Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Americanah

The book has beautiful, readable, flowing prose; a pleasure to read and very easy to consume in large quantities.  I read the book quickly and rarely found clunky or discordant passages.  If I compare the book to Under Half A Yellow Sun, I preferred the domestic setting and subject matter of this book.  Perhaps the drama of the Biafran war and the rather jarring plot development somehow detract from the prose in Under Half A Yellow Sun; in any case, I found this a smoother and more tranquil narrative environment in which to appreciate her writing.

The theme of the ever-dissatisfied, international and multicultural child is very well developed and was probably the best and most interesting part of the book for me.  Even more so than race, which would be the obvious front runner!  The sense of growing up with the understanding that opportunity and success lie outside of your own country is very well portrayed.  Ifem is the most obvious example of this.  She doesn’t like Nigeria growing up and longs for the imagined lustre of foreign lands.  She doesn’t like America when she gets there but equally doesn’t like Nigeria when she goes back because the US has changed her.  There is a sadness to this.  It feels like these children have been raised in an environment and pushed into a lifestyle where they feel like they don’t belong anywhere.  The best example of this is chapter 48 when Ifem goes to the Nigerpolitans meeting and simultaneously scorns the other members’ infatuation with foreignness while realising she is no longer a ‘local’ Nigerian like she used to be.   Most of the cast of characters is touched by this theme of migration, cultural transition and identity.  It contrasts well with the more gossipy sections about Ifem’s friends in Lagos or her relationships.  The end of chapter 29, when Obinze goes to the dinner party in London with his old friend Emenike who has attempted to transform himself into a posh British person, is depressing as it shows Emenike as ashamed of his past and who he is.  However, I felt there was an interesting counterpoint to this in Ifem’s own attempts to maintain her identity while living in America; she consciously tries to retain her African accent.  Ostensibly, this is admirable compared to Emenike’s total transformation but isn’t it really the same thing in some sense; a wilful effort to be different from how you would be naturally?  Here I find concepts of identity and their “naturalness” very hard to pin down because who can be said to be totally “natural”? I feel everyone is trying to be something different from what they are at some point in their lives.  Especially when they’re moving between cultures and growing up at the same time.  Nonetheless, I found Ifem’s attempts to continue to speak with a Nigerian accent a bit forced.  As someone who has experienced unwanted changes in their accent growing up I would question: 1) how feasible it is to control something you use as frequently and subconsciously as your voice and 2) how much a person’s accent would really change at her age anyway.  Whatever the case, I feel like this detail is included to illustrate Ifem’s desire to stay connected to her roots alongside blogging about her experience of being black in America and her hairstyle choices.  To me though it also asks the question, is Ifem actually creating something false in her attempts to remain authentic?  Another interesting strand of the theme of identity and transition is the idea of being a middle class illegal immigrant like Obinze:

Alexa, and the other guests...all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness.  They would not understand why people like him, who were raised well-fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction, conditioned from birth to look towards somewhere else, eternally convinced that real lives happened in that somewhere else, were now resolved to do dangerous things, illegal things, so as to leave, none of them starving, or raped, or from burned villages, but merely hungry for choice and certainty” p276

The whole section that follows, about his attempted sham marriage and eventual deportation, is very good too.  

Certain scenes and moods are captured brilliantly and one that stood out for me was the time around Obama’s Presidential campaign.  The ambience of hopefulness and then outright elation on election night is very well depicted.  She also links it in well with the narrative, describing the positive effect this general mood of euphoria had on her waning relationship with Blaine.  This part is very good and rings true (Chapter 40).

At its worst points I wondered if the book was quite superficial and gossipy in a kind of trashy soap opera way.  One example is the description of a man at a party:

“It was Sterling, the wealthy one, who Blaine told her came from Boston old money; he and his father had been legacy students at Harvard.  He was left-leaning and well-meaning, crippled by his acknowledgement of his own many privileges.  He never allowed himself to have an opinion.  “Yes, I see what you mean,” he said often.” p323

I found this throw away section about a totally inconsequential character disproportionately distressing! Moreso for the tone than for the prose or the non-existent plot implications.  Isn’t this shallow, judgemental gossip; quick to size someone up and dismiss them someone based on two or three facts about their life and a huge amount of arrogant, unnuanced conjecture?! Or is it simply good, colourful background?  I felt it had the flippant, glib manner of Hello magazine or some similar society chronicler and didn’t like it at all.  I’m aware this seems a bit like making a mountain out of a molehill but for some reason this particular passage seemed to encapsulate a certain tone within the book that I didn’t care for.

There is no denying there is a snarky and unpleasant side to Ifem.  Sometimes she seems to think of herself as the archetype of decorum and deportment; criticising both the US and Nigeria while she floats about in some elusive culture that allows her to judge everything while never making herself the subject of criticism. Her blogs could be portrayed as patronising, simplistic and arrogant; generalising about groups of people numbering in the tens of millions using only the scant experience of a foreigner living in the US for a few years.  There’s certainly a “know it all” tone to the blogs, which you can find evidence for in any post.  However, I think this characterisation goes too far as it is necessary to generalise to have meaningful discussions about slippery and complex issues like gender, race and identity.  Ifem’s blogs can be haughty and draw wide ranging, unwarranted conclusions from scanty evidence but they are also relatable, fun, readable, and, most importantly, promote a discussion amongst the other readers online.  Overall, I thought the blog was a good device that brought a lot of interesting material to the book in an enjoyable format.  I should also point out that Adichie doesn’t let the blog go totally uncriticised in the book.  Ifem’s friend Ranyi makes a good critique of Ifem and the way she invades her privacy by blogging about her, which also addresses the problem of Ifem critiquing all cultures but not really belonging to any of them at the end of chapter 50.  The blogs seem to say a lot in support of the kind of woman Ifem is being portrayed as in the book, a feminist, someone who reflects on inequality and its historical causes, someone trying to be a force for goodness and fairness in the world.  In this way, Blaine seems her most natural fit as a partner but she says she finds him almost too worthy and kind and doesn’t love him.  The argument they have about lying shows Ifem in a far worse light than Blaine, although he is a little theatrical and passive aggressive in not speaking to her for days, and she seems to drift away from him for no particular reason.

