Dave Cullen: Nabokov

Everyone should compare me to Capote

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:29:56 GMT

I think I got over my car robbery so well last week, because I discovered it while calling my parents to deliver some good news. All I could think on the drive to the gym thirty minutes later was, "The lord giveth and the lord taketh." (Feel free to substitute "karma" or "the universe." Works the same.)

He, she, it or they have been giving a lot more than taking for me personally, lately, and even that day. I decided if I had a choice on living the day over again, letting go of either both or neither, I'd take it. Worth a robbery for this email from my editor:

One of the most highly regarded independent booksellers read COLUMBINE and has recommended it as a selection for the IndieNext pick. Actually, what he's written is more than a recommendation. I think you'll be pleased. His note is below.

Every once in a rare while a book arrives to bear witness and such is the case with Columbine. This definitive account of the Colorado high school tragedy will not only surpass all others, it will endure and take a rightful place on the shelf along side In Cold Blood and The Executioner's Song.

Bill Cusumano, Nicola's Books, Ann Arbor

Nice. From now on, I want everyone to compare me to Truman Capote. Norman Mailer optional. Hehehe.

It was the second blurb in a week comparing my book to In Cold Blood. You can never have too much of that. So please allow me to use this pleasant opportunity to whine about something. I have spent decades in bafflement at authors/artists who complain about comparisons like that. (Pop stars seem most heavily prone.)

The complaint tends to runs along the line of wanting to be original. I'd like that too, but I know I didn't invent the form of narrative nonfiction. It would suck to hear that I had shamelessly copied one of those books or was a pale imitation, but I'm not getting that here.

I felt I had to reserve a little judgment, though, because you never know. I might see the comparison differently if I were ever so lucky to provoke it. I am now that lucky. And eager for more.

Also feel free to compare me to Nabokov. Hahaha. I don't think I write anything like him, but I'd like to.

I named my blog after him: Conclusive Evidence of my existence. (Explanation at the link). I used to post a Nabokov of the Day occasionally, just to hear a great prose melody again. Here's a quickie:

People in trains, who lay their newspaper aside, fold their silly arms, and immediately, with an offensive familiarity of demeanor, start snoring, amaze me as much as the uninhibited chap who cozily defecates in the presence of a chatty tubber, or participates in huge demonstrations, or joins some union in order to dissolve it.

-- Speak, Memory / Conclusive Evidence, p. 108 (Vintage Edition)

That's my all-time favorite book, in a tie with Catcher in the Rye. I have still not decided between them, and don't intend to.

I have a few quotes from it I like even better, but I can't find them on my blog archives. (That one was from 2003.) I may have to go find the book. I only keep three copies in my apt.

Oh, I was saying . . .

I decided the night of the car-theft, that I'd gladly trade that blurb for a robbery. I got some even better news the next day, which I can share in about a week. Hopefully I won't have to get mugged.

NOTICE: See you on the weekends

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 18:17:40 GMT

Hey. You might have noticed I'm rarely here during the week these days.

Yes, by design. Trying to keep my focus entirely on my book during the week. Hence the big one-day bursts on Saturdays and Sundays. So look for me then. (Or on Mondays when you get back to trolling the web at the office, while your boss is away. heeheehee.)

OK, better try that bigger:

LOOK FOR ME MOSTLY ON THE WEEKENDS UNTIL THIS BOOK IS DONE!

Occasionally I may stop by in an evening, if I've had a great day and deserve an indulgence, or maybe once in awhile for a quickie. (Like just now. I figured since I was here to let you know this, I could pound out a quick reaction to the Housewives.)

But hopefully you'll see a lot of self-control.

See you Saturday.

The journalist, my hero and the murderer

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 07:03:33 GMT

I had to stop reading the cover story Salon just posted after the first page.

Nothing lacking in the material, or Andrew O'Hehir's treatment of it, quite the reverse.

It's past 11, so the bookstores here are closed, but first thing in the morning, I'm hopping on my bike to snag a copy of Michael Finkel's book True Story.

The subhead of the Salon story capsulizes it expertly:

A disgraced New York Times reporter learns his identity has been stolen by an all-American hunk who killed his wife and three children. The result is the most unlikely "True Story" you'll ever read.

