Leo Tolstoy - A Confession

This confession is deeply personal and immediately made me want to know more about Tolstoy’s biography.  Some information is provided but given that the whole book is scarcely 100 pages it’s not rich in detail.  The pages are dense with intense ideas and reflections on how Tolstoy’s answers to questions concerning the meaning of his life evolved over time.  I empathize with much of what he writes but, in certain places, felt I couldn’t gain the same perspective or felt like Tolstoy goes much further than I would be happy to.  Like the novels I have read, there are some very moving passages and hugely perceptive sections on the internal, emotional life we all lead and hide to a greater or lesser extent.

I’ll start with what biographical information there is.  Tolstoy was born in 1828 and wrote this book aged 51 in 1879.  He lived a privileged childhood and  graduated to a career in the army, which he pursued until 26 (c. 1854) where he lived a dissolute and rapacious life.  He writes passionately about how the educated, privileged section of society professes to adhere to spiritual and religious codes but really, “our genuine, sincere concern was over how to gain as much money and fame as possible” (p10).  This seems to ring entirely true to me today with many rich people, myself included, publicly declaring themselves to be appalled at the inequality that exists in society while privately amassing as much money, status and security as possible.  Tolstoy also writes about the perverse effects this social milieux had on his approach to life, “every time I tried to display  my innermost desires - a wish to be morally good - I met with contempt and scorn, and as soon as I gave in to the base desires I was praised and encouraged.  Ambition, lust for power, self-interest, lechery, pride, anger, revenge, were all respected qualities.  As I yielded to these passions I became like my elders and felt that they were pleased with me” (p6).  Eventually, disgusted with the lifestyle and what he sees as the religious duplicity of his class, Tolstoy rejects traditional Russian Orthodoxy and enthusiastically adopts a form of rationalism or empiricism.  He writes eloquently of this era of his life, “these people became repugnant to me, and I became repugnant to myself, and realized that the religion was a fraud...Now when I think about this period and about my state of mind and that of those around me (and incidentally there are thousands of them nowadays), I feel sad, terrible, ridiculous; it arouses in me precisely the same feelings as one might experience in a madhouse” (p9).

He started to write as his new career and went to Europe to learn more and try to make up for his feeling that he was trying to teach something he didn’t know himself.  He returns after six years (c.1860/1?) and started to involve himself in the education of peasant in schools following the liberation of the serfs in Russia in 1861.  He worked like this, managing the schools and publishing a journal, until he became exhausted and left to the steppes of Bashkir to ‘live a primitive life’.  He marries on his return (1862) and enters a period of his life focussed on his family and attempting to provide for them in the best possible way for 15 years (perhaps until c.1877?).  During this period he considered the writer's task unimportant and pursued writing only as a means of attaining material goals for his family.  He says he didn’t concern himself with questions about the meaning of his life and life in general.  He lived this life until ‘five years ago’ (c. 1874?) when he started to experience moments of ‘bewilderment’ when his thoughts would leave the material plans he had for himself and his family and ask him, “But why?”, “to what end?” and “for what purpose?  I empathised a lot with the feelings of emptiness and futility that arise from the conflict of living a finite life in an infinite universe.  Tolstoy writes, “what is the meaning of my life? It has none.  Or: what will come of my life? Nothing.  Or: why does everything there is exist, and why do I exist?  Because it does.” (p35).  He can’t shake his existential malaise and comes to see life as evil,  “‘Life is that which it should not be: evil.  The transition into nothingness is the only thing sacred in life,’ says Schopenhauer.  ‘Everything in the world, both folly and wisdom, richness and poverty, happiness and grief, all is vanity and emptiness.  A man dies and nothing remains.  This is absurd,’ says Solomon.” (p42-3).

He goes on to describe a process of searching human knowledge for answers to these questions that have caused him to see life as an evil.  He categorises human knowledge into two branches, the empirical and the speculative.  He finds fault with pure empiricism and doubts its ability to provide any meaningful answers to his questions:

“But the only answer this branch of knowledge provided to my question concerning the meaning of life was this: you are that which you call your life; you are a temporary, incidental accumulation of particles.  The mutual interaction and alteration of these particles produces in you something you refer to as your life.  This accumulation can only survive for a limited length of time; when the interaction of these particles ceases, that which you call your life will cease, bringing an end to all your questions.  You are a randomly united lump of something.  This lump decomposes and the fermentation is called your life.  The lump will disintegrate and the fermentation will end, together with all your questions.  This is the answer given by the exact side of knowledge, and if it adheres strictly to its principles, it cannot answer otherwise” P35