I found the later portrayal of Obinze very confusing and problematic.  All the prose about him is misty eyed and dreamy and Ifem’s recollections from their youth make him seem kind, gentle and effortlessly cool.  He is certainly painted in sympathetic colours during his failed attempt at marriage and deportation from the UK.  However, the grown-up Obinze is a corrupt ‘big man’ who drives around in a black Range Rover with a chauffer.  He calls other rich Nigerians “thieves or beggars” (p429) but we know he got his start hanging around one of these thieves or beggars and being sycophantic.  You also have to assume that he is corrupt if he is a successful real estate developer in Nigeria given the importance of government permits and approvals in that business.  So where does he derive the right to look down on other people when his own wealth comes from the same tainted source?  All this is lost in breathless whispers about how he works out and salivation over his wealth and success; it’s all a bit sickening.   The fact his academic mother, one of Ifem’s heroes in her youth, disapproves of his money and won’t use her gift of a new car provides some very mild criticism but really there is almost no critical reflection on Obinze's wealth, which is a startling contrast to the rest of the book.  On the whole, the tone of the book seems to be that it is OK for Obinze to be rich from corruption because he is the kind, caring, capable lover of Ifem’s youth and now that he is prince charming come to save Ifem’s heart his riches will help them to live happily ever after.  Is social awareness being sacrificed for romance because traditionally the lover is rich?  It also makes me wonder about how likeable a character Ifem really is.  She doesn’t seem at all bothered about pursuing Obinze despite the fact he is married and has a child but is so judgemental of her friends who do the same thing.  She seems to recieve pretty positive treatment throughout, as with most protagonists, and the access we are given to her inner thought processes, unlike other characters, make us more sympathetic towards her and make her actions seem more reasonable.  Nonetheless, I found myself with more sympathy and respect for Kosi, Obinze’s wife and mother of his child.  She barely makes an appearance in the book but, like Obinze’s friends, is prepared to look past his infidelity if he continues to keep the family together.  This idea appears to be given short shrift by both Obinze and Ifem and is portrayed as ‘traditional’ in a kind of backward way, which is not at all what they want for their shiny, all important, all encompassing love.  However, I find Kosi’s forbearance of Obinze’s adultery for the sake of her child worthier of respect than Ifem’s duplicitousness.     

If I think about the book as having three broad strands, which is undoubtedly simplistic and misses out a lot of other great aspects of the book but has the advantage of clarity, I would identify race, middle class expatriate Nigerian life and Ifem’s love life as the three main themes.  In the main, the first two are very successful but the love story seems all a bit out of kilter to me.  Ifem seems to make odd, maybe I mean slightly unbelievable, romantic decisions like cutting off all contact with the love of her life when she moves to America ostensibly because she got paid $100 to give a man a handjob and let him finger her? Of course, depression and self-loathing are powerful things and can more than adequately account for her erratic behaviour.  I still couldn’t quite shake the feeling that Ifem had severed contact rather brutally with Obinze bearing in mind the feelings she had for him.  He dotes on her during difficult move to America, providing emotional support, sending money and telling her that he loves her.  She seems to reciprocate and so I thought she would at least make up an excuse to console him in some way or spare his feelings.  Perhaps it is simply too hard for her and this is completely understandable.  However, given the magnitude of the decision it isn’t analysed or explained in any great detail.  The same can be said for the ends of all her relationships. Ifem’s break up with Curt is unusual too as she doesn’t even seem that into the guy she cheats with but justifies it by saying deep down she did it because she really wanted to be out of the relationship.  However, then there are weeks and weeks of tears and banging on his apartment door, apparently?! These big decisions are confusing but are glossed over so quickly while other sections, about time spent with the boyfriend, interactions regarding race or observations about expatriate life are far more descriptive, detailed and languid in their pace. I felt Ifem’s love life could probably do with some more depth and internal monologue, especially in the case of Curt, as I was a bit lost about the motivations for some of her romantic decisions.  To be sure, matters of the heart are often complex and unclear even for the person experiencing the feelings of love!  So it’s unreasonable to ask for clear explanations for all of Ifem’s actions.  However, I felt like there wasn’t enough as much time spent on these interesting transitions, in and out of love, as they deserved.  This problem was compounded by my dissatisfaction with what I felt was the general message of the love story.

