Post for 9/10/13

I loved The Enchanter. It's possibly the most horrifying thing I've read, but I'm already liking Nabokov quite a bit. More than anything, I love Nabokov's capacity for metaphor. I particularly liked this passage on page 15. He writes,

"You lost the hands of your watch," said the girl.
"No, he answered, clearing his throat, "that's the way it's supposed to be. It's a rarity."

It's a simple moment. It's not a moment of severe import, in plot or emotion. However, it's incredible, because more than anything, it requires an incredible amount of control, and knowledge of what you're writing. When Nabokov talks about the absurdity that people get carried away with their own stories, we see it really in application here. In three sentences, Nabokov summarizes the entire story. The outside world, as symbolized by the girl, notes to the man that he doesn't have a proper sense of time. The outside world shows discomfort with this idea, as we all would. He, however, replies that his lack of a structural understanding of time is "the way it's supposed to be. It's a rarity." Nabokov's ability to know and control his story well enough to capture the entire universe of The Enchanter within such a minute detail is incredible.

Furthermore, Nabokov's restraint shows itself here too. His writing has such a masterful sense of restraint. To write a story about such a morally charged subject without spending the entire time editorializing is incredible. To go back to this moment that I was just discussing, this is another great example of that restraint. The entire interaction ends there. Whatever would have come next would have been an editorial comment of some sort. She would have either commented on how it was good or bad that the man's watch had no hands, or he would have said too much about it, and it would be beating the point into the reader. In this way, however, Nabokov is always taking a chance. The chance he's always taking is that you are going to be smart enough to figure it out on your own. By not passing over the same motifs and ideas a number of times, he is really putting his work in the hands of the reader. The reader, is then forced to figure it out for themself.

Lastly, and most importantly perhaps, is Nabokov's ability to portray characters complexly. Nabokov doesn't deny the humanity of the lead character. He doesn't portray him two-dimensionally. While it's clear to us that the character is a villain, the text doesn't really care to acknowledge that. It's both fascinating and relieving to see a story told with a character who is certainly morally appalling, who is neither redeemed nor spurned within the text. Often times, we see these stories of villains, or "bad people" and they are given a horrible, invalidating life story. For instance, a character will try to take over the world, and we find out it's because he was an orphan. The truth is that writing like that invalidates both the narrative of the villain, and not treating him like a whole character, or whole person, but it also invalidates the narratives of orphans, and people who have had rough upbringings. Rough upbringings cannot be the reason everyone is evil. Nabokov understands this. I love that. It forces us to understand and connect to people who our entire society is built upon invalidating. Nabokov in this way creates a framework of thought for dealing with "the other." His making the protagonist so morally appalling only further proves and enforces his point of trying to deal with, or at least try to understand the complexity of narratives of the people we disagree with.