is, Humbert 1 AND Humbert 2. We know he understands this distinction between himself and Quilty when nearing the end of his last visit with Lolita ever, during which he does attempt semi-seriously to get her to leave with him, the following is disclosed by each:

"Is there no hope of your coming? Tell me only this."

"No," she said. "No, honey, no."

She had never called me honey before.

"No, she said, it is quite out of the question. I would sooner go back to Cue. I mean --"

She groped for words. I supplied them mentally ("He broke my heart. You merely broke my life").

Of course, Humbert's ego was also bruised by Quilty, who evaded detection by signing his name at various hotel stops under aliases that made it impossible for Humbert to determine his true identity and thus where he might have taken Lolita. Regardless of that frivolous little distress imposed (Quilty himself later pointing out: ". . . my dear Mr. Humbert, you were not an ideal stepfather . . ."), Humbert, who is narrating throughout "Lolita" from the custody of a sanitarium and awaiting trial for Quilty's murder (he does kill him), never seems to truly understand his role and the distinction between himself and Quilty, as the final lines of his story read like an ego-maniacal, self-penned epitaph, to wit:

And do not pity C. Q. [i.e. Quility]. One had to choose between him and H. H., and one wanted H. H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.

Mostly, he's a real jag-off. Pardon my coarseness.