![]() ![]() And never forget that in these pages there is a master at work. But on reaching the end, a reader should look more closely at the dodgy passage and note "the flame of his interest": and see its importance, its indication that the judgment of the divine, the wrath of the creator, the possibility of design in the universe cannot be avoided. ![]() Nabokov wrote in his diary that they "oscillate between hopeless adoration and helpless hatred. TRANSPARENT THINGS Nabokov, Vladimir Published by McGraw-Hill(1972) ISBN 10: 0070456992ISBN 13: 9780070456990 NewHardcoverQuantity: 1 Seller: BennettBooksLtd (LOS ANGELES, CA, U.S.A.) Rating Seller Rating: Book Description Condition: New. ![]() It is not surprising that on publication, Transparent Things received Marmite-esque reviews. But then so too is the Nabokov-like central figure of R… A paragraph in which Hugh gazes at photographs of 10-year-old Armande in her bath makes for very uncomfortable reading, and the first time round appears appallingly gratuitous ( Lolita, exploring those themes more head-on, can be excused) – it's the slip of an old paedo, turning the author into a figure of tragicomic lechery. If only – if only? – it weren't for Nabokov's obsession with "nymphets", who play an unnaturally large part in this story. Have patience, because all is part of the tight slipknot of the plot and Nabokov's small sparks of brilliant prose unite to form a complex whole. ![]() Throughout the story, as Hugh goes about his privileged life in the clumsy haze of a "sullen slave", the imp metaphysically breaks the "thin veneer of immediate reality… tension film" of the present to wander through the personal history of a pencil, or examine a former inhabitant of a hotel room (a 19th-century Russian poet), much as a ghost might. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |