The Borgias are one of those popular subjects in historical fiction that, for me, just don’t captivate my imagination. I know. I’m gaping at me in disThe Borgias are one of those popular subjects in historical fiction that, for me, just don’t captivate my imagination. I know. I’m gaping at me in disbelief, too. IT MAKES NO SENSE.
There is so much rich potential in the basic story for unending fascination: the corruption of the Western world’s greatest superpower (the Vatican), plotting and scheming, sumptuous settings, rumors of all kinds of skeevy things like murders and incest and not just regular incest but ornate polygons formed of super-incest. It’s a goldmine. And yet every time I’ve tried to get into a Borgia story, whether a novel or that one TV show, I just get bored and drift away. Even if Jeremy Irons is involved!
So I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I was hooked by The Serpent and the Pearl, sucked straight into the story, and totally unwilling to let it go when it ended. (I immediately bought the next audiobook in the series, The Lion and the Rose, moments after the first one ended.) I was so into this story that I listened to it non-stop while painting fancy accent walls in my new apartment. I had my phone stuffed into my bra, blasting The Serpent and the Pearl in my face while I stood precariously on a chair to reach the very high ceiling with a roller.
Imagine Kate Quinn’s irresistibly lush words emanating from my boobs. (Kate, if you want to use that as a blurb on your next release, please feel free. I know it’s a stirring image.)
So, yes, a book managed to make me interested in the Borgias. Although I must confess it’s not really the Borgias themselves that interest me in Quinn’s series…though they are wonderfully portrayed here, with their legendary skeeviness dialed back (in most cases) and their personalities far more humanized and sympathetic (in most cases) than popular accounts of the famous family would have you believe. No, I found the Borgia characters ambitious and overstuffed on the feast of their own power, but wholly human, not unlikeable, and very easy to swallow.
But it was Giulia and Leonello who really won me over.
Giulia Farnese, the notorious mistress of Pope Alexander VI, would be an easy character to do all wrong. She was beautiful, and it’s so easy for authors to make a young woman’s beauty her most remarkable feature. It’s also rather a cliché to make a woman as stunning as Giulia either vapid or cruel. Quinn’s Giulia is neither. She’s intelligent but subtle, aware of her strengths and her limitations, and clever enough to turn tricky situations to her advantage more often than not. In addition, she is incredibly kind, generous, and loving. All in all, she is a character you can root for and love without any reservations.
Leonello is a little harder to pin down. Smart, resourceful, and ferocious when he needs to be, one is never quite sure whether it’s care for his friends that motivates him, or his desire to come out on top, to be the winner, to solve the mystery. (And there is a mystery.) I suppose it’s impossible to avoid comparing him to Tyrion in A Song of Ice and Fire (Leonello, too, is a dwarf) but although both characters are subtle and brainy and book-lovers, and friends with whores, I never felt like Leonello was in any way a copy of or even an homage to Tyrion. The two characters are dramatically different where it counts, deep in their personalities.
A third narrator also shares the spotlight, Carmelina, Giulia’s cook (view spoiler)[and a run-away nun (hide spoiler)]. While Carmelina’s point of view was never torment to read/listen to, I just didn’t connect with her as strongly as I did with Giulia and Leonello.
Against the overall story of Rodrigo Borgia’s rise to the papal seat and his family’s moments of drama, a more intimate and urgent story propels the book forward at a compelling rate: the mystery of who is murdering young women in Rome. All the murders are the same, with the victims staked down with knives or daggers through their palms, and their throats cut.
By about halfway through the book, both Leonello and the reader have a pretty good idea of whodunit (though…things might not be quite as they seem) but the sense of satisfaction doesn’t come from answering that question. It comes from watching three ultimately powerless figures struggle to bring an untouchable criminal to justice in a world he very nearly controls.
Not only is this plot obviously amazing, and the characters wonderful and fascinating, but Kate Quinn’s prose never drops below the octave of “awesome.” It frequently soars up into a sustained pitch of transcendent beauty. The scenes featuring Carmelina’s aphrodisiac feast were written in achingly gorgeous prose, as were many others. In parts, the book tiptoed near the edge of Hilary Mantel’s territory with regards to the loveliness of the writing.