And then there's the starred Pub Weekly review:

In 2001, Finkel fabricated portions of an article he wrote for the New York Times Magazine. Caught and fired, he retreated to his Montana home, only to learn that a recently arrested suspected mass murderer had adopted his identity while on the run in Mexico. In this astute and hypnotically absorbing memoir, Finkel recounts his subsequent relationship with the accused, Christian Longo, and recreates not only Longo's crimes and coverups but also his own. In doing so, he offers a startling meditation on truth and deceit and the ease with which we can slip from one to the other. The narrative consists of three expertly interwoven strands. One details the decision by Finkel, under severe pressure, to lie within the Times article—ironic since the piece aimed to debunk falsehoods about rampant slavery in Africa's chocolate trade—and explores the personal consequences (loss of credibility, ensuing despair) of that decision. The second, longer strand traces Longo's life, marked by incessant lying and petty cheating, and the events leading up to the slayings of his wife and children. The third narrative strand covers Finkel's increasingly involved ties to Longo, as the two share confidences (and also lies of omission and commission) via meetings, phone calls and hundreds of pages of letters, leading up to Longo's trial and a final flurry of deceit by which Longo attempts to offload his guilt. Many will compare this mea culpa to those of Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, but where those disgraced journalists led readers into halls of mirrors, Finkel's creation is all windows. There are, notably, no excuses offered, only explanations, and there's no fuzzy boundary between truth and deceit: a lie is a lie. Because of Finkel's past transgression, it's understandable that some will question if all that's here is true; only Finkel can know for sure, but there's a burning sincerity (and beautifully modulated writing) on every page, sufficient to convince most that this brilliant blend of true-crime and memoir does live up to its bald title.

The key for me was "a burning sincerity (and beautifully modulated writing) on every page."

Which brings me to my strange connection to this man.

I've never met him or spoken to him. But when the scandal broke, I was stunned. He had just recently been christened my hero. Writing hero.

I will confess here that a glorious afternoon in Novemeber 2001 was the day I discovered The New York Times Magazine was not the piece of crap I had always assumed it must be. Here were the two key facts previously at my disposal:

1) Most of the so-called magazines inserted in Sunday newspapers are something of a joke, or at least they were when I was getting started in journalism, and I'd never gone back to see if any of that had changed.

2) As great as the reporting can be in the Times, the writing tends toward the flat, dry and artless.

So I assumed the magazine was even worse.

But then I had a story to sell and my agent assured me the Times magazine under Adam Moss ranked near the top of the heap, so I pitched it to them and they weren't quite ready to bite, but interested. So I went to the Denver library, piled up a stack of recent issues and began the dreadful task of wading through some of the stories.

My dread ended almost immediately. The writing was crisp, lively and engaging. Nearly every story. But one leapt out so far above the others, I photocopied it, tucked it into my bag and cleared a special place for it on my writing desk. From the opening line, I was transported. Every time I felt lost or drained of inspiration, I flipped through it and smiled. And remembered how great it felt to inhale wondrous writing. And every time, I found my voice again, because he reminded me what I was looking for.

He hadn't exactly knocked Nabokov off my pedestal, but he was alive and young, and traveling the world writing exactly the sort of stories I wanted to cover exactly the way I would like to be writing them, for a publication I would love to see them appear in.

The piece was sitting just a few inches from my fingertips as I sat at the computer five months later, April 14, 2002, and typed in nytimes.com to check out Frank Rich's column. The editor's note caught my eye first. The story ''Is Youssouf Malé a Slave?'' had been something of a fraud--a composite character presented as an individual. And Michael Finkel, my new hero, had been fired.

I was mad at him for awhile. For all the obvious reasons, and for depriving me of my hero and of fresh examples to inspire me. Of a career to inspire me, to aspire to. For doing it to himself. He might have become one of the great writers of our day. How could he sabotage himself like that? And why?

I talked to several journo friends about it, and they were equally baffled. I think one of them interviewed him and wrote about it, and remained baffled, though now I can't remember who.

But I was also afraid. That places like the Times magazine would be warier of trusting unproven writers like me. That the public would trust us even less than they did now. And just this odd sense of fear, that somehow I could be someday drawn into the same temptation. When a role model reveals corruption, what does that say about the person who chose him? Just bad luck, probably, but the scary little fears that I was somehow tainted or infected by the association stuck with me more than a year.