He’s also dissatisfied with explanations invoking  progress or evolution, writing:

““It became apparent to me that to say that in the infinity of time and space everything is developing, becoming more perfect, complex and differentiated, is really to say nothing at all.  They are all words without a meaning, for in the infinite there is no simple or complex, no before or after, and no better or worse” P28

Nor can he find any comfort in explanations from the speculative realm:

“[to] the other side of knowledge, the speculative realm...the universe is something infinite and incomprehensible.  Man’s life is an inscrutable part of this inscrutable whole...The mistake is identical:  development and perfection can have no purpose or direction in infinity, and as far as my question is concerned, no answer” P36

So Tolstoy finds himself lost; having rejected religion and attempted to live a rational life.  Haunted by his irrational fear of death and the meaningless of finite human life.  He includes this quite long, rather mystic allegory about the human condition.  I found it memorable, perhaps because of the exotic details like the steppe, the dragon and the well:

“It is only possible to go on living while you are intoxicated with life; once the sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere trick, and a stupid trick!  That is exactly what it is:  there is nothing either witty or amusing, it is only cruel and stupid.  There is an Eastern fable about a traveller who is take unawares on the steppes by a ferocious wild animal.  In order to escape the beast the traveller hides in an empty well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him.  The poor fellow does not dare climb out because he is afraid of being eaten by the rapacious beast, neither does he dare drop to the bottom of the well for fear of being eaten by the dragon.  So he seizes hold of a branch of a bush that is growing in the crevices of the well and clings on to it. His arms grow weak and he knows that he will soon have to resign himself to the death that awaits him on either side.   Yet he still clings on, and while he is holding on to the branch he looks round and sees that two mice, one black and one white, are steadily working their way around the bush he is hanging from, gnawing away at it.   Sooner or later they will eat through it and the branch will snap, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon.   The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish.  But while he is still hanging there he sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the bush, stretches out his tongue and licks them.   In the same way I am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the Dragon of death inevitably awaits me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And I try licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure. The white mouse and the black mouse - day and night - gnawing at the branch from which I am hanging. I can see the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tastes sweet. I can see only one thing; the inescapable dragon and the mice, and I cannot tear my eyes away from them. And this is no fable but the truth, the truth that is irrefutable and intelligible to everyone.” P21

Feeling like he has exhausted human knowledge in his search for answers, Tolstoy begins to look at the other people around him and wonders how they find ways to forget about their predicament in the well or, at least, continue hanging on and sucking the honey.  He identifies four main approaches:

1. “ignorance...the majority of the people of this kind are either women, or very young, or very stupid and have not yet understood the problem of life that presented itself to Schopenhauer, Solomon and Buddha.” P44
2. “Epicureanism…” P45
3. Suicide - “The third method of escape is through strength and energy.  It consists of realizing that life is evil and senseless, and destroying it” P46
4. “The fourth road of escape is that of weakness.  It consists of clinging to a life that is evil and futile, knowing in advance that nothing can come of it” P47

As well as displaying a healthy disrespect for women,  Tolstoy shows a strength of belief in death as preferable to life that I find hard to understand.  He puts himself in the category of the weak but seems to think he would like to be in the suicide category, which I can partially understand if one really can’t deal with life’s seeming meaninglessness.  However, given that life can be enjoyable even if it is ultimately futile (the honey in the allegory), why is it preferable to destroy it?  Because of the certainty that action brings?  It seems to me that there is no possible, certain way of telling if death will be preferable to life so the safe bet would be to go on living.  Of course, I am speaking as someone who has yet to find life’s meaninglessness, which I think I do appreciate, overwhelming.  Perhaps I am too young at the moment.  Or very stupid.  Or a woman.  Tolstoy writes, “for if I know of something better and it is within my reach, then why not yield to it?  I myself belong to this category.” but how can we be sure that what is in reach is better?  More certain and less subject to injustice, perhaps, but how can ‘better’ be judged in such an abject absence of information!?  I suppose my response would be that my life and everything in the world may or may not be meaningless but there is simply no way of knowing and that it’s unnecessary to place so much importance on meaning and significance.  Especially to the extent where you’d rather kill yourself than go on living.  But perhaps I am yet to feel the full force of futility!