So, with a tight plot, deep and dimensional characters, and wordplay to die for, The Serpent and the Pearl gets the highest possible rating from me. Bonus: Quinn pulls off that trick I’m always ranting about, first-person narration in historical fiction. It’s so often botched, but here the reader doesn’t miss a speck of emotion or detail, in any of three narrators’ points of view.
And I must say, the narrator who does Leonello’s parts in the audiobook has the sexiest voice. He sounds just like Jeremy Irons! I think I am developing a little crush on Leonello. ...more
Brace yourselves. I am about to commit Egypt Nerd Heresy.
This is the best work of Egyptian historical fiction out there.
Yeah. I said it. The best. IBrace yourselves. I am about to commit Egypt Nerd Heresy.
This is the best work of Egyptian historical fiction out there.
Yeah. I said it. The best. I have found a writer who, in my opinion, outclasses Pauline Gedge in bringing ancient Egypt masterfully, near-flawlessly to life. That's not to say I don't still love Pauline Gedge. Of course I do. It is to say that if you are not currently reading The Maya Papyrus, you are not doing yourself any favors. Welcome the raising of the bar, O Fans of Egyptian Fiction. This is a good thing for all of us.
Coady's astounding epic of a debut novel lacks virtually nothing. Expertly plotted with just the right interweaving of courtly intrigue and high-stakes action scenes, built upon a cast of exceedingly well-drawn characters, and furnished with accessible yet vivid prose and flawless dialogue, Coady has established himself for good and all as the writer to contend with in the ancient-history genre.
True fans of Egyptian history -- particularly of the Amarna period -- will delight in seeing literally every known name in the late-18th roster brought to breathtaking, wholly believable life, with the exception of Mutnodjmet, whom we can plausibly assume enters the scene just after the book ends, and the puzzling exclusion of Ankhesenpaaten-Tasherit, whose absence I could not account for given the seamless way the rest of the Amarnan rogue's gallery were threaded into the tight and compelling plot. Even Ta-Miut gets her moment on the page, and if you know who Ta-Miut is, I guarantee you you'll love this book as much as I did.
It is no spoiler to note that early on in the book the wheels of considerable, generations-spanning intrigue are set into motion by a source so unexpected and yet so entertaining that such actions feel like they might become Egypt-fiction canon: Thuyu. Yes, Thuyu, wife of Yuya, the charioteer. She wields a hefty intelligence and a craving for power that would put Petyr Baelish to shame, and Coady makes her grip over her family -- particularly Aye -- believable enough that her ambition and influence outlive the woman in all too plausible a fashion. As the doomed Eighteenth Dynasty careens toward its inevitable end, Thuyu's descendants behave in increasingly more despicable ways. Just when the reader thinks one or the other will not stoop any lower than the last, the next stoop is made.
The text alternates between a very competently written omniscient third narrator and the first-person account of Maya, here depicted as a son of Aye. Maya is physically bumbling but highly intelligent, earnest, and perhaps the only moral character in the entire book -- certainly one of the only moral males, at least. His goodness is a welcome frequent relief to the increasingly demoralized action of the power-hungry men around him.
But even the men who are difficult to like are beautifully written. Akhenaten earns the reader's deepest sympathy at first, slowly and quietly degenerating into a fiend. Tutankhamun, idealistic and kind-hearted, seems too wonderful to be real, and when the stark realities of life finally pile upon him, his downward spiral is painful to watch. I was terribly moved by both images of Tutankhamun in the toy room, before and after his awful wake-up call.
My one quibble with the book -- still not enough of a quibble to prevent my declaring it the best Egyptian novel extant -- is that the female characters did not feel quite as real as the male characters. Here some greater opportunity may have existed for Coady to flex his writer's muscles, especially in the personages of Nefertiti-as-Smenkhare (spoiler alert!) and in Ankhesenamun as she vied to keep the throne out of her enemy's hands. Thuyu was vivid but not as complex as either Nefertiti or Ankhesenamun, and it would have been impressive to see more of the inner workings and inner strength of either woman, or of both.
But this is a small criticism. On the whole, it is a resounding success of a novel, vivid and compelling, as strong as any in the subgenre of Egyptian fiction -- or as any in the genre of historical fiction.