I still think about him from time to time. And that no matter what he did or why he did it, he was still an amazing writer. I figured we hadn't heard the last of him. He would probably have to give up journalism, but that would hopefully just force him into a novel, and we might soon be wading through the next Sheltering Sky.

So now this. I actually heard about the story on a plane nearly two weeks ago, but too busy to follow up till I got back to Denver this week. I could have sworn it was written up in the Vanity Fair with Angelina Jolie on the cover, but couldn't find it in there the past two days.

Kinda glad now. Read just enough tonight to know it was time to stop reading and get the book. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Update:

Got the book as planned, engrossed from the first page. He's intercutting two stories at first, and each time he cuts away from one I can hardly bear it. That's good. Very good.

Lotlita

Sun, 25 Apr 2004 22:24:23 GMT

Despite naming this blog after him, I've still never managed to get very far into the book that keeps Nabokov so damn famous.

It's not much the narrator's crime as his voice. Ugh. I just couldn't bear to listen to another word out of that pretentious bastard Humbert Humbert's mouth.

But the opening line. Yum. Don't know what knocked me into it again yesterday, but I just had to feel those words in my mouth again.

So I did, now I have them, why shouldn't you, here you go:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Nabokov for the month--Guest blogger: Denis Johnson -- no, Tim O'Brien

Thu, 22 Apr 2004 15:54:09 GMT

I know, I know. I've gotten so bad at posting the Nabokov passages I ought to be renaming it Nabokov of the Season. Too hard to admit I won't actually do better in the future.

And I did bring two dozen books with me up to Chicago this time, so that I could be surrounded by great art up here in this cold corporate townhouse, but I thought Conclusive Evidence (aka Speak, Memory) was already up here, so alas, it's left behind. Again. Damn.

If I can't quote that Nabokov, I'm not going to quote any Nabokov today.

And I've just been dying to share this passage from Denis Johnson's "Car Crash While Hitchhiking." I've read it a hundred times at least, and it still blows me away.

Censored!

In a rare act of self-censorship, I got halfway done typing it in and decided it would be in poor taste, given the main conversation in play on this blog at the moment. Whoops.

So what's going on in my head anyway, that I was driven to that passage? Aside from always being driven to it. Maybe death is on my brain this week, and I'm looking for a death story with a bit of redemption. I'm always looking for a story with redemption, but that one is prolly just a little too rough to hear for anyone too close to the Columbine story. Another time.

Let's see, my second choice was The Things They Carried. Definitely Death in the Heart week. Guess it's time to just go with it. This is the opening of the title story from the Things book, by Tim O'Brien, and my first exposure to it was deeply painful. I'll let you read it first, then explain more about my shit:

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. More than anything he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love. She was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. She often quoted lines of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself. The letters weight 10 ounces. They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Crosss understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. At dusk, he would carefully return the letters to his rucksack. Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin.

The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pokcet knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sweing kits, canteens of water. Together, these items weighted between 15 and 20 pounds, depending upon a man's habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced filed hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he'd stoen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed 5 pounds including the liner and camouflage cover. They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their feet they carried jungle boots -- 2.3 pounds -- and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl's foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RTO, carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother's distrust of the white man, his grandfather's old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in the helmet band for easy access. Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho wieghed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away.

Stunning, huh. The material itself was moving enough, but the real problem was the big steel bolt like they kill cattle with slamming into my forehead out of the blue now and then screaming, "Oh, just hang it up! You'll never pull off shit like this--remotely like this! (asshole), so just quit making an ass out of yourself and hunt down another freaking calling.

Seriously. It's debilitating.

I get over it, I guess. Not to beat this dead horse too hard, but Mike Paterniti's Columbine piece in GQ this month was so freaking dazzling I thought I might never write again, but three days later I was on the phone hawking my own Columbine story I thought I would never get my arms around.