Tolstoy finds his answers in faith, which may seem unusual given his earlier rejection of religion.  Again, Tolstoy proceeds with incredible force of belief in his convictions but I lack his convictions.  His mastery of feeling and emotion would seem to dictate that these play a central role in spiritual reflections.  And sometimes there is no denying the feeling of a presence of God, or love, or oneness in the universe.  Equally, there are often opposite feelings of comparable strength.  Tolstoy seems to feel the importance of religious doctrines and institutions in a way I am simply incapable of doing at the moment.  In fact, most of my feelings tend in the other direction as I am naturally wary of authority and instruction.  As with the preference for death over life, perhaps I am still too young or too stupid or have yet to apprehend the problem in its totality.  Tolstoy starts out by realising that, of all the branches of human enquiry, faith alone is really concerned with answering the questions he is asking, which seems to me to be broadly true:

“Faith remained as irrational to me as before, but I could not fail to recognise that it alone provides mankind with the answers to the question of life, and consequently with the possibility of life...Whatever answers faith gives, regardless of which faith, or to whom the answers are given, such answers always give an infinite meaning to the finite existence of man; a meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation or death.” P57

But he moves pretty quickly on to claiming that a far more extensive religious infrastructure is required to sustain life, which I just don’t follow or feel in the same way.  For example:

“The concepts of an infinite God, the sanctity of the soul, the relationship[s between God and the affairs of man, of moral good and evil, are all concepts that have been worked out in history, through the life of a humanity that is hidden to us.  Without the existence of these concepts there would be neither life nor myself, and yet I, rejecting all the efforts of humanity, wanted to do it all over again, alone, in my own way...I began to realise that the most profound wisdom of man is preserved in the answers given by faith, and that I did not have the right to negate them on grounds of reason and, above all, that it is these answers alone that can reply to the question of life” P61

Part of me respects the humility and reverence for history but another part of me revolts at the non-existent justification for this extreme doctrine.  He seems to be saying that if it happened throughout history then it must be right and a necessary precondition for life!  I’m sure humans have executed each other in one way or another for the whole of human history; but it is this very act that disgusts Tolstoy and causes him to write the most moving part of the whole book!  It is true most religions don’t advocate killing but some do in certain circumstances, including Christianity.  It seems inconsistent and ill-reasoned.  In some ways, this is what we should expect and this is what Tolstoy is explicitly telling the reader to expect as he returns to faith after attempting, unsuccessfully, to live by reason alone.  However, I still find too many things I find unsatisfactory are adopted too quickly with too little justification.  Perhaps I am just wanting “to do it all over again, alone, in my own way”!  Tolstoy’s new position can be summarised as, “Where there is life there is faith” (P58).  One of the main things that seems to have lead him in this direction is his interaction with the labouring or peasant classes and his disgust with religion as practiced by his own class.

Tolstoy comes to believe fervently that the life he was leading, and religion as practiced by most other members of his class, were corrupting his mind and his soul:

“I realised that I had been blinded from the truth not so much through my mistaken thoughts as through my life itself, which had been spent in satisfying desire and in exclusive conditions of epicureanism .  I realised that my question as to what my life is, and the answer that it is an evil, was quite correct.  The only mistake was that I had extended an answer that related only to myself to life as a whole.  I had asked myself what my life was and had received the answer that it is an evil and meaningless.  And this was quite true, for my life of indulgent pursuits was meaningless and evil, but that answer applied only to my life and not to human life in general.  I understood a truism that I subsequently found in the gospels: that people often prefer darkness to light because their deeds are evil.  For he who acts maliciously hates light and avoids it so as not to throw light on his deeds.  I understood that in order to understand life it is first of all necessary that life is not evil and meaningless, and then one may use reason in order to elucidate it.  I realised why I had for so long been treading so close to such an obvious truth without seeing it, and that in order to think and speak about human life and not about the lives of a few parasites.  The truth has always been the truth, just as 2 x 2 = 4, but I had not admitted it, because in acknowledging that 2 x 2 = 4 I would have had to admit that I was a bad man.  And it was more important and necessary for me to feel that I was good than to admit that 2 x 2 = 4.  I came to love good people and to loathe myself, and I acknowledged the truth.  And then it all became clear to me” P67