My one regret upon finishing it is that it will undoubtedly take Coady a very long time to write another. This one was massive, spanning from the end of Thutmose IV's reign to the beginning of Horemheb's -- that's seven Pharaohs, for those of you keeping count. It's long, but difficult to put down, and worth the read. If only Coady could crank out more just like this one at a rapid pace. Fans of Egyptian fiction would never want for entertainment again.
This one gets the highest recommendation from me. If you enjoyed my own Egyptian novels at all, you will go nuts for The Maya Papyrus. Buy it now, in droves, and make Coady the full-time writer we all need him to be, or there may never be another like it....more
Wow, wow, wow. What a tremendous debut novel. This was one of those books that stayed with me whenever I was not reading it, and spookily, continues tWow, wow, wow. What a tremendous debut novel. This was one of those books that stayed with me whenever I was not reading it, and spookily, continues to stay with me after I read the final page. Spooky in a good way -- a way that makes me admire author Laura Rae Amos's craft in a way that is more astounded gobsmackery than mere admiration.
The plot of the novel is as thin and incidental as any literary novel's plot is permitted to be: three people, Jodie, Amelia, and Drew, run into personal conflict when their lives, already deeply entangled due to their shared history, intersect in new and challenging ways. Plot-wise, it's not much. But it doesn't need to be. The great strength of this book -- and it is a very great strength indeed -- is the incredible, subtle, deliberate craft Amos employs in depicting these characters and a cast of supporting characters who feel so real, so human and complete, that I actually found myself thinking about their predicament constantly whenever I had to put this book down. They are so well-crafted that they settled into my brain, occupying the same place my good friends occupy -- the people I have known forever, the people who are always real to me and always in my thoughts, even if I haven't seen them or spoken to them in a long time. You don't read this book; you feel it, and I felt it in a way I haven't felt many books before, with a deep and palpable bond to these people who don't actually exist. To be honest, the experience tripped me out some.
And yet it even feels somewhat wrong to call this book a literary novel, for although it relies entirely on the thoughts and emotions of its characters to carry the reader along, most readers associate "literary" writing with at least some amount of flourish and shazzam. But not once does Amos go over the top in her craft. The writing here is so gentle and assured, so confident, that the only word I can really think of to describe it is classy. It's classy prose, with perfect posture, a firm handshake, and wearing a well-tailored Chanel dress. It needs to prove nothing to you; it knows where it's going, where it's been, and how amazing it looks walking down the street. If Amos is not supremely assured of her own clarity and strength as a writer, she sure as hell knows how to fake it.
As I read the book, I was reminded of two other authors' works. In EWTF's exploration of the baffling complexities of friendship-love and its often hazy intersection with romance-love, it reminded me of several of Maeve Binchy's novels, which I love. In its frank exposure of the inner lives of its cast of characters, showing the reader all of what lurks inside their heads and hearts, it reminded me of Tigers in Red Weather, one of the best books I read in 2012. Yet where Tigers explores the inner lives of people barely clinging to the upper class, EWTF's characters are all middle-class, ordinary, and average. Their struggles, their desires, their sorrows and joys are not one whit less compelling than Liza Klaussman's characters even though they lack the tarnished shine of wealth.
As far as books that explore the strange and tender complexities of every possible variety of love-relationship (romance, family, friend, one-night-stand...you name it), this is the best I've yet read, bar none. And although we are still less than two months into 2013, I have a feeling Exactly Where They'd Fall might turn out to be the most impressive book I read all year.
This is the kind of book -- and the kind of author -- the traditional publishing industry has long since lost sight of. This is the kind of book and the kind of author the traditional publishing industry only wishes it could debut. Fortunately for readers everywhere, authors as skilled and nuanced as Amos have not withered up and died as publishers have turned away from subtler, more artistic works like EWTF in favor of Twilight fanfiction and books by Snooki. They're doing it on their own now, thank all the gods of pixel and pen. I cannot wait for more from Laura Rae Amos. And neither can you; trust me. Based on the strength of her debut novel, she just might be the first indie author to win a major literary award. Get it now while the getting's good, and tell your friends a few years down the line that you read her debut novel before anybody knew who she was, you hipster, you....more
So I am listening to this audiobook (easily one of the best audio productions I've ever heard, by the way, up there with Jeremy Irons reading Lolita!)So I am listening to this audiobook (easily one of the best audio productions I've ever heard, by the way, up there with Jeremy Irons reading Lolita!) and I am only about an hour and a half into the book, and already I can tell this is a five-star book.