The most unsatisfactory aspect of the book for me was the ending, which sees Obinze declare his love for Ifem and her welcoming him into her flat in a teary eyed scene redolent of Love Actually.  But surely this is a shoddy end for a book that is so acutely socially aware in other places and for a woman like Ifem, proclaiming her progressive views through her blogs?  Both Ifem and Obinze leave Nigeria “mired in dissatisfaction...hungry for choice and certainty”.  Most development experts would tell you this poverty of opportunity comes from corruption, a lack of competition and dearth of strong, independent institutions.   These are at least some of the reasons why they can’t realise their material dreams at home and have to go through the difficult and sometimes traumatic ordeal of emigrating described in the book.  Unless there is a deeper desire to go abroad, motivated by feelings of inferiority, the roots of which cannot be laid so squarely at cronyism’s door.  For me, the book showed the primary motivation as seeking a better life with higher standards of education, more choice of career and better prospects for children with feelings of inferiority to, or fetishisation of, the West a far weaker motivation.  At least in the cases of Ifem and Obinze.  So, I wonder why Ifem’s getting together with a married ‘big man’ who derives his wealth from corruption is the cause for such tender treatment and apparent celebration from Adichie.  I also expect better from Ifem, who is portrayed as a moderniser and a force for progress, slipping into exactly the kind of relationship she criticises among her friends.  The book may also be criticising this type of relationship quite harshly via the character of Dike, Ifem’s Aunt’s son from an illegitimate relationship with an army general who attempts suicide, but this criticism isn’t explicit and I may be overstretching.  It seems to me like their love story cements the status quo; corrupt ‘big men’ run Nigeria and women run around to please them in whatever way they can.  This is a truly astonishing message to be found in the work of Adichie and there is, of course, an alternative explanation.  This would seem to me to be love and this would make sense as the book is clearly, in part, a love story.  If this is true, then I am being far too sceptical and reading far too much social commentary into a situation where the author never intended there to be any.  Nonetheless, in my defence, it’s undeniable that the book as a whole contains lots of social commentary. Viewed in this light, the story is very romantic and idealistic with the sheer power of Ifem and Obinze’s love filling in any possible cracks.  For instance, if he loved her so much why didn’t he search for her when he went to America? Or, if he is prepared to cheat on his wife and child now, won’t that mean there’s a risk he’ll do it again?  Or, what does it tell you about a person’s character that he makes huge amounts of money from corruption in a poor country?  It’s all a bit much for me to have such a questionable situation shot with soft focus lenses while the string section plays in the background.  Why draw such attention to social issues like race, identity and immigration and show them in all their ugliness while leaving the equally important issue of corruption and inequality in Nigeria depicted in broadly positive terms as it makes the love story more dreamy and happily-ever-after?  It’s such a glaring oversight to me I can barely believe it didn’t occur to the author.  She even has Obinze criticising the rich people in Nigeria as ‘thieves and beggars’, I mean, come on!  It might be slightly better if he had made his money in something vaguely socially responsible like micro-finance.  However, Adichie goes out of her way to show him as corrupt and for that reason I don’t like the nostalgic treatment of their love story. Is the book’s concluding message really supposed to be, “no matter how much time you spend abroad or how much you try to challenge existing norms and change your aspirations; you will eventually behave in the broadly the same way because you’re Nigerian and Nigeria will stay the same”? It beggars belief in an otherwise highly socially aware novel and really spoilt the book for me.  

Virginia Woolf - Liberty

This book has a strange format, containing excerpts from A Room Of One’s Own (essay, based on lectures at Cambridge, 1929), The Waves (novel, 1931) Street Haunting (essay, 1927) and How Should One Read A Book? (essay, 1925, published in The Common Reader).  I felt like I didn’t really know what I was reading! In the end, I think I have discovered that they are all excerpts from longer essays or novels but this was after quite a lot of googling.  We’re not provided with any further information about any of the texts within the “Vintage Minis” book itself.  A former colleague’s father used to call these examples dislocated from their original contexts, ‘bleeding chunks’ when talking about “The Best of Mozart” type albums.  I think his point is more or less valid.  I wished there were more of the good chunks and was confused and flummoxed by the bad ones.  And what joins these bleeding chunks together?  Well, ‘liberty’ according to the book’s title.  In running order, broadly; liberty to write as a woman; liberty to seduce men (perhaps?); liberty to wander about the street and imagine what the people you pass might be up to and liberty to read how one wants.  Although I suppose one could argue that Woolf is actually impinging on your liberty to read as one wants by writing an essay making recommendations on the same topic!  But after reading a page or two of the document this becomes self-evidently false.  So, after some investigation, this is a collection of excerpts, united by their relevance to the theme of liberty, all written by Virginia Woolf between 1925-1931 when she was in her 40s.  One feature I really didn’t like were the pages dotted through the book like adverts with some supposedly aphoristic comment printed in large font.  I’ll go through the individual chunks in order before making some conclusions.

Section from A Room Of One’s Own

The clarity and readability of the prose was initially refreshing after Nabokov although this impression was diminished a bit by some of the later excerpts.

The idea of women being unable to write well because of being angry and defensive about the criticism they receive from men for doing it seems well argued but, to me, a bit of a stretch when applied to women in general.  Woolf also admits this in her praise for Emily Bronte and Jane Austen but makes it clear that these are exceptions, and exceptional exceptions at that, and not the rule:

Writing about Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre, “the woman who wrote those pages had more genius in her than Jane Austen; but if one reads them over and marks that jerk in them, that indignation, one sees that she will never get her genius expressed whole and entire.  Her books will be deformed and twisted.  She will write in a rage where she should write calmly.  She will write foolishly where she should write wisely.  She will write of herself where she should write of her characters.  She is at war with her lot.  How could she help but die young, cramped and thwarted?”

Throughout, this essay was fluid and felt very well researched and argued, Woolf seems to have effortless control of the material and adroitly guides us through her reasoning.

Section from The Waves

It’s hard to work out what is going on and frustrating to have characters that we know we’ll never get fully acquainted with.  Half of the passage is a girl’s internal monologue while at home in a rural setting having returned home from a school in Switzerland.  The other half seems to be a monologue by Jinny, a schoolmate of the nameless narrator, delivered to her friend and is a story about her going to a glamorous ball, feeling desirable and meeting men.  Of all the chunks, this one struck me as bleeding most profusely!  I felt reading it was a bit like trying to listen to someone speak underwater.  Some of the impressions are wonderfully vivid but it was disjointed and badly chosen.