This is a moving passage and I think it contains a good deal of truth about how important our actions and surroundings are in creating reality.  We try to judge ourselves based on what is around us and Tolstoy’s extreme change in mindset when he changes his environs is alluring.  However, there are aspects of it I disagree with.  First is the delineation by class.  I found it too dogmatic and also hard to understand.  I can accept that the majority of the rich are in some way evil because they are so greedy and fearful.  But can the majority of peasants be thought to be so wonderful?  This kind of Slavophilic deification of the peasantry is similar to Dostoevsky and a doesn’t really appeal to me.  I have found humanity to be more homogenous with all manner of person found in all manner of classes. Another problem I have with it is seeming rejection of work in the educated classes.  There are plenty of educated people in society doing good, worthwhile, meaningful jobs and Tolstoy seems to discount this just because it isn’t agricultural labour.  It’s all a bit Chinese Cultural Revolution for my tastes!  What about doctors, academic, social workers and administrators?  Characters like Levain, Prince Nikolai and Tolstoy's own life spring to mind too.  Why should a labourer be placed above them?  Should anyone be placed above each other in a truly Christian assessment of humanity?  As usual, these sort of religious assertions tend to produce more questions than they answer.  Here is Tolstoy on the blessedness of hard labour:

“In contrast to what I saw happening in my own circle , where the whole of life is spent in idleness, amusement and dissatisfaction with life, I saw that these people who laboured hard throughout their entire lives were less dissatisfied with life than the rich. In contrast to the people of our class who resist and curse the privations and sufferings of their lot, these people accept sickness and grief without question or protest, and with a calm and firm conviction that this is how it must be, that it cannot be otherwise and that it is all for the good” P65

There is doubtless some truth in what he says but it is simply too general and takes too much joy in other, poorer people’s stoicism for my tastes.  I’m sure the blessed poor would rather be rich and evil and not have to suffer like they do and so it feels a bit voyeuristic, and even materially false, to exalt their luck at having a poor life.  Even though it may be entirely true!  Criticisms of the hypocrisy of privileged class ring far truer to me perhaps because it is something I have seen at close quarters.  Perhaps because I feel like the rich have all the resources and should be able to do something better with them.  Although I think it is simply the fact that rich people say they care about other people but act like they don’t which is the gratuitous thing!  Anyway, Tolstoy is excellent on this and wrties scathingly and bitingly about it:

“But believers of our class lived, just as I did, in excess, striving to maintain and increase it and fearing deprivation, suffering and death.  Like myself and all non-believers, they lived only to satisfy their desires and they lived badly just as, if not worse than, non-believers.  

No arguments could convince me of the truth of their faith.  Only actions showing me that they had an understanding of life that did not make them afraid, as I was, of poverty, sickness and death might have convinced me...I realised that the belief these men had was not the faith I was seeking and that their faith is not really faith but only one of the epicurean consolations of life.” P63-4

Tolstoy believes that interaction with the working class and ‘loving good people’ shook him out his malaise and returned him to faith:

“The thing that saved me was that I managed to tear myself away from my exclusive existence and see the true life of the simple working people, and realise that this alone is genuine life” P71

While I am sceptical about the sanctity of agricultural labour and the merits of Russian Orthodox Church, I can definitely recognise the benefits of doing something you have faith in and loving people better than yourself.  So, as with lots of this book, I found myself disagreeing with Tolstoy’s ultimate conclusions while agreeing with lots of the sentiments and ideas he express.  Some of them are very beautifully expressed too!

Tolstoy’s return to organised religion is all a bit much for me to stomach and I know I have written about this already so I won’t go into detail about what is a huge, and hugely complex, topic in its own right.  That’s the nature of this book, it is short and deceptively simple but it drags you into all these infinite questions because of the chosen subject.  Tolstoy is definitely aware of the problems himself and even sketches some of them in the latter pages: “As I turned my attention to all that is done by people who profess Christianity, I was horrified” (P92) and “And assuming that truth lies in union by love, I was struck by the fact that theology was destroying the thing it should be advancing” (P88).  But he goes on to present us with this extraordinary passage that seems to claim it’s explicable and normal for competing religions, which both or all claim to be the true keepers of a faith based on love, to kill each other!!