OH. MY GOD, YOU GUYS. THE PROSE. It is so expert, so tight, so well crafted! I am freaking out! When I first began to listen, I had that gobsmacked moment that all writers get from time to time when, confronted by the work of a true master artist, they wonder why the hell they're bothering, because they'll never be this good, ever, no matter how earnestly they work at it. And then I felt this fantastic rush of inspiration, to see historical fiction so beautifully, artfully, meticulously written, on so many levels of structure and craft, and I realized the bar had been raised for me, all around, forever and ever, and that while I could never expect to achieve such heights myself, I sure will have a fun career trying for a lifetime to write a historical novel half as awesome as Hilary Mantel's.
And I really hate Tudor stuff, too. So sick of it. That's why I resisted reading Wolf Hall for as long as I did, despite the well-earned accolades it's received. I just couldn't make myself face more Tudor. I don't even mind the Tudorishness in this book. It is such a pleasure to experience Mantel's excellent, mind-bogglingly crafted writing. She could write about anything, and I'd read it.
Fan for life. Haven't even finished the book. ...more
A dark, disturbing, and unforgettably beautiful novel which pays homage to nature and examines man's place in it. There's a good reason why readers keA dark, disturbing, and unforgettably beautiful novel which pays homage to nature and examines man's place in it. There's a good reason why readers keep describing this book as a blend of Cormac McCarthy and Wallace Stegner. It's the most apt description I could come up with, too. Crooked Creek combines the compelling bleakness of McCarthy with Stegner's rapturous imagery of Western nature, and the mixture is surprisingly appealing. I have seldom read a more lovely and unsettling novel. It moves with a quiet power, a subtle terribleness, full of images the reader will not soon forget -- the dead bird in the spider's web opening its black eye, the crate full of apples rotting in the ground.
I am from the general region where this book takes place...more or less. I was moved by how perfectly Werner captured the awful sublimity of Rocky Mountain farming valleys. It made me feel like I was back home again, for better and for worse.
Strongly recommended for fans of McCarthy and Stegner. Just don't expect a happy ending....more
It's been a long time since I've encountered a book that takes such a hold of me that I feel tormented by not reading it. Once my weekend arrived, I rIt's been a long time since I've encountered a book that takes such a hold of me that I feel tormented by not reading it. Once my weekend arrived, I read this book in the bathtub, at the gym on two different pieces of workout equipment (I had to stop for a few minutes while I worked on my arms...have you ever tried to operate a Kindle while lifting weights? Not easy) and while folding laundry. I literally could not stop reading it.
Thank goodness for small presses. Thank goodness for adventuresome souls willing to take a risk on books which are out-there, different, beyond the typical, and worthy of preservation. The Scholar of Moab is not the kind of book that would find its way into a Big Six imprint in this day and age. But that, of course, is not an indicator of quality. As the economy continues to flounder the usual publishers seem to grow more and more conservative in their acquisitions, and while perhaps ten or fifteen years ago a book like this one would have been grabbed immediately by a big publishing house, today there's just no way in hell. Not enough zombies, vampires, or tragic family sagas set on the Asian continent. I am so grateful that Torrey House and other discerning small presses are hunting down and acquiring and offering such under-represented voices and settings in fiction. Few authors are working with the contemporary American West, but Steven L. Peck proves it's a setting full of beauty, character, and mystery.
The Scholar of Moab concerns one Hyrum Thayne, a sincere and curious man who lacks education and worldliness but who manages to impact the lives of several interesting people in his small red-rocks world -- Dora Tanner, a poet who may or may not be unhinged; William and Edward Babcock, a pair of polyglot conjoined twins with a penchant for cowboying; the Babcocks' mysterious sibling Marcel; and the Redactor, the amateur historian who presents their stories in the form of recovered documents, letters, and transcripts of interviews. Bearing up the stories of these unforgettable people is a mystery that keeps the reader hooked until the end: who killed Dora's newborn baby? Or was the baby killed at all?
Interwoven throughout are bits and pieces of Mormon theology and mythology, and the text plays in intriguing, clever ways with the concept of a trinity, a theme that bears out to the poignant final lines of the book.
