ABAW: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

I’ve read excerpts and I knew the general plot of this novel, but this is the first time I’ve read Lolita, or anything else by Nabokov. My first reaction was to wonder whether Nabokov set himself the challenge of trying to write a story that would make readers sympathetic to a pedophile.

Early on, I found it difficult to see anything but the tragedy in the story. Even knowing the general plot ahead of time, I was still surprised by the intensity of the story. I was amused by the amazingly circuitous and convoluted language Nabokov employs to infer Humbert’s desires and actions without being explicit or obscene.

Only when I’d reached the absurd final scenes between Humbert and his nemesis did the humor begin to resolve for me, and upon reflection, I started to find many other moments in the story grimly funny.

Lolita is an absurd love story, a darkly comical story with some scenes that are almost slapstick mayhem.  

Humbert is such a terrible, unreliable narrator, yet so brilliantly and consistently wrought. I could not hate him. I even found it difficult to revile him sometimes, though that was my gut inclination. Humbert’s obsessive attention to the details surrounding Lolita make him completely blind to other things, which Nabokov reveals with such delicious subtlety, even through Humbert’s voice.

Don’t get me wrong. Humbert is a pedophile. He is a child rapist. He destroys Lolita’s life. He consistently rips her from normalcy, even disrupting her desperate efforts to be a regular kid in their year playing house. He doesn’t realize the extent of his destruction until he has lost her. Humbert always thinks he is trying to fill a fantasy for Lolita-with their travel exploits, with the year of school, with her participation in theater-but it is Lolita that knows the reality of their situation, and it is Lolita that ultimately decides when to end the normalcy farce and when to end the relationship completely. Humbert destroys her life, but he doesn’t destroy her sense of self. She leaves Humbert to pursue other options, but she doesn’t prostitute herself or allow others to exploit her, and she manages to achieve a kind of stable normativity in her brief life.

I find it horrifying on one level to joke about pedophilia, child rape, and child kidnapping. Humbert is reprehensible, but I found it difficult not to laugh at him and the situations he creates for himself. I also found it difficult not to be a tiny bit sympathetic to him, in his (mostly) single-minded pursuit of love.

There are perverts, and then there are Perverts. And then there are people, like Nabokov, who wield language with subtlety and a sharp edge of masterful innuendo. I can’t put my finger on it now, but my favorite line in the book is about grasshoppers spurting (not leaping or jumping or flying, mind you—SPURTING) from the tall weeds. 

And We Have a Winner!

Four lovely people posted comments in my contest to win a copy of Ayelet Waldman’s Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace. I danced around in a circle, rolled a single die, and Lo! commenter four, Tim is my winner. Congratulations Tim! I hope you and your wife love it. I think it goes especially well alongside Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends. 

Thank you to everyone who entered. Maybe I can scare up some more things to give away around here.

[rummaging…]

ABAW: Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Aleksandar (Alek) Ferdinand is the prince of Austria-Hungary, on the run after the assassination of his father, a peace-loving archduke, and his mother in Sarajevo. Because Alek’s mother was a commoner, Alek isn’t supposed to inherit anything from his family, especially his grandfather’s throne. Alek’s adversaries aren’t taking any chances and hunt him across Austria. His teacher-protectors have given up everything in order to protect Alek and get him to a secret hideout in Switzerland.

Deryn (a.k.a Dylan) Sharp is a British girl disguising herself as a boy to earn a position as a midshipman on one of his majesty’s airships. She has lost her father in a fiery accident. Deryn earns her spot on an airship, a Leviathan-class ship that gives this novel its name, but worries every day that her crewmates will discover her secret.

Europe is divided and on the brink of war. The year is 1914, but not the 1914 that you know from the history books.

Scott Westerfeld has created a steampunk, alternative WWI history in a world where Darwin discovered DNA (the threads of life) and gene splicing. Europe is divided among Darwinist countries, which employ genetic engineering to create incredible creatures to take place of their machines, and Clanker countries, which reject what they see as godless genetic tinkering in favor of engineering elaborate, diesel-driven machines.

Other elements: a heavy pile of gold bullion, a lady scientist with a mysterious cargo bound for Constantinople, flying jellyfish, talking lizards, walking tanks, a tasmanian tiger, and a lot of clart.

The story is fast-paced and exciting, cutting back and forth between the two main characters until they eventually run into each other on a glacier in Switzerland. The audience is privvy to just enough secrets to make us feel involved in the story, but not so many to ruin the excitement and suspense. I love that we don’t know which adults are trustworthy—if any. And I love the afterword, in which Westerfeld sorts out the real history leading up to WWI from his own inventions.

A great middle-grade to young-adult book and the first in a trilogy, followed by Behemoth, released in October 2010, and Goliath, scheduled for release in the fall of 2011.