Huh. Friday night 13 days ago, I was riding home on a plane balling my eyes out on the plane, this time crying first and foremost over the material because I've spent five years so close to it, but aching harder and harder in my soul at my unworthiness to ever create something approaching it. And I had had the chance to approach it! This was my story, I could have written the very piece if I'd had the clarity to do it. I had actually worked with him, I had helped him select some of the subjects, I had every opportunity to do this, but had I ever done anything in five years that captured even a whiff of what he brought to these people, these events, this legacy?

No sir. I had been so blind where he had been so perceptive. I thought I could never write about Columbine again, and I shoved the magazine into my backpack with a page left to go just before landing, wiped my eyes clean so the whole freaking plane didn't see me bawling, and the flight attendants didn't question me on the jetway about being having been assaulted, and finally put to rest any dreams of ever writing a book about this. I could never write about Columbine again.

I called him the next day to tell him how extraordinary it was, but he was out and I left a message. He's such a nice guy, he left a really gracious msg back on my machine, which he didn't have to do, because he's this famous A-list writer and I'm just this struggler, but we talked on Tuesday, and suddenly I was inspired again. Five days after swearing off the story forever, I was pitching it hard to Slate.

I guess that's why I read opening to this story over and over and over. Still doesn't seem possible to write anything equally worthy, but I just can't resist the urge to bash my skull with that big steel bolt to see what might happen this time. Just never know what those bolts will do to you.

God, am I late for work.

Don't ever tell anybody anything . . .

Sun, 15 Feb 2004 16:41:11 GMT

. . . You'll only start missing them.

Obviously, I don't subscribe to that sentiment, since I tell you people everything.

It's my favorite ending line ever, though, even if it's actually two lines, and not just because it's the sweetest, most heart-breaking story I've ever read. I still can't decide whether Conclusive Evidence is the better book, but Catcher in the Rye will always be the one I'm in love with.

Before I ever figured out how to fall in love with a human being, I fell in love with that story. That was the day I found out I wasn't alone. I'll never be alone, because so many people felt their heart torn open by Holden Caulfield--only somebody growing up feeling that way could have been so affected.

Oh, there I go again. I'm not allowed to write about Holden usually, cause I just get soppy and messy and say the same damn things every time. Did I ever mention that he's one of only two literary characters ever I think of as an actual person. Think I'll ever write anyone that vivid some day? That moving?

I love that closing, though, because he obviously doesn't mean not to do it--he just told us everything--but he does mean he misses everybody, and that's the first time he can come so close to admitting it. And at the start of his rant two hundred pages before, he would have believed the opposite: he wouldn't tell anyone anything and he wouldn't miss them a bit if he did. That little boy breaks my heart every time I think of him.

I'm feeling kind of wistful this morning, because I forgot to sleep last night, and because I met this remarkable guy who reminded me unintentionally that I keep forgetting to read. Read enough. Look how deliquent I've been on posting your Nabokovs for the week. I rushed home to get my fix of Nabokov, but I'm staying with my sister, and she carries none in the house.

I'm jonesing. I want a hit of Denis Johnson, actually, but I'm having to live off fumes. My heart moans every time I hear that last line, because he doesn't believe it, obviously, since he just told us everything, but it almost killed him to do it, but he only found solace once he did.

I wonder how Conclusive Evidence ends. I did name this site after it, but I still haven't managed to finish it. I'm terrified of it all being gone. I have six more pages to go on In Cold Blood, too. Just can't bring myself to drink the last drop. I don't do this consciously of course, I just noticing myself doing it and I don't have the heart to take it from me.

I want to write something. Something good. It's been too long, I'm getting restless.

I'm starting to like this healthcare consulting again, it's getting much better, but it's keeping me from my true love. Maybe in a few weeks I can start carving out a little time to write again. I'll try to make it something worthy.

Surprise appearance

Thu, 29 Jan 2004 16:40:34 GMT

Yes, you know my mood has shifted when Nabokov re-enters these waters.

I'm psychically a little exhausted with politics for the moment--don't worry, I'll be charged up for Dean again 20 minutes from now--and I thought I was revving up again for Survivor (wrote a whole spiel on it in my head in bed this morning--that's what I'm doing up already), but somehow when I wasn't looking my old little Russian friend snuck back on board.

You know that means I'm itching to write. Don't know what, don't know how, don't know when I'll possibly cram it in, but something's getting ready to pop out of me. I hope. I hope I find the time to widwife it.