The writing itself is compelling and confident, and shows a good deal of impressive craft. Even without the Redactor's headings on each document, it's obvious from the distinctive voices which characters are "speaking." Peck is a writer with impressive chops, one to watch and one to follow.
The Scholar of Moab is literary fiction at its finest: evocative, haunting, gorgeous, and more than a little strange. In its weirdness and humanity it reminds me of Geek Love, and fans of that book will certainly love this one. Those who found Geek Love too overwhelming will find The Scholar of Moab to be a softer, more accessible, more lovable version -- but still bizarre and still unforgettable.
This might be the only book about writing anybody needs.
It's not a book that tells you how to write. But I've never found those books to be useful anyThis might be the only book about writing anybody needs.
It's not a book that tells you how to write. But I've never found those books to be useful anyway. This is a book about what it is like to be a writer. Not "be a writer" as in "being able to tell strangers that you're a writer and then enjoying the instinctive looks of awe on their faces," nor "be a writer" as in "manage a career writing books." It is a book about what it's like to obsess over a single sentence for days or weeks, what it's like to feel the frailty of art and the responsibility for creating it, what it's like to know that what you do ultimately matters very little, yet you feel compelled to do it anyway.
It is told, as per Dillard usual, in a series of stunningly, quietly beautiful sketches, small anecdotes that when taken as a whole impart both wise advice and understanding to the fellow obsesser over a single sentence; yet never is the point of the narrative stated plainly, and that makes it all the more accessible and pretty and sincere.
This is a book that speaks directly to those who live "with one foot in fatal salt water and one foot on a billion grains of sand."
Beautiful and personal and absolutely recommended....more
I just finished this book and there is not much I can say about it, because I am still in the grips of its quiet, beautiful power. If you wanO my god.
I just finished this book and there is not much I can say about it, because I am still in the grips of its quiet, beautiful power. If you want to know what it's about, read others' reviews. Here I can only tell you that my life is changed for having read this book. I will never look at the world the same way again, and I will spend every day I have.
Annie Dillard reminds me that if I live for a thousand years and write every day I will never achieve this simple, perfect beauty, but I never want to stop trying anyway.
---
Addendum!
Now that I've been able to digest this book a bit more, I feel prepared to add a few comments.
People have said that this book is about theology broadly, or theodicy specifically (that is, the attempt to make the idea of a loving personal god fit into a cruel, cold natural world.) I don't think that's true. Annie Dillard may well have written Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and designed it to be about theology or theodicy, and to her it may be a treatise on those themes. But it is so accessibly crafted that it is just as much about the lack of a god in the universe, and the independence of nature, if that is the way you approach nature on a personal level. The Bible and other Abrahamic-religious sources are often quoted, but so are field guides, nature writers, and poets; and they are all quoted in such picturesque and touching ways that anyone can relate to the message therein. To Dillard, the Bible is just another source to be mined for understanding of human nature, or for understanding humanity's place in nature. When Dillard writes directly of God, it's not to preach at the reader or even to assume. It's to question, to imagine, to ask the reader whether she is God and whether she is finished yet with Creation.
This book is not about any point of theology. It is about mystery: The mystery of being, of being alert and aware, of seeing and experiencing. The mystery of life's briefness and life's beauty. It is one of the finest, most touching, most human books I have ever read, and doubtless one to which I'll return whenever I need comfort or whenever I simply want to know that I'm not the only one who loves the world so intensely, or who wonders about so many things....more
A slim but gorgeous, highly experimental work, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid follows, somewhat disjointedly, the life of the famous outlaw and A slim but gorgeous, highly experimental work, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid follows, somewhat disjointedly, the life of the famous outlaw and a bit of his legend, too. Through a mixture of Ondaatje's unparalleled poetry (he is undoubtedly the most under-appreciated poet in the English-speaking world) and his equally moving, memorable prose, the reader drifts in and out of Billy's mind, his experiences, and the perspectives of the people who knew and loved him. The book is deeply focused on visual imagery, on the idea of photographs, of freezing a moment in time with foreground sharp and background blurred, on the act itself of making an image in order to preserve a memory.
