This is one my favourite books of all time, from the originality of the opening page (the clock hand's 'once a minute gesture' that 'will set the entire world in motion') to every page thereafter.

The fact is, very, very few authors (no-one?) can touch Nab when it comes to metaphor, intellect, descriptive precision at large, and of course, he just happens to have arguably greatest sense of humour of anyone who ever lived to top it all off.

The opening sequence contains such a remarkable description of the sensation and shapes of a train disembarking that you almost have to hold on to something firm to prevent you sliding away with it.

Then there are the silken, truly exquisite meanderings through a subterranean world of the 'automannequins', about which I will not ruin your enjoyment.

This is vintage Nabokov - the MIND of Nabokov at its most self-indulgent, mesmerising best, if you will.

Every single page of this book contains moments as good as this:

'The city shimmered and fell in fantastic folds, not held up by anything, a discarnate iridescence limply suspended in the azure autumnal air...and suddenly a sunbeam, a gleam of glass, would stab him in the pupil.'

'...a famous young man who flitted all summer from resort to resort like a velvet butterfly.'

'The fizzy little stars of champagne pricked an unfamiliar tongue, without warming her blood or quenching her thirst.'

Some people have mentioned shallow characterisation, but I think the main focus here is the humour and the descriptions - everything is fairly satitical, often how Nabokov liked to play things.

I can't speak highly enough of this book, and much preferred it to several Nabokov works that are more widespreadly read (so to speak). Massive fan of 'Speak, Memory' and the Short Stories too - incidentally the style of KQK is reminiscent of several of Nabokov's most stylistically impressive short stories.

Perhaps not a 'masterpiece' in the most expansive sense, but equally enjoyable as many works considered masterpieces for reasons of exquisite combinations of words, page after page.

When starting this review, what I first put down was that my reading of it was not what I’d hoped for. It seemed slow, plodding and confected at times. After finishing it, I read some reviews and found it was supposed to be funny; I had missed that.

Unwilling to give up my positive expectations, I started making up excuses:
*I know you can only read a book twice and certainly I’ll read it again.
*This was one of his early works.
*This had been written in Russian and translated by his son, Dimitry—it wasn’t even the man himself.
*I had put off reading Nabokov for such a long time while I read everything about him and his wife Vera. I studied his lectures on western literature while reading and re-reading his lectures and those masterpieces with him. I don’t know what I expected but it was too much, perhaps something that should have been introduced in the light of a burning bush, ushered in by Charles Dickens himself.

As I looked back over my notes and highlights, I realised that I had appreciated and highlighted many brilliant sentences and paragraphs as I read along.

“His memory opened its gallery of waxworks, and he knew, he knew that there, at it’s far end somewhere a chamber of horrors awaited him. He remembered a dog that had vomited on the threshold of a butcher’s shop. He remembered a child, a mere toddler, who, bending with the difficulty of its age, had laboriously picked up and put to its lips are filthy thing resembling a baby’s pacifier. He remembered an old man with a cough in a streetcar who had fired a clot of mucus into the ticket collector’s hands. These were images that Franz usually held at bay but that always kept swarming in the background of his life greeting with a hysterical spasm any new impression that was kin to them.
*On rain
“Both yesterday and today were novel and absurd days, and certainly not quite intelligible, but significant, outlines were showing through confusedly and like that darkish solution in which mountain views would presently float and grow clear, this rain, this delicate pluvial damp, developed shiny images in her soul.

*The lustre of black asphalt was filmed by a blend of dim hues, through which here and there vivid rends and oval holes made by rain puddles revealed the authentic colours of deep reflections — of a vermillion diagonal band, a cobalt wedge, a green spiral — scattered glimpses into a human upside down world, into a dizzy geometry of gems. The kaleidoscope effect suggested someone’s jiggling every now and then the pavement so as to change the combination of numberless coloured fragments. Meanwhile shafts and ripples of life passed by, marking the course of every car. Shop windows, bursting with tense radiance, bruised, squirted, and splashed out into the rich blackness.”

“A purposeful gaiety, a dash of excitement now marked the rains. They no longer drizzled aimlessly; they breathed, they spoke. Violet crystals, like bath salts, were dissolved in rainwater. Puddles consisted not of liquid mud but limpid pigments that made beautiful pictures reflecting house fronts, lamp posts, fences, blue and white sky, a bare instep, a bicycle pedal.”

Then as I sat down to write the review from the book’s first paragraph, I proved to myself that writing is thinking. Things started coming to me, connecting thoughts that hadn’t fully formed.

