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Vladimir Nabokov - Transparent Things / PATRON ONLY Review (Patreon)

Published:
2020-05-25 23:18:47
Edited:
2020-05-25 23:25:19
Imported:
2026-09
Tags:

Content

A pleasant puzzle box of a book by the author of Lolita.  

Files

Vladimir Nabokov - Transparent ThingsBOOK REVIEW

BUY HERE: https://amzn.to/2TDYvdp LINKS: https://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/19/archives/transparent-things-by-vladimir-nabokov-104-pp-new-york-mcgrawhill.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibn3oAUzZuE&t=323s https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1355503760?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=2 https://books.google.com/books?id=IhiejB1J7iUC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=4th+dimension+transparent+things+nabokov&source=bl&ots=aCcDANV9id&sig=ACfU3U1_HqPElOTn2KqEiG86WbYKdybyoA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxkM-M06TpAhU4CTQIHRx2BRoQ6AEwDHoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=4th%20dimension%20transparent%20things%20nabokov&f=false

Comments

Sanyam Arora

Great review Cliff. Thanks for an amazing recommendation, been trying my best to read challenging literature. Thank you.

Sanyam Arora

Wish I was brave enough to keep an awesome 'stache.

Derrik

Oh, man, put Pale Fire on the top of your list. It wasn't as abstract as this one sounds (and I'll certainly have to read it), but it's no less impressive.

Hannah Gray

I'm a little bit sad this one is a patron only review - definitely one of my favourite ever. Nabokov, such sublime lunacy!

Derrik

I just finished this and there's a structural feature that may or not be obvious: I don't think it's accidental that the number of chapters mirrors the numbers of letters in the alphabet and there appear to be clues to this effect throughout the book, at least from what I notice near the end. This occurred to me around the time I got to the W chapter (23) and then noticed the chapter ends with "Raining in Wittenburg, but not in Wittgenstein". Chapter 24 references a Mr. X, Chapter 25 a Mr. Wilde (Y-lde?) and Chapter 26 ends with "Easy, you know, does it, son" (E-Z?). And perhaps this was also an exercise in his own synesthesia. Maybe I'm really grasping here, but given his interest in these kinds of tricks and puzzles, maybe I'm not. Also, from an article I found: Another instance of not quite infinite anagrammatic regression occurs in Transparent Things where the protagonist, Hugh Person, an editor working on the manuscript of an eminent writer, known only as Mr. R., queries the spelling of the name of an incidental character, one Adam von Librikov, another Nabokov anagrammatic surrogate (p. 75). Although Mr. R. writes and speaks in an elegant and somewhat baroque style, his slightly off-center English is not native. Also unusual is the fact that he appears to be the posthumous narrator of the novella —a fact ascertainable only from certain stylistic mannerisms peculiar to his speech pattern. These two facts suddenly fall into place when it is realized that the eminent author's name, the capital letter "R," is a mirror-image reversal of the Russian letter "Ya," signifying the first person singular personal pronoun "I." Thus, Mr. R., the writer narrator who is creator of the people and events of Transparent Things, is an ego-alphabetic surrogate of Vladimir Nabokov and one who, moreover, anagrammatically incorporates Adam von Librikov into one of his inset books.