Section from Street Haunting and Other Essays is more comprehensible than the passage from The Waves but still moves about at a dizzying pace and was all a bit much for me presented in its dislocated context.

How Should One Read a Book?

This was blissfully enjoyable for an avid reader with many familiar opinions and true observations from Woolf’s own, clearly extensive and perceptive, reading.  There were many passages that made me stop to nod in assent or to smile at how astutely she had captured the myriad facets, and pleasures, of reading.  For example, the sanctity of the library and the properties of equality and liberty it can encapsulate:

“To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries.  Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions - there we have none”

More pleasing even still for someone given to writing about what they read and attempting to record, locate and describe more precisely what, and how, the books make them feel were the passages on this illusive preoccupation:

“It would be foolish, then, to pretend that the second part of reading, to judge, to compare, is as simple as the first - to open the mind wide to the fast flocking of innumerable impressions.  To continue reading without the book before you, to hold one shadow-shape against another, to have read widely enough and with enough understanding to make such comparisons alive and illuminating - that is difficult; it is still more difficult to press further and say, ‘Not only is the book of this sort, but it is of this value; here it fails; here it succeeds; this is the bad; that is good’.  To carry out this part of a reader’s duty needs such imagination, insight, and learning that it is hard to conceive any one mind sufficiently endowed; impossible for the most self-confident to find more than the seeds of such powers in himself.”

“And even if the results are abhorrent and our judgements are wrong, still our taste, the nerve of sensation that sends shocks through us, is our chief illuminant; we learn through feeling; we cannot suppress our own idiosyncrasy without impoverishing it.”

The idea of reading as it’s own reward has always been one incredibly close to my heart and Woolf finishes on this most enthusiastic of notes:

“Yet who reads to bring about an end, however, desirable?  Are there not some pursuits that we practise because they are good in themselves, and some pleasures that are final?  And is not this among them?  I have sometimes dreamt, at least, that when the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards - their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble - the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when He sees us coming with our books under our arms, ‘Look, these need no reward.  We have nothing to give them here.  They have loved reading.’”

I couldn’t help but wonder after reading it whether Woolf is hinting here that reading is really her God; leaving her with no need of an elevated, paternal figure.  Obviously the risk here is that I get lost in amongst the warm pleasure of shared passion for a subject and overlook any and every shortcoming because of this so perhaps my opinions on this chunk should be seasoned with a pinch of salt!

In conclusion, on the basis of these limited and assorted passages, I found Woolf’s style to be very dense and teeming with ideas.  This can lead to it feeling a bit frenzied and leave some of the ideas feeling a bit half formed.  

The chunks cut from The Waves & Street Haunting seemed to work less well for me than A Room of One’s Own and How Should One Read A Book?.  Impressions pile up very quickly in Woolf’s prose and she switches between scenes very rapidly and fluidly in both the section from The Waves and the section from Street Haunting.  In some ways it seems like a definite topic such as, ‘women in literature’ or, ‘how to read book’ is necessary to retain some focus! Her prose is so rich with ideas sometimes they can feel a bit half formed or out of focus.  For example, she declares,  “Indeed, since freedom and fullness of expression are of the essence in art, such a lack of tradition, such a scarcity and inadequacy of tools, must have told enormously upon the writing of women.” in A Room Of One’s Own.  However, 3 pages later, which must constitute all of 200 words in such a small volume, when pontificating on women’s writing in general she says, “She may be beginning to use writing as an art, not as a method of self-expression.”  To the lay person this sounds like a direct and fairly glaring contradiction!  If the essence of art is self-expression, how can someone simultaneously be using writing as art but not as self-expression?  A rupture like this gives me pause for thought. Is the author really thinking about each individual firework in this pyrotechnic extravaganza of ideas?  Or is she just piling them up, one upon another, focussing on the density and number of explosions, with little thought for the coherence of the whole?  Even if this is the case, it seems like her writing would still contain a huge amount of fascinating ideas.  However, some sections do have a clunky and haphazard feel.

The overall feeling I was left with was, ‘I want to read some of these books!’ Probably in the order of A Room of One’s Own, How Should One Read A Book?, Street Haunting and then The Waves.  I didn’t really like it as a format and think it ruins some sections but it is hard to deny that it does provide an introduction to her work.  It’s ultimately ill conceived and I think my time would have been better spent just reading Virginia Woolf in the format and context in which it was originally published!

Vladimir Nabokov - Pnin

As per usual with Nabokov, the reader has barely any idea who the narrator is for the entirety of the book.  The question of whether this is a poignant comment on narration, testimony and credulity or if it is a rather repetitive stylistic device is still not totally resolved in my mind!  In this case, the gentleman is a fellow Russian academic, Vladimir Vladimirovich or V.V., also seemingly a specialist in Russian literature, with whom Pnin absolutely refuses to work.  This is in part why he subsequently loses his job at Waindell College where he is teaching.  The narrator traces the personal history of the pair back to time spent together in Paris and recalls telling Pnin about how he met him as a child while visiting his father’s eye clinic in Russia.  Pnin denies this in Paris and the two never meet in America.  As such, we never really discover the truth of their relationship or the reason for Pnin’s extreme dislike of the narrator.  It is hinted that the narrator had an affair with Pnin’s wife before their marriage but this hardly seems a full explanation.  For his part, the narrator seems to like Pnin so we are left with the usual half-revelations and slightly discordant accounts that are the norm for narration in a Nabokov novel!

