Vladimir Nabokov
You aren't a lecher are you?
As a warning, you should know that I have been interested in Chess as of late and so it is probable that I would be more than inclined to enjoy a book about chess. But regardless of whether or not you enjoy chess, The Defense has enough redeeming qualities to make it worth the read.
Nabokov's Luzhin is one of the greatest worst protagonists I have ever witnessed. He almost makes the live at home when thirty, video-gamer phenomenon of our day look good.
These are bits and pieces of the mystery, not given that we should understand and thereby dissolve it, but that with each new speck its depth might be expanded and we humbled.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Despair
By Vladimir Nabokov
While Joyce may have been one of the first paragons of the stream of consciousness (as someone has seen fit to so dub it) Nabokov has explored a wholly new possibility in it with his fusion of the author and narrator and character into one being behind which he (Nabokov) hides poking out only so much as one might imagine him to be exposing himself in reality or in the pages of fiction. It seems impossible to be able to pin down exactly where Nabokov begins from the twisted mess of his character Hermann--perhaps only in the forward...if even there.
As you read this mystery, never forget that the voice speaking to you is not some benign author laying bare before the heart of one of his characters, but rather a book as written by a manipulative character for your confusion and consumption. It seems that Nabokov has genuinely made me aware of his transcendence of the first person novel into a state which might be described as author as character.
While it may not strike you with the same force, the story is well worth the time you may choose to spend on it, if only for the glorious procession of what can only rightly follow (despite all the standards of a glamorous dramatic tradition. 8/10
Tum-tee-tum. And once more--TUM! No, I have not gone mad. I am merely producing gleeful little sounds. The kind of glee one experiences upon making an April fool of someone. And a damned good fool I have made of someone. Who is he? Gentle reader, look at yourself in the mirror, as you seem to like so mirrors so much.There are few novels I have read where it seems that the author is not out to entertain the reader, not attempting to enlighten or convince, but is in fact seeking out and and attacking the reader. Such has been my first experience of Nabokov. It is startling how he reaches out into your mind as you slip through his pages. He seemed to be doing what many authors might write about others doing, but few have the balls to actually act out. That he would not only be attempting to gauge the reader's reaction, but is in turn playing off that reaction and then informing the reader that he is playing him, all for the sake of...what?
While Joyce may have been one of the first paragons of the stream of consciousness (as someone has seen fit to so dub it) Nabokov has explored a wholly new possibility in it with his fusion of the author and narrator and character into one being behind which he (Nabokov) hides poking out only so much as one might imagine him to be exposing himself in reality or in the pages of fiction. It seems impossible to be able to pin down exactly where Nabokov begins from the twisted mess of his character Hermann--perhaps only in the forward...if even there.
As you read this mystery, never forget that the voice speaking to you is not some benign author laying bare before the heart of one of his characters, but rather a book as written by a manipulative character for your confusion and consumption. It seems that Nabokov has genuinely made me aware of his transcendence of the first person novel into a state which might be described as author as character.
While it may not strike you with the same force, the story is well worth the time you may choose to spend on it, if only for the glorious procession of what can only rightly follow (despite all the standards of a glamorous dramatic tradition. 8/10
Of Human Bondage
W. Somerset Maugham
It is strange, almost mindboggling (of course only when you actual slip away from Maugham's insidious grasp) to notice how incredible happy the man is about his morbid discoveries. At one point he comments joyfully that he would have long ago dealt himself a murderer's death if he weren't so "damned flippant." It seems that in Of Human Bondage life in losing it's meaning, gains some other (greater?) thing. Asceticism? The hedonist glory of living because we are not dead?
But beyond the perhaps questionable philosophy in Of Human Bondage, I once again must spend some moments talking about his excellent craftsmanship. I do not know that I have ever before encountered an author who works in English with so much beauty. Maugham's writing, regardless of those pedantic people who imagine it too stylish, like some fop or dandy--garish in their fashion--is perhaps the best put together of any English author's.
For example, one interesting phrase, "Oh life where is thy sting?" might strike some as a childish twist on a much venerated and perhaps overused rhetorical idea. But I have not yet become so like Maugham's characters as to be unable to enjoy a cliche when used rightly. Like a Dairy Queen burger at the right moment, such a style can be as great a pinnacle as any.
Art, he continued with a wave of the hand, is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.Maugham paints a picture of humanism in Of Human Bondage which repeatedly places the glories of humanity before the reader before spitting upon them and grinding them into the ground with his nicely polished shoe. After each glory which might signify something greater and more grand going on here than the rutting and rooting about of so many animals, he finishes with an exuberantly sunlit picture of humans reveling in the beauty of being alive in an ugly world.
Whatever happened to him now would be one more motive to add to the complexity of the pattern and when the end approached he would rejoice in its completion. It would be a work of art, and it would be none the less beautiful because he alone knew of its existence, and with his death it would at once cease to be.
It is strange, almost mindboggling (of course only when you actual slip away from Maugham's insidious grasp) to notice how incredible happy the man is about his morbid discoveries. At one point he comments joyfully that he would have long ago dealt himself a murderer's death if he weren't so "damned flippant." It seems that in Of Human Bondage life in losing it's meaning, gains some other (greater?) thing. Asceticism? The hedonist glory of living because we are not dead?
But beyond the perhaps questionable philosophy in Of Human Bondage, I once again must spend some moments talking about his excellent craftsmanship. I do not know that I have ever before encountered an author who works in English with so much beauty. Maugham's writing, regardless of those pedantic people who imagine it too stylish, like some fop or dandy--garish in their fashion--is perhaps the best put together of any English author's.
For example, one interesting phrase, "Oh life where is thy sting?" might strike some as a childish twist on a much venerated and perhaps overused rhetorical idea. But I have not yet become so like Maugham's characters as to be unable to enjoy a cliche when used rightly. Like a Dairy Queen burger at the right moment, such a style can be as great a pinnacle as any.