Poignantly, the book opens with a caption beneath a blank "photograph" and ends with the type-written text of a very old graphic novel, sans images, featuring Billy the Kid: his own legend obscuring his life, continuing forward after his death; Billy becoming unseen behind the image of Billy.
It is a deeply moving, visceral work, as all Ondaatje's works are. This, his riskiest and strangest book, may also be his best -- and it is certainly his least appreciated.
This is pure, emotional literary fiction at its best. Highly recommended....more
Five stars for amazing writing. Didn't finish because it depressed the hell out of me and eventually I couldn't function from the downer-ness of this Five stars for amazing writing. Didn't finish because it depressed the hell out of me and eventually I couldn't function from the downer-ness of this book (and its vividness.) Had to quit early. Still don't know how it ends....more
I just finished my third or fourth re-read of this book, and it occurred to me that I still haven't reviewed it. What a crime! Because this is one of I just finished my third or fourth re-read of this book, and it occurred to me that I still haven't reviewed it. What a crime! Because this is one of the finest novels in the sci-fi genre, and one of the best books I've read of any genre.
Orson Scott Card's writings from early in his career -- say, everything from Ender's Shadow and earlier -- are really amazing works. Whatever you may feel about him as a person, given his (in my opinion) odious political views, it's hard to deny that early on, he was a superlative writer. His work is emotionally deep, lyrically written without ever turning purple, and absolutely haunting in theme and imagery. In his younger days he also took more risks with theme and plot, writing books that walked the very fine line between disturbing and unforgettably brilliant on the tips of their toes. Back then, Card's stories meant more because they delved into parts of the human experience where we often fear to tread, pushing us past the artificial boundaries of propriety and tradition.
Wyrms is one such book. In a bold move for a very religious author, this novel explores the nature of "God." And the nature of god which Card presents, in the end, is something entirely unexpected from the pen of a very religious author. As an atheist, I appreciated the intellectual honesty of Card's exploration. As a human being, I loved the uplifting nature of the book's ultimate message.
But you shouldn't be led to believe by this review that Wyrms is a feel-good novel. Card weaves a dark, strange atmosphere where religious zealotry and racial prejudice are serious threats to the central characters. The main character, Patience, bred by an unseen, unknown being to fulfill a prophecy of sorts, is hardly more than a child but is already trained as a "diplomat," which in this book really means "assassin," and Patience is often quite callous about her duties. She is not a perfect main character, not by a long shot -- which only underscores the strangeness of the book's central prophecy. As she moves along her path to fulfill the prophecy -- or not fulfill it; the reader is never quite sure which way she'll swing until the climactic scene ultimately comes, very late in the novel -- Patience travels through a world that merges old-fashioned sci-fi weirdness with images that seem more haunting for their contemporary treatment.
Card creates an umber-hued world of alien strangeness into which the reader cannot help immersing herself. Once you have read this book its central message and its intensely dark imagery will never leave you. Highly recommended....more
In spite of all the reading I do, this one continues to reign supreme as my favorite book of all time. I've noticed that I have a tendency to love booIn spite of all the reading I do, this one continues to reign supreme as my favorite book of all time. I've noticed that I have a tendency to love books that sharply divide readers, and Lolita is certainly no exception, as evidenced by its 3.7 average rating here on Goodreads. People either love this one or hate it. There are very few who feel ambivalent toward it -- and that's exactly the kind of book I adore.
Those who love it usually love it for its incredible prose -- maybe the best I've ever read anywhere, so intricate and luscious that I find new surprises there every time I re-read, and I have read this book now more times than I can count.
Those who hate it usually hate it for its subject matter. If you have been living in an underground bunker built of school buses since the 1950s, you may not be aware of what the rest of the world is aware of, even the portions of the world that don't read American fiction, or don't read at all: Lolita is a novel about a pedophile victimizing a child.
Understandably, it's hard for good people to find much to like in a book with such disturbing matter. Or at least, it's hard for good people to allow their appreciation for Lolita's various strengths to overcome its inherent disturbing nature. And I am not at all suggesting that those who give this book five stars (such as myself) are bad people for not allowing Lolita's subject to cloud their opinion. Everybody approaches art in different ways; that's what makes art so fascinating to our species, and so vital to our social health. Art makes us confront uncomfortable situations, such as society's dark secrets, and the question of whether the worst people in the world can ever be said to have redeeming qualities.