The book’s tone and feeling are polyvalent.  In one sense it is jocular and clearly written to amuse.  Pnin is a figure of fun amongst other professors and students, teaching his dull Russian literature course in peculiar English, fumbling his way through American life and misunderstanding the conventions and protocols of a foreign culture.  His misfortunes giving lectures, trying to find his friend’s house or trying to withdraw a book he has already borrowed from the library are comic.  The prose can also be distinctly waggish, mocking the insular and ossified university life Nabokov must have know well.  For example, when describing the head of French at Waindell:

“Two interesting characteristics distinguished Leonard Blorenge, Chairman of French Literature and Language; he disliked Literature and he had no French. This did not prevent him from travelling tremendous distances to attend Modern Language conventions, at which he would flaunt his ineptitude as if it were some majestic whim, and parry with great thrusts of healthy lodge humour any attempt to inveigle him into the subtleties of the parley-voo.” P156

However, the book also had a distinctly melancholy feel.  Pnin seems a proud, studious and serious man with refined manners and sensibilities.  Yet we encounter him somewhat adrift in a culture that he doesn’t understand, which laughs and mocks his misunderstanding; albeit not in an especially malicious way.  He’s nostalgic for the Russia he grew up in but now can never return to.  There seems to be a sadness to his solitary life, accommodated in rented spare rooms that can never quite fulfil his modest desires.  When he eventually finds a house he likes and plans to buy it; he gets fired from his job making it impossible.  Certainly, his love life has a sorrowful feel to it.  Pnin’s ex wife seems to use him to get to America and then leaves him for a psychotherapist, a profession Pnin despises.  As such, he is estranged from his son, who is raised in the sort of Freudian environment he detests.  His ex wife visits him but only to extract money from him but Pnin pays, seemingly because he still loves her.  His solitary work in the library could also be read in gloomy light although it sounds rather blissful to me!  

As with The Real Life Of Sebastian Knight, there are some tantalising biographical comparisons to be made.  Nabokov himself taught literature at several American universities (Cornell, Wellesley, Colgate).  He also hated psychotherapy, especially Freudianism.  However, it’s hard to imagine the urbane, anglicised Nabokov in the role of Pnin.  It’s more likely he may be the eponymous narrator.  However, as with The Real Life Of Sebastian Knight, I suspect that this approach is ultimately an investigative deadend.  

The treatment of Pnin’s foreignness and his lurching interactions with American culture are painted in vivid and evocative colours.  Foreignness and its effects on the character’s English are usually an area of particular virtuosity and hilarity for Nabokov and Pnin is an excellent example of this:

“So I take the opportunity to extend a cordial invitation to you to visit me this evening. Half past eight, post meridiem. A little house-heating soirée, nothing more. Bring also your spouse – or perhaps you are a Bachelor of Hearts?’ (Oh, punster Pnin!)” p169

However, in the aftermath of this party, conceived so mirthfully, we find Pnin sacked and his modest dream of owning a house destroyed.  Suddenly, it seems wrong and sad that such a cultivated figure, who takes such meticulous care of his guests and bends to prepare “a bubble bath in the sink for the crockery, glass, and silverware” with such tender and methodical care, in spite of the bad news he has just received, should be subjected to such abuses.  To be sure, Pnin is depicted as awkward teacher and a lazy faculty member so probably deserves to be sacked.  However, Nabokov also portrays him, by turns, as dignified and distinguished; for example in the preparation for his son’s visit or the management of his house warming I have already mentioned.  While he way not be the most dynamic or capable of men, it is in his stoic endurance of the vicissitudes of his life that I found a melancholy respect for this lonely man, transplanted from his native culture long after he has lost the tools to adapt himself to it.

In amongst the uncertain narration and the ambiguous tone, which seems to flit between benevolent ribbing and deferential sympathy for Pnin’s forbearance, the reader can still find the usual literary gemstones that Nabokov is so famous for.  This description of Pnin being examined by a doctor with a stethoscope was particularly pleasing to me:

Like the flat sole of some monopode, the ear ambulated all over Timofey’s back and chest, gluing itself to this or that patch of skin and stomping on to the next. P20

Like a dress studded with dazzling jewels, there are spectacular parts of this novel.  However, I’m not entirely convinced by the cut or shape of the dress nor I am sure that I like the material to which the eye catching jewels are affixed!  In terms of the certainty a reader can have about the narrative and the book’s characters, this is one of the most straightforward Nabokov novels I have read.  Even so, the effect of the whole is still somewhat haphazard.  Almost as if different, separately manufactured pieces have been sewn together rather thoughtlessly to create a satisfactory, rather than breathtaking, whole.  I enjoyed the book but did not finish it with the rapt sense of intoxication I feel when a book really astonishes you with its integrity and entirety.  What Virginia Woolf describes as, “shutting the book even with a kind of reverence as it if it were something very precious, a stand-by to return to as long as one lives” in A Room of One’s Own.  For a reason I struggle to locate precisely, most of Nabokov’s novels I’ve read, including this one, seem to feel multifarious and incomplete in the end.  

