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The first novel Nabokov wrote while living in America and the most overtly political novel he ever wrote, Bend Sinister is a modern classic. While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay,
it is, first and foremost, a haunting and com-
pelling narrative about a civilized man and his child caught up in the tyranny of a police state. Professor Adam Krug, the country's foremost philosopher, offers the only hope of resistance to Paduk, dictator and leader of the Party of the Average Man. In a folly of bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude, the gov-
ernment attempts to co-opt Krug's support in order to validate the new regime.
One of the twentieth century's master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.
"Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." — John Updike
Filled with veiled puns and outrageous wordplay, this work is a haunting narrative about a civilized man caught in the tyranny of a police state.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Cory Karnthaler
reviewed Bend Sinister on November 29, 2008
Bend Sinister
It's interesting to compare Bend Sinister with 1984. (Nabokov didn't much like Orwell, and thought he was a hack). Orwell's take on totalitarianism, is, roughly, that it's evil. Nabokov's is more that it's terminally stupid. Even when the rulers of the State would actually prefer to get things right, they've fucked up their minds with nonsensical ideology to the point where they're no longer capable of coherent thought. I wonder whether Nabokov wasn't closer to the truth. In the end, the Soviet Union's collapse seems to be have been, more than anything, due to the simple fact that nothing worked any more.
Nabokov suggests that the process starts with dishonesty about artistic choices. There's a very funny passage near the beginning of this book, describing a politically correct version of Hamlet in which things have been reorganized so that Fortinbras is the hero. It's a nice metaphor for what's wrong with the whole system. The scene where Adam is trying to cross the bridge is also a fine piece of black humor. But things rapidly stop being so amusing, and the ending is very tragic indeed.
I recall a quote from Viktor Korchnoi that I've always liked. He's trying to explain why chess was so popular in the Soviet Union, and says it's because, try as they would, no one was ever able to define what a bourgeois chess move might be. Think about that for a moment.
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