That queasy feeling when you’re sitting in a train at the station; you think you’ve begun to move off but it’s actually the train on the next track. In the opening pages, #Nabokov extends this inversion of the senses until the firmament reaches 50 mph, receding in the distance. When the Knave reaches Berlin, he breaks his glasses and the author sets the scenes through the perceptual dysphasia of astigmatism. Even after the glasses are replaced, Nabokov doesn’t describe the street scenes directly but rather through their distorted reflections of rippling rain water accumulated in puddles in the cobblestone streets. This turns out to be one of Nabokov’s main themes: Just as the Knave is fresh, green, and wet behind the ears, the perception of his environment is backwards, foggy, distorted, and bizarre. No one is there to say, “You’re following your dick. A wanton Queen and a philistine King are guiding you into the web where they get their pleasures.” The Knave is unable to place himself.
Now as I write the above, the brilliance and the structural accomplishment of a genius writer starts to emerge in my understanding. This was too well done for me to comprehend on a first reading; too deep, too well developed. I must come back to it.

Re, donna e tante esercitazioni di stile

Immaginatevi qualcuno che a mano libera riesca a fare precise righe sottili sovrapposte e che senza cambiare penna, ma solo angolazione, di tanto in tanto ne faccia di più marcate quando parla di desiderio fisico. La precisione di Nabokov è invidiabile, ha un controllo totale della mano, nessuna fretta, nessun tremito. Quelle righe sono ammirevoli, solo avvicinando lo sguardo, come farebbe un miope, si riesce a stabilire che sono formate da tanti piccoli sussulti. Il primo capitolo è davvero ottimo, racconta il viaggio in treno dei tre personaggi che saranno protagonisti del libro, i pensieri erotici del più giovane di loro intervallano descrizioni accurate di ciò che si vede sul treno e dal treno

Poi la pioggia cominciò a picchiettare dolcemente sul finestrino: un rivoletto serpeggiava sul vetro, si fermava esitante, per poi riprendere la sua rapida corsa a zigzag verso il basso. Oltre il finestrino del corridoio, uno stretto tramonto arancione finiva di ardere sotto una massa di nuvole temporalesche

Ciò che succede fuori e ciò che accade dentro

...Aggrottò le sopracciglia sotto lo sguardo luminoso e indifferente di lei e, quando la vide distogliere il viso, calcolò mentalmente, come se le sue dita stessero spostando rumorosamente le palline di un invisibile pallottoliere, quanti giorni della sua vita avrebbe dato per possedere quella donna

Il godimento con cui si leggono i primi capitoli finisce nel momento in cui l’adulterio riduce la storia ad una sordida storia di corna nella quale la donna e il gobbo (qui da noi il fante lo chiamiamo così) si coalizzano per far fuori il re. I potenziali assassini mi annoiano, la preparazione del delitto mi indispettisce, a meno che esso non sia per vendetta e qui l’unico torto del re è possedere il denaro che consentirebbe agli amanti di condurre una vita agiata.
La pianificazione dell’omicidio è in alcuni passi volutamente grottesca, per farsi venire l’anima nera, gli amanti vi han passato due mani di tinta. La terza ed ultima parte è un delirio febbrile che si legge solo perché ormai si vuol capire come finirà il romanzo; delle linee precise dei primi capitoli non vi è più traccia, la prosa raffinata è stata prima adulterata e poi simbolizzata.

L’introduzione dell’autore, scritta per gli iniziati, io l’ho letta alla fine. Nabokov lascia intendere di aver ritoccato ad arte il suo romanzo in età adulta per consentirgli di invecchiare meglio, lascia intendere anche di voler onorare il suo debito verso Flaubert (trovavo odiosa Martha, lui mi ha suggerito il perché: il suo temperamento è modellato su quello di Emma Bovary) ma di non dover niente a Balzac e pochi spiccioli a Joyce e Freud.
Nemmeno io credo di dovere niente a Nabokov, questo probabilmente sarà il suo ultimo romanzo per me.
Trovo che sia votato alla letteratura al punto di sacrificare qualsiasi verità in nome dello stile. Per lui tutto è contesto e pretesto per far mostra del suo sopraffino esercizio letterario. Leggere Nabokov è come bere da un bicchiere vuoto.

بين ٣ و ٤ موندم
خيلي شروعش جذاب بود مثل اكثر دوستان من اونقدر خسته كننده حسش نكردم و واقعا داستان منو كشوند تا اخرش
ولي اخرش اصلا به اون سطح جذابيتي كه براش ترسيم كرده بودم حتي نزديك هم نشد
چه حيف

Senryu Review:

Dim late-teen tailor
lusts after Teutonic wilf
in heaven-kissed prose

VN's second novel -- but not entirely. When he translated the book into English in the late 1960s, Nabokov freshly polished the sentences and streamlined some plot points. It's not as radical an intervention as "Despair," but this is also not the work of a sophomore novelist. There are still a few creaky sections and it's a tad too long, but the prose always soars. It's among his finest writing, showcasing scenes of brilliant ingenuity and imagery, transforming a mundane romantic triangle into something unexpected, all leading to a deeply affecting finale.
4.5 stars

صوتی با صدای رضا عمرانی

King, Queen, Knave is about an uncle, aunt and nephew. The nephew has been offered a position at his uncle’s clothing emporium in Berlin. The nephew falls for his aunt, thirteen years his senior. He’s sexually attracted to her. He’s twenty one. She’s thirty four. The aunt’s and uncle’s marriage has gone stale.