Vladimir Nabokov - The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

As with other Nabokov books I have read, the narration has a complicated, almost disingenuous, feel.  Is the half brother of Sebastian Knight, who purports to be writing this biography, really who he claims to be?  It seems the structure and recitation can never quite be taken at face value and I can't decide if this feature is pleasing or actually a bit convoluted!  Nabokov alludes to it through the character of the narrator himself having him say, “remember that what you are told is really threefold: shaped by the teller, reshaped by the listener, concealed from both by the dead man of the tale.  Who is speaking of Sebastian Knight? Repeats that voice in my conscience.  Who indeed? His best friend and his half-brother.”  However, as the book continues we find scant evidence for his claims, especially that of being his best friend although it remains a possibility given Sebastian's apparent reclusiveness.  Whatever the case, I felt split between regarding this device of dubious narration as an astute comment on the nature of testimony and credulity and feeling it was a slightly precious and repetitive trope.  On balance, in this book, I found it an enjoyable and pleasing addition to the murky atmosphere of confusion and uncertainty.  Nabokov appears to address precisely this aspect of his writing too when the narrator asks an unnamed, but well read, English business associate about his brother’s books:

“I asked him whether he had liked them. He said he had in a way, but the author seemed to him a terrible snob, intellectually, at least. Asked to explain, he added that Knight seemed to him to be constantly playing some game of his own invention, without telling his partners its rules. He said he preferred books that made one think, and Knight’s books didn’t – they left you puzzled and cross.” p209

It perfectly represents my own feelings about Nabokov’s writing when I am at my most exasperated with it.  With the exception of the claim that he doesn’t make you think, which I find false.  I’m assuming that this passage must refer to Nabokov’s own writing and criticism of it; such similarity could not be coincidence.  I also feel like Nabokov enjoys the unexpected irreverence of his joke here. I certainly found it amusing to read.

Knight and his half brother don't seem to have a fantastically close relationship so one wonders about the unnamed brother's motivation for writing the biography.  This issue is addressed, to some extent, by the existence of Knight's venal former agent; who has written an inaccurate, competing account of his life.  However, once again, what reason do we have for believing one in preference to the other?  Probably only the fact that one is presented by the main protagonist!  Interestingly, this does seem to have quite a strong effect and probably shows some form of psychological hard-wiring toward credulity amongst people we "know" better.

The incident where the brother goes looking for the lover who caused his half brother to descend into depression is another case in point.  She tricks him into thinking that her friend is the woman he seeks when in fact it is her.  It seems that nothing is quite as it seems in this book, as in Pale Fire, and as a reader this is both disconcerting and intriguing.  The narrators are always somewhat implacable and appear polyvalent but reveal only one or two of these layers, if that.  I feel like saying this book was clearer than "Pale Fire" but then catch myself thinking that this may only be a superficial impression.  What fecund acreage Nabokov must provide for the literary critics!  However, as a reader, it is hard to shake the impression you’re missing out on a lot, allusions, references, intimations, and I don’t think this is a positive aspect of his writing.  Perhaps it’s too obfuscatory and slightly elitist or perhaps I just feel inadequate because I can’t feel like I’ve fully comprehended it.

The accounts of Sebastian Knight's books given by his brother are another strange feature.  Are these discarded ideas from Nabokov's own canon of novels? None of them were particularly memorable and, again, I was reminded of the poem in Pale Fire.  What’s the status of these imagined artistic works?  In one sense, I want to take them at face value as their authors are described as successful and critically acclaimed in both cases.  However, we quickly return to the ever present problem of the reliability of the narrator and it is this unnerving confusion that makes it difficult to imagine they aren’t jokes, barbs or allusions.  In one way, this open-endedness is refreshingly non-prescriptive but in another it seems a little indefinite, contrived or even pretentious.  Whatever the case, I always find myself asking who the narrator is and whether or not we can trust his testimony.  Besides the summaries of his novels offered by Knight’s half brother there may be some other autobiographical features in the novel. Nabokov shares some details with Sebastian Knight; an anglicised Russian who went to Cambridge, studied literature and writes in English rather than his mother tongue.  Nabokov also had a younger brother, Sergei, only one year his junior, who is said to have had quite a similar personality.  Indeed, tantalisingly, Sergei also studied literature at Cambridge, which immediately proposes parallels with the two literary brothers in this story.  Certainly, the passages about the narrator’s visit to what he believes is his brother’s death bed have a heartfelt and fraternal quality.  I’m certain some of this book was informed by Nabokov’s relationship with his brother and his experience of their identities; but I feel it’s too simplistic and speculative to read it as straightforward autobiography.  There’s almost always an urge to draw links between an author’s life and his work and, to some extent, this is justified and useful.  However, attempting to find direct counterpoints for all aspects of a novel in an author’s life seems a misplaced endeavour.  I don’t think it’s a book about Sergei writing a biography of Vladimir after his death or anything like that.  In fact, the narrator is referred to as “V” so it’s more natural to cast the author in the role of narrator.  As Nabokov shows at the end of the book, he seems to prefer less facile interpretations!

As always, there is sparkling prose to enjoy regardless of what you make of the narrative structure and some of the scenes and dialogue are excellent.  For example, the brother's interaction with the hotelier at the beginning of his search (Chapter 13).  Or the chance meeting with the private detective on the train and his subsequent, extraordinary billing arrangements:

“‘Oh, wait a bit, Mr Silbermann, we’ve got to settle something. What do I owe you?’ ‘Yes, dat is correct,’ he said seating himself again. ‘Moment.’ He unscrewed his fountain-pen, jotted down a few figures, looked at them tapping his teeth with the holder: ‘Yes, sixty-eight francs.’ ‘Well, that’s not much,’ I said, ‘won’t you perhaps …’ ‘Wait,’ he cried, ‘dat is false. I have forgotten … do you guard dat notice-book dat I give, gave you?’ ‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘in fact, I’ve begun using it. You see … I thought …’ ‘Den it is not sixty-eight,’ he said, rapidly revising his addition. ‘It is … It is only eighteen, because de book costs fifty. Eighteen francs in all. Travelling depenses …’ ‘But,’ I said, rather flabbergasted at his arithmetic … ‘No, dat’s now right,’ said Mr Silbermann. I found a twenty franc coin though I would have gladly given him a hundred times as much, if he had only let me. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I owe you now … Yes, dat’s right. Eighteen and two make twenty.’ He knitted his brows. ‘Yes, twenty. Dat’s yours.’ He put my coin on the table and was gone.” Chapter 14, p152.