Note: I received this book in a Twitter contest from Simon & Schuster last summer and I’m passing it on to the Sonars. 

ABAW: The Experts' Guide to 100 Things Everyone Should know How to Do, Created by Samantha Ettus

The Experts’ Guide to 100 Things Everyone Should Know How to Do

Created by Samantha Ettus

If alcohol is a social lubricant, coffee is a social adhesive. A couple of years ago I tried to make coffee for my in-laws. It didn’t go well. I haven’t made coffee for anyone since. Partner makes a seriously good cup of coffee. He should. He makes coffee for himself once or twice a day. His goal is caffeination, to be sure. But if you watch him—measuring the beans on the scale (10 grams), grinding them (fine, but not super-fine), moistening the unbleached cone filter (peel it open and THEN moisten), slowly pouring the boiling water over the beans (in two portions, with a pause to watch in between)—you might see something that looks more like ritual.

I have wanted to learn how, I really have. Last week, I made my first proper cup of coffee. It was a lovely thing. I engaged the rituals, step-by-step. After years of watching someone else do it, I’d apparently picked up a thing or two. Partner didn’t prompt me. Maybe I needed written instructions. I was motivated by this book, The Experts’ Guide to 100 Things Everyone Should Know How to Do, created by media personality Samantha Ettus.

In her introduction, Ettus explains how she kept a list of things she wanted to know how to do. As she worked through her list, she sought out expert guidance to remedy her lacks. In the process, she found that she became an expert at identifying experts. Her sources of guidance “were chosen based on their accomplishments, talent, and undeniable spark….”

Some of the tasks are straightforward, that can be accomplished briefly: brewing coffee, tying a scarf or necktie. Some are longer processes to complete, step-by-step, over time: learning a language, managing money. All of the experts are interesting choices in one way or another.

This is a great sort of basic book for anyone who just wants to know how to do things. Also a useful quick reference for a writer to think about the ways in which we do things. When I think about a character, for instance, I might think about the way he shaves. His shaving choices might say something about his overall character. Thinking about how to do something well provides my writer brain with a starting point for how to complicate a character, or to lend authenticity to an action, or to properly conduct a background investigation.

As a person who enjoys learning how to do things—and, yes, as an overachiever who likes to do things right—I think this book was fun. I enjoyed reading the entries, even about things I know how to do. I was forced to reflect on my own practice (how I wash my hair—no, I’m not changing, even though I don’t wash my hair as Mr. Fekkai advises, but I did think about it).

My favorites: Ira Glass on how to tell a story (“the more you’re in it to amuse yourself, the better it’ll be”) and how to apologize. The most fascinating to me (but the least likely to be used by me) were three athletic entries, how to swim, how to swing a golf club, and how to swing a tennis racket. They provided brief, though curiously detailed insight into the mechanics of athleticism and the athletes’ brain.

Ettus has three other Expert Guides: The Baby Years, Life at Home, and Doing Things Faster. Check out her Experts web-site for more information about Ettus and her endeavors. 

ABAW: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I know, I know. It’s ridiculous that it took me so long to read this book. It’s just exactly the sort of silliness that I love. I wanted to read it. I lamented the cultural jokes I was missing. Even Sonar X10 has read it, and while he reads a lot, I have a considerable head start on him in reading years.  So, of course, it was the first book I wrote down when making my list of Book I’ve Missed that I Want to Read for this year.

I was not disappointed. The writing is sharp, funny, totally nonsequiter, absurd, confusing, and very very smart. For those of you who do not know (surely there aren’t that many of you!) this is the story of Arthur Dent, who evacuates Earth with his friend, Ford Prefect, in the moments before the planet is destroyed to make an interstellar bypass. Arthur spends the entire book a bit confused by the shocking turn his life has taken.

Ford is writing an update to the “Earth” entry for the indispensable handbook of all freeloading space travelers, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but gets stuck on Earth for sixteen years. Why does he rescue Arthur, of all the people on Earth? I have no idea. Ford and Arthur escape the torture of Vogon poetry and hook up with Zaphod Beeblebrox and Trillian McMillan, who found each other on Earth, of all places. A number of highly improbable things happen in the story, which makes it that much more improbably funny.

Some secrets: 42, don’t piss off the mice, watch out for the whale guts, don’t let Marvin get you down, don’t let the Vogons read you poetry, don’t forget your towel or your Guide, and above all, please, DON’T PANIC.

Also, if you like/love/live The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, go read The Sheriff of Yrnameer by Michael Rubens. If you’ve already read that one too (overachiever) Rubens is currently working on a sequel. I hope he doesn’t leave out Kenneth. *Sigh* Kenneth.