Before jumping to any conclusion about who may be in the wrong, one must know more. Call this a character study of the uncle, aunt and nephew. None of the three are angels. Adultery, trickery and possibly murder are elements of the plot. It is 1928 and the setting is Berlin and a resort town not far distant.

Perhaps the story sounds nasty, with a plot not terribly original. It is instead plucky and fun, a cerebral tragi-comedy. What makes this special, while other novels having a similar plot are just ordinary, is the writing and the humor. Nabokov plays with words. He draws allusions. He captures the feel of situations and places, be it a train ride, a morning on the beach or a room in a boarding house. You read, you recognize and remember similar situations. You marvel at how perfectly Nabokov has captured your own experiences. Little details make all the difference in the telling of a story, and Nabokov gets it right. It is the details, the humor and the way Nabokov plays with words that make this book special, a book above the ordinary.

I was about to give the book four stars, but the tying up of the strings at the book’s end is quick, lacks the humor and the play on words that make Nabokov’s writing special. I don’t dislike what happens at the end, but the writing had all of a sudden become ordinary. For this reason, I have given the book three rather than four stars.

This, Nabokov’s second novel, is one of his ten written originally in Russian. It is translated by his son, with the author’s collaboration. Words are an important element of Nabokov’s stories, making a good translation essential.

Christopher Lane narrates the audiobook. He does dramatize. Until I got into the swing of the story, this annoyed me. By the end I enjoyed it. Three stars for the narration; it’s good.

If you are a Nabokov fan, you will definitely like this a lot. It is not the story that is special, but the prose and the humor.

****************
*Lolita 5 stars
*Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle 5 stars
*Speak, Memory 5 stars
*Mary 4 stars
*Laughter in the Dark 4 stars
*Glory 4 stars
*The Gift 3 stars
*King, Queen, Knave 3 stars
*Pale Fire 2 stars
*Pnin 1 star
*Despair 1 star
*Transparent Things 1 star

*The Real Life of Sebastian Knight TBR

"Of all my novels this bright brute is the gayest." Nabokov opens his forward. I have always found his Russian novels to be brighter, gayer, and, yes, more brutish, than the more famous English ones. This is a favorite. It has no deeper meanings, nothing to say, practically nihilistic. But, man, is it fun. The relish Nabokov takes in crafting this story oozes out of every word. It's a very funny book, as well.

An eclair sits on a table, "alone, despised, unwanted."

The deliberate flattening of the characters in King, Queen, Knave undermines the credibility of the book's love triangle as if the text was, reflexively, mocking its own form.

Martha, a brittle ice-queen who lives in an austere villa in Berlin, does not love her husband, Dreyer, and seems incapable of loving anyone. As the flat card-like character she is, however, Martha, the "queen" enjoys the power to manipulate others. Martha views Franz, her nephew through marriage, as a pawn, and reflects that "he is warm, healthy young wax that one can manipulate and mold till its shape suits your pleasure" (31).

Martha does ultimately mold and seduce Franz to suit her pleasure, although Franz views the seduction differently. Franz see himself as the seducer and, in a sense, both he and Martha are seducers, but as the playing cards they represent, neither one can see the other's "hand" to realize he/she has been duped as well.

The writing is superb. The characters and plot both reminded me quite a bit of An American Tragedy with Martha and Franz splitting Clyde Griffith's personality between them. This one differs quite a bit though with all the hints and foreshadowing of nazism. It comes through quite directly with Martha's attitude towards foreigners and eerily with Franz who we are told will some day be "guilty of worse sins than avunculicide". Yikes! Franz is portrayed as a budding nazi in other ways as well as he becomes increasingly unable to think for himself and only responds to Martha's harsh commands.

One of my criteria for five stars is that it has to be something I would be interested in re-reading and this is the rare Nabokov that I probably won't be revisiting but it's just shy of that level.

خیلی وقت بود نابوکوف نخونده بودم و باید بگم دلم برای کیفیتِ منحصربه‌فرد فضای داستان‌هاش، نثرش، و توصیف‌هاش تنگ شده بود. ولی «شاه، بی‌بی، سرباز» به نسبت خود نابوکوف کتاب درخشانی نبود، طرح داستان و مسیر تراژیکش کم‌وبیش شبیه به خنده در تاریکیه (به جز اون تمِ سای‌فای آدم‌واره‌ی عجیب‌وغریب، که کاش تو کتاب‌های دیگه‌ش ادامه می‌یافت) و فرانتس نسخه‌ی کم‌تر بسط‌یافته‌ی پروفسور پنینه. ولی نکته‌ی رشک‌برانگیز برای من اینه که نابوکوف این کتابو تو بیست‌ونه سالگی چاپ کرده. بیست‌ونه سالگی آخه؟