Foreigners, their accents and the foibles of crosslinguistic interaction are nearly always  described in excellent detail, undoubtedly informed by Nabokov’s multicultural life.  The journey around Paris to search for the woman is very well described with lots of rich, amusing characters and dialogue (Chapters 15 & 16).  The tone is redolent of a detective novel as the narrator visits the various ‘suspects’, assessing their plausibility as Sebastian’s lover and asking elliptical questions in an attempt to draw out further clues.

Above all, the hurried journey to see his brother and the incident where he sits in what he believes to be his half brothers room in hospital when he arrives are incredibly well written and evocative for me and, alone, could probably justify reading this book (Chapter 20).  For some reason, this passage had a much more authentic and straightforward quality for me.  I didn’t doubt the narrator’s testimony anywhere near as much as I did in rest of the book and I’m not quite sure why.  This is certainly not to say I didn't enjoy the preceding chapters and, on the whole, this was an enjoyable read.  The book ends philosophically and somewhat obscurely with a hint towards some key to understanding the meaning or purpose of life.  The book ends with this intriguing passages on his relationship with his brother and their identities:

“Sebastian’s mask clings to my face, the likeness will not be washed off.  I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we both are someone neither of us knows”.  

The whole conclusion in the hospital finds the narrator gaining deeper understanding of, and reconciling, his love for his brother and the way their identities are intertwined.  It would be easy to read this autobiographically if Nabokov’s brother was dead when he wrote this but the book’s publication precedes his brother’s death by 5 or 6 years.  Nonetheless, the passage remains moving and mysterious.  It feels like a fitting end to the narrator’s impassioned, but at times haphazard, attempt to write about his brother.

Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire

Ordinarily, I think I would have dismissed this book as needlessly complicated and overly confusing.  The poem doesn't seem to have any particular merit to me, although I am certainly not a poetry expert!  It seemed to have something of Alexander Pope's "Rape of the Lock" about it insofar as it is presented in epic style with considerable gravitas but its subject matter is decidedly domestic.  It deals mainly with John Shade's life, his marriage and his daughter's suicide, which aren't terribly amusing topics.  However, I definitely got the impression that the 999 lines are mainly mocking in their intention with feted poets their intended target.  Whatever the case, I didn't derive much pleasure from the poem.

The absolutely insane commentary is considerably better and contains lots of amusing prose.  Charles Kinbote, the commentator, provides such a dazzling array of delusion it's quite hard to work out what exactly is going on during the book!  Is Kinbote an exiled king, as he not very subtly alludes to and then states outright?  Is there such a person as Gradus, who seems a fantasy character?  Does Kinbote, in fact, kill Shade in order to obtain the poem and provide his lunatic eisigesis? Given that all we have are the poem and Kinbote's mad glosses; I think it is pretty much impossible to work out what's going on!  Who can we believe and what is as it seems?  The whole work struck me as an elaborate and slightly niche joke!

A passage from The Real Life of Sebastian Knight expresses some of my more weary and impatient sentiments about Nabokov more generally and Pale Fire specifically as the most bewildering example I’ve read:

“I asked him whether he had liked them. He said he had in a way, but the author seemed to him a terrible snob, intellectually, at least. Asked to explain, he added that Knight seemed to him to be constantly playing some game of his own invention, without telling his partners its rules. He said he preferred books that made one think, and Knight’s books didn’t – they left you puzzled and cross.” (p209)

As usual, there appears to be a huge amount of mocking going on; the poem, the poet, the lunatic critic, perhaps all critics in some way with their extensive comparisons of minute discrepancies between notes and fair copy and their elaborate interpolations from scant biographical scraps, often obtained at far remove? Kinbote takes this to a ludicrous, and hilarious, extent; making connections where none can realistically exist.  In any case, I feel divided about it.  Part of me is excited by the irreverence while another part of me is repulsed by the obfuscatory snobbishness and self satisfaction.  Perhaps I’m just annoyed not to feel full “in” on the joke!  I can’t help shake the feeling that some of it is needlessly esoteric and willfully obscure; making it feel quite pretentious in places.

The things that save this book from being a totally abstruse bore are the bursts of spectacular prose, the comedy of Kinbote's delusions and the intrigue over their credibility and some of the fantastic scenes of Zembla and its exiled King's escape from there (p105 onwards).

The best bits of Nabokov's writing really can't be praised highly enough in my opinion. I occasionally found myself smiling or sighing, luxuriating in sheer pleasure of his masterfully mellifluous combinations. Against this, I would also say there's a fair amount of floral, finickity, forced prose too, which can be almost torturous to read. At these points I marvel at the fact that I used to claim Nabokov as my favourite author for a few years after reading Lolita as a 17 year old! In my defence, some of the prose is enchanting but, less happily, it also points to some quite profound pretentiousness! If only I had written about what I liked when I was 17.