Lolita, I believe, should be taken as more than just a novel. It is a deliberately conflicted work of art. It is a complexity of emotion and technique, perhaps one of the greatest artistic achievements of the human race -- and the harsh juxtaposition of its intense beauty and depth of emotion against the sordidness at its core is part of what makes it so great.
Nabokov, being the sly, self-assured bastard he was, realized that he was writing one of the loveliest works of art of all time -- in fact, he praises his own writing shamelessly in the rarely-read foreword to the novel, which is not a true foreword at all but rather a commentary on the book's content and technique by the fictional John Ray, Jr. -- Nabokov wearing a mask, as so many characters in Lolita do. He knew how beautiful this book was, and he could have set such beauty against a tale of love between two adults, or any number of other, less horrible subjects. Instead, he recycled the basic premise (and some of the scenes and prose) from a short story written many years before, when he was still living in Europe. The story is called The Enchanter, and if you read and enjoy Lolita (enjoy it for whatever it is to you), I recommend you find the story and give it a read as well. The story is a fascinating look at the core ideas that became one of the world's most meaningful works of art -- but it, too, is about a pedophile victimizing a child. (Un-fans of Lolita will be glad to know, though, that in The Enchanter the predator gets his well-earned punishment.)
Many literary critics and readers and students have proclaimed Lolita to be all kinds of things -- satire, travesty, social commentary on the debauchment of old Europe by young America, social commentary on the debauchment of young America by old Europe. Lolita has been many things to many people, showing to each reader a different viewpoint on the world. In interviews Nabokov always vehemently resisted the idea that he had written Lolita with any particular theme in mind, that he was trying to say anything about the world at all. He always forcibly stated that Lolita was exactly what it appeared to be -- a story about a man with a disturbing obsession.
The closest Nabokov ever came to admitting that Lolita had a hidden artistic agenda was stating that he first developed the idea for the story, long ago before he'd written even The Enchanter, after reading a news article about a captive ape who had produced the first drawing by an animal -- the image of the bars of its own cage. Certainly that micro-theme can be detected in Lolita, as Humbert Humbert's intoxicating narration is an artistic depiction of his own prison -- his lust for Lolita.
But I think Nabokov wrote Lolita with something very definite in mind, and only insisted that he did not to allow readers and critics the room to freely interpret his work as they would -- which is a rather noble and generous thing for any author to do, since, as I already stated, art must be approached personally and individually; when its themes and purposes are dictated to the audience it loses all its significance and all its immortality.
Lolita is, I believe, a very intentional picaresque -- the best picaresque of America I have ever read. It has all the earmarks of a picaresque -- the narrator who is uninitiated into the culture through which he moves (Humbert is from Europe); the often humorous or ridiculous interpretation of the observed culture's habits and characteristics; the importance of travel through a foreign landscape.
If Lolita was an intentional picaresque, then I can only assume its disturbing subject matter was dredged up from The Enchanter in order to cast the traveler/observer of this American picaresque in an intentionally awful light -- to make him as horrible as horrible could be, so that his humorously negative opinions of America could never quite be fully trusted, even as his charisma and artfulness made the reader feel irresistibly drawn to him.
In that respect, I believe Humbert Humbert is a reflection of Nabokov himself -- not to suggest that Nabokov had any sexual interest whatsoever in children, but that Nabokov was conflicted by a great love and appreciation for America, his adopted homeland, while also being extremely critical of its culture. After all, he grew up with a Russian baron for a father. Emigrating to America and making a new life there as a simple professor and butterfly-catcher must have been a change fraught with some very deep conflicts.
Take Lolita for what it is: a malleable work whose unparalleled prose can be approached in so many ways; however you like -- and a work whose intentional inclusion of humanity's most vile aspects only underscores the impact of its many beautiful aspects.
Aside from the disgusting nature of the subject itself, there is nothing "dirty" in the book -- there is no vulgar language, no outright descriptions of any sexual activity. It is not a book meant for titillation, as so many people have claimed. It is a book meant for serious artistic appreciation, crafted with the greatest skill and thought the world of literature has ever known.
Nabokov was a giant, an absolute master of his art -- and Lolita is his finest work....more
Libbie Hawker
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Books:
can-t-stop-thinking-about
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