So back in December my editor at the Dallas Morning News asked me (and other contributing writers) to pen a brief essay about a book I’d been given as a gift some time in my life, and I actually wrote two. The first one turned out to be a mistake, in that I neglected the “gift” angle, and only remembered the essay prompt to be about a book that changed my life. When my editor explained it didn’t quite fit the prompt, I wrote another. Here’s the first one, about one of the great writers of the Twentieth Century.
The Goodwill Genius: On Discovering Vladimir Nabokov’s “Bend Sinister”
On the dusty shelves of a Goodwill store in Austin, Texas, circa 1979 (in the dimly lit rear of the store, by the flyspeck shelves of plastic toys and dented cookware), I came across a book I’d never heard of by a writer I’d never heard of, and without fanfare or fireworks, it changed my life. It was Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Bend Sinister, first published by Holt in 1947, but due to the success of Lolita (1955), reissued in the Sixties. The paperback copy I bought for fifty cents includes Nabokov’s supremely haughty and gently comic Introduction, in which he urges readers not to make comparisons they will obviously make, and admits, “The title’s drawback is that a solemn reader looking for ‘general ideas’ or ‘human interest’ (which is much the same thing) in a novel may be led to look for them in this one” (xii). I only bought the book because I liked the garish, trippy cover—shades of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”—and because the novel begins with one of the greatest descriptions of a puddle ever written: “An oblong puddle inset in the coarse asphalt; like a fancy footprint filled to the brim with quicksilver; like a spatulate hole through which you can see the nether sky. Surrounded, I note, by a diffuse tentacled black dampness where some dull dun dead leaves have stuck. Drowned, I should say, before the puddle had shrunk to its present size.” I love the use of oblong, tentacled, and spatulate, as well as the alliteration of “dull dun dead” and “fancy footprint.” It reminds me of a review of The Bird Saviors I received years ago by a petulant twit who argued I “used too many metaphors.” Which was said about Nabokov by various critics, otherwise known as other nitwits.
It’s not an exaggeration to say I learned to write by reading Nabokov—all his books, several times. Bizarrely, after thirty-seven years and several lifetimes, I still have that dog-eared copy of Bend Sinister, which has now lost its cardstock covers, front and back, yet has my quaint, loopy signature on the first page, a physical scratching of my life so long ago, put there as a marker in case it, or I, ever got lost.—December 2016
Tomorrow I’ll post the other essay, the one that did make it to press.
- October 2023
- September 2023
- September 2021
- April 2020
- September 2019
- May 2019
- August 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- October 2017
- August 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- November 2016
- October 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- December 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- May 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
Recent Posts
- Aliens Among Us: Probing Hillbillies and Freaking Shut-ins, How Netflix’s “Encounters” and Hulu’s “No One Will Save You” Prep Us for the Coming Alien Apocalypse, Kind of
- My Life as a Bob Odenkirk Character: On How Watching Netflix’s Black Mirror episode “Joan Is Awful” Mimicked My Experience of Watching the AMC series Lucky Hank
- “Bobcats, Bobcats, Bobcats”: Animal Life and a Tribute to “Modern Family”
- “The North Water”: This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Moby Dick
- Day 25: On David Quammen's "Spillover": Terrific Book That Foretold Our Pandemic, Kind of
Recent Comments
No comments to show.