I list a few examples of my favourite passages:

“teeming with devastating erasures and cataclysmic insertions” (foreword)

“relations are at first touchingly carefree and chummy, with expansive banterings and all sorts of amiable tokens” (foreword)

“Having replaced everything in a neat pile, he sank back in his chair closing and opening his gabled hands in various constructions of tedium – when a man who had occupied a seat next to him got up and walked into the outer glare leaving his paper behind” (p258)

Of Gradus, “He had never visited New York before; but as many near-cretins, he was above novelty. On the previous night he had counted the mounting rows of lighted windows in several skyscrapers, and now, after checking the height of a few more buildings, he felt that he knew all there was to know.” (p280)

Kingsley Amis - Lucky Jim

The main problem with this book is that I didn’t find it funny and, with a few exceptions, it was a boring and verbose procession of weak, unlikeable characters and narrative developments that somehow manage to be simultaneously implausible and predictable.

The main protagonist, Jim Dixon, an alcoholic junior academic in the history department of an unspecified provincial university, is depicted as intelligent and capable of making quick decisions on the hoof but also of being profoundly half-witted.  We read that he is trying to save his career, after getting off to a bad start, by oiling up to his boss Professor Welch.  To this end he attends said boss’s house for a weekend of cultural activities but halfway through seems to decide that he can’t be bothered and goes to the pub to get drunk.  Why Jim would choose to attend the event, an active attempt at saving his career, but then sabotage his own aims so violently seems totally inexplicable to me.  Equally, while at the party he gets one of his fellow lodgers to call up and pretend his parents have come to see him to get him out of some of the proceedings.  Again, this is a far too facile and risky a strategy for anyone to really consider in his position.  Wouldn’t his boss want to see his parents?  Wouldn’t they be able to check his story with his fellow lodgers?  For a man shown to have sharp wits in his exchanges with Professor’s son Bertrand this kind of idiocy isn’t at all of a piece.  I was left feeling annoyed at what I thought was sloppy character construction, which probably would have been OK if the results had produced side splitting laughter but the ‘comedic’ incidents that ensue are more likely to induce the reader to roll their eyes.

This incident is not isolated.  Jim is also involved in a predictable love quandary whereby he is sort-of-involved-but-not-really-involved with Margaret, a colleague who has recently been dumped and attempted suicide, who he doesn’t really like.  This seems inexplicable, given that he is unfazed by making other socially unpopular decisions like fighting all the time with his boss’s son, and he doesn’t even find her attractive.  He also adopts a schizophrenic approach to his interactions with Margaret; sometimes behaving in a caring and considerate way and other times totally disregarding her feelings.  Perhaps his alcohol consumption is supposed to explain this away but I couldn’t shake the feeling that his character is inconsistently conceived.

The other participant in Jim’s love predicament is his boss’s son’s more attractive girlfriend, Christine.  While attempting to woo Christine, he asks her to take a taxi home with him from a College ball all the characters are attending.  Her boyfriend, Bertrand, the son of Prof Welch, is ignoring her so Jim orders a taxi, makes the proposal to Christine and waits outside expectantly.  Then, just as his taxi is about to arrive, he makes the decision to steal the Professor of Music’s taxi instead for no good reason except to allow the author to drone on for a few more pages about the problems this causes him.  The whole incident was totally without merit as there was no reason for him to do it, no explanation offered as to why he did it and nothing funny arises as a result of him having done it.  Finally, he manages to snog her at the end of the taxi journey but then breaks off relations with her for no discernible reason except to enable a predictable reconciliation at the end of the book.  This incident only serves to reinforce the impression that the narrative, like the some of the characters, has been thrown together at random.

Other aspects of the book that grated included the sneering, snobbish tone adopted by the author when talking about the College, the somewhat floral and pretentious language employed when more simple constructions would serve just as well and the misogyny that sometimes seems to be yet another unattractive facet of Jim’s character and other times seems to be coming directly from the author.  Perhaps the latter two can be attributed to the book’s date of publication (1954).  Amis also seems in thrall to describing Jim’s various facial expressions in what, one assumes, are supposed to be amusing and evocative terms.  However, most of them don’t really provide a very vivid picture and only really evoke feelings of confusion initially, which quickly turn into boredom as he repeats the trick several times during the course of the novel.  The first example is this, “He’d draw his lower lip under his top teeth and by degrees retract his chin as far as possible, all this while dilating his eyes and nostrils” and they don’t get any better despite the numerous repetitions.

The better parts of the book involve Prof. Welch and his son Bertrand who are far more consistently odious and idiotic than the deranged depiction of Jim.  The Prof’s absent minded self-obsession and his son’s garrulous pretension are far more coherent than the haphazard pick and mix of personalities we find in Jim.  Indeed, Jim’s bad tempered interactions with Bertrand are one of the book’s highlights.  However, it’s the contrast of Jim’s witty, decisive repartee displayed when jousting with Bertrand that jars so badly with his asinine flapping that caused me such distress.  The end of the book identifies Jim as a sort of hero figure, finally getting his rewards after much hardship and tribulation.  The problem with this is that he is not at all likeable during the course of the book and behaves in such an imbecilic manner it’s hard to develop any empathy for him as a character.  The plot ‘twist’ whereby he not only gets Bertrand’s girl but also manages to unwittingly secure the job he is coveting from Christine’s aristocratic uncle is obvious from a distance of about 50 pages. This only added to my feelings of exasperation with the book and my hope that it would end soon, which it mercifully did!  On a more positive note, the storyline about Margaret turning out to be an arch manipulator is much less expected and all the better for it.

I suppose if I was to try and argue against my criticisms of Jim then I’d say he is supposed to be a reflection of what we all are; an inconsistent and irregular mixture of characteristics by turns behaving well and terribly.  However, unlike the heterogenous but believable characters that often make great writing so rich and enjoyable in this case it seems like Amis has tried to think of some ‘funny’ situations and then crowbar the protagonist into them using brute force.  The overall effect was highly unsatisfactory and there wasn’t enough amusing material to counteract this impression.