But you have no idea how giddy it makes me.

Nabokov for the quarter

Thu, 29 Jan 2004 15:41:36 GMT

These entries were supposed to be weekly, but I'm so utterly far behind.

Sorry to deprive you of your rightful dose of Nabokov.

I guess you deserve something special, so I'm going to treat you to my third-favorite opening sentence of any novel, of all time, that I have encountered. In this case, it's also the first paragraph.

From Laughter in the Dark, Chapter 1:

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.

Heeheehee. Pretty ballsy opening, huh? That's the whole book, that's all that's going to happen. For two hundred ninety two pages.

Hard to imagine how he could milk such a slight story so that long, hard to imagine why we would want to endure it.

And then he plunges into one of the most riveting and delicious tales you'll be lucky enough to experience in this lifetime.

The story doesn't require that first sentence, but I love the lesson in literature it inspires. (I know lesson is a dirty word, but it didn't soil itself--it's the long, ugly line of narrow-minded schoolmarms who have been pooping on the concept since the early invention of the schoolhouse. But if you can't get over the eat-your-brocoli connotation, try this one: "The story doesn't require that first sentence, but looking back on it once you've gobbled up the story, it will mesmerize you with the vision of a whole new conception of art--writing by direct illustration, all other art by extension. I still get tingles from it ten years later. Giggles, too." How's that? More appealing? That's what I said, you'll love the lesson it inspires.)

Four basic plot points, 292 pages. And not a single moment of padding. Read this book and I dare you to come back here and show me the extra word you found squeezed in. That's right, that's what they built this comment section for, and it will alert me with an email if it takes you two years and you think I've forgotten. I can wait. And I dare you.

These books, these wonderful books, they seem to be packed with so incredibly much, and they are packed with ideas and images and insights and individuals . . . But not so much really has to happen.

Romeo and Juliet: "Two kids who fall in love, their families get pissed, they try to hide it, screw up the plan and end up killing themselves."

It's all in the telling.

---

And if you're pissed at me for giving away the whole story, check out the second sentence/paragraph:

That is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome.

Is it ever. But is he illustrating how rich the story is behind the surface or how rich the human?

Human, story, do you see a difference?

Nabokov for the week

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 07:15:02 GMT

Speaking of Nabokov, I've been incredibly delinquent, haven't I?

Here's a brief passage. I always underline the physical descriptions when a character is first introduced, because it remains my greatest weakness. I flipped for a moment through Conclusive Evidence to find one, and this one jumped out at me:

Nominally, the housekeeping was in the hands of her former nurse, at that time a bleary, incredibly wrinkled old woman (born a slave around 1830) with the small face of a melancholy tortoise and big shuffling feet. She wore a nunnish brown dress and gave off a slight but unforgettable smell of coffee and decay.

If Jean Genet could write like that! If I could. Someday.

More guilty pleasuring to The OC

Thu, 13 Nov 2003 06:34:17 GMT

I'm still kind of embarassed to admit I like The OC, but it really does enthrall me. I'm way behind, though. It wasn't going to be on for a month, so I kept putting off watching it. I'm always scared not to have anymore of something. I still have five pages left to read in In Cold Blood, because I can't bear not to have anymore. I actually have two unread chapters in Conclusive Evidence, the freaking book I named this blog after. Just love it too much to spend every word.

But now the OCs have been piling up, I think I had five left to see, so I watched one each of the past two nights. Didn't cry like the first couple episodes, but did come close once, at an unlikely moment. It's kind of annoying the plot gynmastics they keep putting these characters through, but I'm falling in love with nearly all the main characters, and the dialogue is joy to behold. (The banter is starting to remind me of the first few seasons of Gilmore Girls.)

And that boy--that 25-year-old man playing a boy, Benjamin McKenzie Schenkkan. That boy. Not just dreamy to look at, the kid will break your heart. He won't be doing TV much longer. As long as the OC contract lasts, I'll wager, then he'll make the leap to the big screen.

I guess I ought to spell out why I love it again, but I did that already in August, and then expanded on it three days later. Same reasons. And I'm too worn out to think that hard. Tonight, I just wanted to share a little of my affection.