“Then I understood it all.  While I am seeking faith, the force of life, they are seeking the best way of fulfilling, in the eyes of men, certain human obligations.  And in fulfilling these human affairs they perform them in a human fashion.  However much they might speak about their compassion for their lost brethren, or of their prayers for those who stand before the throne of the Almighty, it has always been necessary to use force in carrying out human duties.  Just as it has always been applied, so it is now, and always will be.  If two religions each consider that they hold the truth and the other a lie, then in order to convert their brother to the truth they will each preach their own doctrines.  And if a false doctrine is taught to the inexperienced sons of the Church which holds no truth, then that Church will have no choice other than to burn the books and banish the person who is leading his sons into temptation.  What can be done with a sectarian who, in the eyes of the Orthodox Church, is ablaze with the fire of false doctrine, and who is misleading the sons of the Church in the most important matter of life, in faith?  What can be done with him other than chop off his head or imprison him?” P91

I can’t say I really understood this or subscribe to what it is saying.  It seems that the answer is broadly, ‘humans always kill each other so why expect anything different in religion?’.  This strikes me as depressing and seems to negate the special status and power that religion is claiming for itself.  As I mentioned earlier, religion and its explanations always seem to lead down a rabbit hole that opens up into an endless warren where more questions are asked than answers given.  Or the answers end up being delivered in a kind of double think, a bit like the passage above, and it is unclear if you’ve learned anything at all!

Tolstoy describes his own experience in terms of a boat trip across a river of almost Biblical proportions!  It is certainly a description of a religious experience of some sort, to me, if only one experienced with hindsight.  As such, I think it explains Tolstoy’s confession well.  It’s not a reasoned account of his return to religion and never could be.  It’s more a story about his mystical journey back to religion:

“Something like this happened to me: without remembering when I had been put into it, I found myself in a boat that had set off from some unknown shore.  The direction to the opposite shore was shown to me, oars were put into my inexperienced hands, and I was left alone.  I rowed as best I could and moved forwards, but the further I rowed towards the centre of the stream, the faster the current became that was carrying me directly away from my object, and I kept meeting more oarsmen like myself, who were being carried away by the current.  There were lone oarsmen who continued to row; there were some who had discarded their oars; there were large rowing boats and enormous ships full of people, some struggling with the current, others abandoning themselves to it.  And as I looked at the flow of those drifting downstream, I found that the more I rowed, the more I forgot the directions that had been given to me.  In the very middle of the current, amid the crowd of boats and ships being pulled downstream, I lost my directions and abandoned my oars.  From all directions people were being carried downstream by sail and oar, shouting for joy and assuring me and themselves that there could be no other direction.  And I believed them and flowed with them.  And I was carried a long way, so far that I could hear the noise of the rapids which were bound to shatter me, and I caught sight of the boats that were already being smashed against them.  Then I came to my senses.  For a long time I could not understand what had happened to me.  I saw nothing ahead of me except the destruction towards which I was rushing, but which I feared, and I could see no salvation anywhere, and I did not know what to do.  But looking behind me I saw countless boats that could not stop but were defiantly pushing against the current, and I remembered the oars and the direction of the shore, and I began to struggle back against the current, towards the shore.

The shore was God, the direction was tradition, and the oars were the freedom given to me to row towards the shore and unite with God.  In this way the force of life rose up within me and I started to live once again” P76-7

As a cynic and general nitpicker, I would be interested to see how fully Tolstoy abandoned the life of privilege and renounced his worldly goods from a biographical perspective.  He certainly talks a good game in this book but perhaps the reality was somewhat different, as it often is when it comes to material comfort!  I suspect that Tolstoy probably did renounce it but I still want to find out!

My favourite part of the book, alongside the indictment of his class and their religious sophistry, was this section:

“Thus, during my stay in Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me the precariousness of my superstition in progress.  When I saw the heads being separated from the bodies and heard them thump, one after the next, into the box I understood, and not just with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence and progress could justify this crime.  I realized that even if every single person since the day of creation had, according to whatever theory, found this necessary I knew that it was unnecessary and wrong, and therefore that judgements on what is good and necessary must not be based on what other people say and do, or on progress, but on the instincts of my own soul.  Another instance in which I felt that the superstition of progress was inadequate in regard to life was the death of my brother.  He was an intelligent, kind-hearted, serious man who became ill when he was young, suffered for over a year and died in torment without having understood why he had lived, and still less why he was dying.  No theories could provide the answers to these questions, either for him or for me, during his slow and torturous death.”  P12-13

It reminded me a lot of my favourite section from Anna Karenina when Levain is discussing the concept of ‘living for God’ with his serf or servant in his trap.  This is where Tolstoy is really excellent.  Describing the visceral, all consuming feelings that give us certainty in life and seem to guide us far more powerfully than reason or thoughts.  Often, they are difficult to interpret and analyse after the event and we are left feeling confused.  In some ways, Tolstoy seems to have felt his way back to religion, and had to do so in order to continue living, and this book is in part an expression of that journey.

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)