Nabokov for the week: Guest blogger, J.D. Salinger

Mon, 08 Sep 2003 08:55:38 GMT

My dirty little secret of Nabokov is I can never decide whether Conclusive Evidence is really my favorite book or not. Best writing, for sure, by a landslide, but my heart always wants to go this other way.

I used to keep this printed on a page up above my monitor. Now there's only air above my monitor, which is just far too hard to adhere paper to:

Anyway I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around -- nobody big, I mean -- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.

No one should be allowed to write that well. Who could ever do that again?

Nabokov for the week: Guest blogger, Tim O'Brien

Fri, 22 Aug 2003 19:32:39 GMT

I am so behind on providing your weekly dose of Nabokov. So sorry. And something must be up in St. Petersburg, because another guest author has had to step in again today to perk your day up with lovely dispatches from a foreign land. In honor of Reichen's victory, we take you to a military scene today, the opening paragraph of the extraordinary book, The Things They Carried. It will be my pleasure to transcribe it:

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love. She was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. She often quoted lines of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself. The letters weighed 10 ounces. They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. At dusk, he would carefully return the letters to his rucksack. Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin.

Something, isn't he (Tim O'Brien). Nice way into a Vietnam horror show. I'm usually one for plunging right in, but Southeast Asia is a place readers might be hesitant to join him--what a perfect way to draw us across that ocean. My favorite moment was him tasting the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. What a tiny exquisite touch.

The next paragraph plunges you much more vividly into the battlefield itself, but always in terms of the things they carried. What an incredible way to illustrate what was really important to each of these people: Weight was everything when you were humping miles every day, and the non-essentials that you dragged along just because you needed them--because for you, they were essential--revealed everything about your character.

An extraordinary piece of work.

Nabokov for the week

Mon, 11 Aug 2003 07:26:44 GMT

I know, I know, it's been way more than a week, and you must be jonesing for some Nabokov, so I'll make it a good one. From the first chapter of Conclusive Evidence, one of his earliest memories:

Judging by the strong sunlight that, when I think of that revelation, immediately invades my memory with lobed sun flecks through overlapping patterns of greenery, the occasion may have been my mother’s birthday, in late summer, in the country, and I had asked questions and had assessed the answers I received.

I was given a tremendously invigorating shock. As if subjected to a second baptism, on more divine lines than the Greek Catholic ducking undergone fifty months earlier by a howling, half-drowned half-Victor, I felt myself plunged abruptly into a radiant and mobile medium that was none other than the pure element of time. One shared it—just as excited bathers share shining seawater—with creatures that were not oneself but that were joined to one by time’s common flow, an environment quite different from the spatial world, which not only man but apes and butterflies can perceive. At that instant, I became acutely aware that the twenty-seven-year-old being, in soft white and pink, holding my left hand, was my mother, and that the thirty-three-year-old being, in hard white and gold, holding my right hand, was my father. . . . ; but now my father’s attire, the resplendent uniform of the Horse Guards, with that smooth golden swell of cuirass burning upon his chest and back, came out like the sun, and for several years afterward I remained keenly interested in the age of my parents and kept myself informed about, like a nervous passenger asking the time in order to check a new watch.

To a joke, then, I owe my first gleam of complete conciousness—which again has recapitulatory implications, since the first creatures on earth to become aware of time were also the first creatures to smile.

I don't know about you, but I liked it, liked it, suddenly fell in love with it as he got to the resplendent uniform with the golden cuirass burning upon his chest and back and coming out like the sun. Then the switch to its effect on him, watching his parents like a nervous passenger--just makes my heart ache.

How will I ever top that?

Nabokov for the week: Guest blogger, Denis Johnson

Fri, 25 Jul 2003 16:57:29 GMT

It's Friday, so I'm now four days late on feeding your Navokov habit. And not one complaint. You people. You really need to stay on me.

And it turns out Vladimir is still on vacation, so Denis Johnson has agreed to guest blog. Don't be put off by the title of Denis' incredible novel (or linked short stories if you prefer to view them that way). It's called "Jesus' Son," but the title comes from a Lou Reed song, and the protagonist narrator is a heroin addict. In today's passage, from the wistful "Beverly Home" chapter/story, he has settled into a part-time job at the Home as part of his recovery process:

There was a guy with something like multiple sclerosis. A perpetual spasm forced him to perch sideways on his wheelchair and peer down along his nose at his knotted fingers. This condition had descended on him suddenly. He got no visitors. His wife was divorcing him. He was only thirty-three, I believe he said, but it was hard to guess what he told about himself, because he really couldn't talk anymore, beyond clamping his lips repeatedly around his protruding tongue while groaning.

No more pretending for him! He was completely and totally a mess. Meanwhile the rest of us go on trying to fool each other.

Ah, to write just one paragraph like that, ever. Brings me to the verge of tears every time. Not out of sadness, awe.

I find the world such a delight to participate (frolic? what's a less queeny term for frolic?) in because we're all so freaking comical at our attempts to fool each other. The real joke is watching people convince themselves they're succeeding. (Please don't mistake this for bitterness. It really brings a smirk to my face, nearly every time.) But nothing is funner than seeing Denis Johnson, stumbling around over by the curtain like a derelict, suddenly grab hold with both hands and rip the thing right off the rods. He's so deceptively sloshed over there getting ready to yank, you barely even notice him except to avoid accidental eye contact.

Go buy this book today. Great movie, too. Billy Crudup plays him perfectly. And you can see it first without spoiling the book, because the language is everything and there's no way to prepare you for it.

Does the pic shut it down?

Mon, 14 Jul 2003 20:19:25 GMT

I just posted something, just below--don't look yet!--composed of a favorite poetic passage, the picture it inspires in me, and an explanation about their interaction. But once it posted on the website, I read through the lines again, it worked completely differently with the picture. That is, it failed to work. The metaphors refuse to materialize on my internal projection screen when the concrete image is right there alongside trumping them.

So I'm reposting just the passage here, for two reasons:

1. For reasons which should be obvious if and when you read the second post--not yet!--I couldn't bear to take the picture down. But I didn't want to deprive you the wonder of enjoying those words unfettered again either.

2. I'm curious whether this is a universal (or at least common) reaction. If you read both posts (this one first!--are you listening?), please click on the comments tag (in this post, preferably), and let us know if the picture also shut down the visualization of the metaphors for you. (Or does that only happen when the picture represents the embodiment of the poetry to the individual reading it?)

Here's the original passage, with the original title and introduction:

Nabokov for the week--Guest blogger, William S.

In the whole wide world of literature, that I know of, so far, there's one little passage I admire more than anything written by our good friend Vladimir--that I know of, so far.

So making a very special one-time-only guest blogging appearance--offering a slight variation of the usual text, explained down below at the second asterisk**--may I present the master of the word usement, our slightly more foreign* friend William S:

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,

Having some business, do entreat his eyes

To twinkle in their spheres till they return.

What if his eyes were there, they in his head?

The brightness of his cheek would shame those stars

As daylight doth a lamp; his eye in heaven

Would through the airy region stream so bright

That birds would sing and think it were not night.

Nabokov for the week--Guest blogger, William S.

Mon, 14 Jul 2003 18:40:26 GMT

In the whole wide world of literature, that I know of, so far, there's one little passage I admire more than anything written by our good friend Vladimir--that I know of, so far.

Two of the fairest stars in all of heaven,

Having some business, do entreat his eyes

To twinkle in their spheres till they return.

What if his eyes were there, they in his head?

The brightness of his cheek would shame those stars

As daylight doth a lamp; his eye in heaven

Would through the airy region stream so bright

That birds would sing and think it were not night.

* Nabokov may have been born in Russia, but he's far less foreign to me than Shakespeare. Apparently time is thicker than space.

** It may be sacrilege to some of you, but yes, I flipped it around to read to a man. Because in my little head, I am reading it to a man. Because . . .

I had no intention of doing this as I started typing, but those lines always make a mess of me, and now the keyboard's all soaked and . . .

And of course my thoughts ran straight to that boy who walked out of my life again May 16th. No chance of getting back with him, because we don't belong together, but I do still love him, so one last time I'm going to dedicate that passage to him. There he is pictured in a happy moment last Halloween. (I cropped myself out of the shot, because this passage is just about him, not the two of us, and it just did not seem right to squeeze me in there with him. I'm going to post the full pic shortly at a new pix page on my author site here.)

So I just couldn't bear all the hers in there beside a picture of him. Too many people would read it way too literally, and I get enough of that "girl" shit from gayboys already; he's never been a girl to me, just a guy who luckily likes to love men. Besides, when I'd sit up in bed in the morning and beg him to let me read it again--giving him a rare break from all the Nabokov passages and the Catcher in the Rye ending over and over again--I always changed the hers for him then. That's how it reads in my head, so that's how I'm displaying it here. You can change it back in your own head; this one's just for him and me.

Want to see my favorites (from the previous post)?

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 07:32:35 GMT

Read the whole passage first. You'll be really annoyed by my highlights if you plunge right ahead. At least I would be.

That passage leaves me gaping. Only one or two hundred in the book do that to me, which is why I revere it so. Certain phrases leap out at me, though, fill me with awe, and I always wonder if they are the same moments that do it to the rest of you.

So I'm going to highlight my moments--color them maroon, I guess (with bold for an especially bright moment within a larger). Feel free to jump in with your own. Or challenge any of mine:

With the help of some grown-up person, who would use first both hands and then a powerful leg, the divan would be moved several inches away from the wall, so as to form a narrow passage which I would be further helped to roof snugly with the divan's bolsters and close up at the ends with a couple of its cushions. I then had the fantastic pleasure of creeping through that pitch-dark tunnel, where I lingered a little to listen to the singing in my ears—that lonesome vibration so familiar to small boys in dusty hiding places—and then, in a burst of delicious panic, on rapidly thudding hands and knees I would reach the tunnel’s far end, push its cushion away, and be welcomed by a mesh of sunshine on the parquet under the canework of a Viennese chair and two gamesome flies settling by turns. A dreamier and more delicious sensation was provided by another cave game, when upon awakening in the early morning I made a tent of my bedclothes and let my imagination play in a thousand dim ways with shadowy snowslides of linen and with the faint light that seemed to penetrate my penumbral covert from some immense distance, where I fancied that strange, pale animals roamed in a landscape of lakes. The recollection of my crib, with its lateral nets of fluffy cotton cords, brings back, too, the pleasure of handling a certain beautiful, delightfully solid, garnet-dark crystal egg left over from some unremembered Easter: I used to chew a corner of the bedsheet until it was thoroughly soaked and then wrap the egg in it tightly, so as to admire and re-lick the warm, ruddy glitter of the snugly enveloped facets that came seeping through with a miraculous completeness of glow and color. But that was not yet the closest I got to feeding upon beauty.

Today's Nabokov

Fri, 20 Jun 2003 07:22:18 GMT

From Conclusive Evidence, pp. 23-24 (Chapter One--he's about 5):

With the help of some grown-up person, who would use first both hands and then a powerful leg, the divan would be moved several inches away from the wall, so as to form a narrow passage which I would be further helped to roof snugly with the divan's bolsters and close up at the ends with a couple of its cushions. I then had the fantastic pleasure of creeping through that pitch-dark tunnel, where I lingered a little to listen to the singing in my ears—that lonesome vibration so familiar to small boys in dusty hiding places—and then, in a burst of delicious panic, on rapidly thudding hands and knees I would reach the tunnel’s far end, push its cushion away, and be welcomed by a mesh of sunshine on the parquet under the canework of a Viennese chair and two gamesome flies settling by turns. A dreamier and more delicious sensation was provided by another cave game, when upon awakening in the early morning I made a tent of my bedclothes and let my imagination play in a thousand dim ways with shadowy snowslides of linen and with the faint light that seemed to penetrate my penumbral covert from some immense distance, where I fancied that strange, pale animals roamed in a landscape of lakes. The recollection of my crib, with its lateral nets of fluffy cotton cords, brings back, too, the pleasure of handling a certain beautiful, delightfully solid, garnet-dark crystal egg left over from some unremembered Easter: I used to chew a corner of the bedsheet until it was thoroughly soaked and then wrap the egg in it tightly, so as to admire and re-lick the warm, ruddy glitter of the snugly enveloped facets that came seeping through with a miraculous completeness of glow and color. But that was not yet the closest I got to feeding upon beauty.

Wow. Even Shakespeare had to struggle for word usements that great.