The Killing Joke - Alan Moore and Brian Bolland

The Killing Joke is not a graphic novel in the same sense as The Dark Knight Returns.  For one, it is about 40 pages long.  It is basically like one-quarter of The Dark Knight Returns.  Having said that, it's arguably better than any one of the four parts of that book.


The story is short and sweet and to the point and while I was afraid of "spoiling" The Dark Knight Returns, and therefore didn't want to even name the villains that Batman faces in that story, I have mentioned it to several people and most of them just admit that they'll never read it anyways, why don't I just tell them?  I do, but I'm doing them a disservice.  They don't know what they're missing.


I was going to buy The Killing Joke until I saw that it was $18 and could be read in one sitting at Barnes & Noble.  One night last week en route to picking up some take-out on a Friday night, I sat down up against the window of second floor B&N in downtown Evanston and ran through the book in about 30-45 minutes. It's brilliantly written, hilarious, very sad, slightly heartwarming, and perverted as hell.  Once again, definitely not a book for little kids.


What is most interesting is that the story is basically the Joker's, and Batman plays more of a supporting role.  Literally!  


The story opens up with Batman saying, "You know, I really, really don't want to, but one of these days, one of us is going to have to kill the other." (Note: I may be conflating this line with The Dark Night Returns, but the idea that Batman sympathizes with the Joker to a certain degree is accurate.)  Batman really doesn't hate the Joker as much as he does in other stories.  What he feels for him is more akin to pity.  And the opening of the story certainly lends a sympathetic air to the Joker.  



This is because it tells his "origin story" and it's so sad.  This is what makes The Killing Joke a real masterpiece (even though Alan Moore later said that he did not think it was very good, and even though most people agree that it does not rise to the level of Moore's other 3 famous graphic novels - Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen--all of which have been turned into movies ranging from mildly disappointing to downright disastrous).  


The Killing Joke is, in a sense, "turned into a movie" if one combines Batman (1989) and The Dark Knight (2008).  There was much talk in The Dark Knight about how you could not be sure of the Joker's true origin--but Batman left nothing to the imagination.  I think the truth is that it's a combination of the two.


First, yes, the Joker was married.  However, he did not cut his wife's face.  (He does disfigure Alicia, in Batman, but that is irrelevant here).  Instead, he works as an engineer at Axis Chemicals, and he decides that he wants to do what he really loves--which is to make people laugh.  So he quits his job and starts trying to work as a stand-up comedian--and is a horrible failure at it.  In one scene, he and his wife (who has recently become pregnant) sit in a restaurant and dwell upon their impoverished life since he quit his job.  Needing money, he decides to accept an offer from the Mob, who want him to help them break into a building next door to Axis Chemicals (note: I am lifting this is off of Wikipedia--my memory is not so sharp and I don't own the book--but apparently it's a "card company"--now one would assume that means credit cards, but it could actually be a card manufacturing facility, which is certainly more appropriate).  


Then, the police informs him that his wife has just died in an accident.  The Mob forces him to go forward with their plan even though he has been traumatized.  They put a Red Hood on him apparently to disguise him (though it seems more like a trope used to reference the real introduction of the Joker in Batman comic books--in 1951 in the issue "The Man Behind the Red Hood.").  Batman comes in to save the day, and the Mob is dispersed, but "Red Hood" is left standing there.  Having just lost his wife and unborn child, having lost out on the money he was going to get from the job, being a failure as a comedian, being trapped in a corner by Batman, he decides to commit suicide into a vat of acid.


Second, yes, the Joker was disfigured in a vat of acid.  While this does not explain his scars in The Dark Knight, this is a story that I like much better, because of how the rest unfolds.  The Joker, now in present day, decides to play a "big joke" on Gotham City.  The set-up for that Joke is to break into Commissioner Gordon's home.


He breaks in, and he kidnaps his daughter (who is perhaps in her late-teens to mid-twenties--it's unclear).  He takes her into a room, strips her naked, cuts her, and takes pictures of her being tortured.  Commissioner Gordon is also kidnapped and brought to a funhouse.  He is also stripped naked and put into a "freakshow" cage and forced to watch a slide-show of the torture of his daughter.  After only a short while, he goes insane.  This is the Joke: if a person is just pushed and pushed and pushed--just hard enough--they can cross the line from sanity to insanity.  


It is here--when Batman arrives--that the real theme of the story emerges: all it takes is "one bad day" to drive someone insane for the rest of their life.  Some people can be redeemed--like Batman.  And some people cannot.  But Batman believes that the Joker has to have a chance.  After Batman arrives and frees Commissioner Gordon and reunites him with his daughter, the Commissioner tells him not to kill the Joker but to bring him in to "show him the way we do things."


At this point the stage is set for the final scene, with the Joker taunting Batman that perhaps his madness is also attributable to "one bad day."  He then claims that there is nothing worth living for and gives a short speech about the virtues of nihilism and tells Batman "the Joke."


"See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum... and one night, one night they decide they don't like living in an asylum any more. They decide they're going to escape! So, like, they get up onto the roof, and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away in the moon light... stretching away to freedom. Now, the first guy, he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend didn't dare make the leap. Y'see... Y'see, he's afraid of falling. So then, the first guy has an idea... He says 'Hey! I have my flashlight with me! I'll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk along the beam and join me!' B-but the second guy just shakes his head. He suh-says... He says 'Wh-what do you think I am? Crazy? You'd turn it off when I was half way across!"


The ending has been open to speculation, but I think I am reasonably sure of the way it ends.  Note that I would recommend both The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns very highly--but that The Killing Joke should be read first.  Philosophically, I think it is the most interesting story in the bunch, and since the Joker has always been my favorite character (indeed I will play him in Batman in Brooklyn) I am naturally drawn to this book.  As the present-day Joker and the "pre-suicide" Joker are presented alongside one another, one feels sympathy for the character in one instant, where all he cares about is taking care of his wife and making people laugh, and one feels derision (or maybe, catharsis?) as he mutilates and takes pictures and does who-knows-what else to the Commissioner's daughter.  This duality then, compared with Batman, who is psychologically "one" with the Joker, but morally opposed to his view of life--who takes his bitterness out on the world, making it a more miserable place, rather than trying to make it a better place by ridding it of such evils--makes the story something of a meditation on  human existence.


I was not going to pay $18 for the deluxe edition, but I would consider getting Alan Moore's DC Universe compilation, as this is apparently included in it, and it is a story that I would like to revisit some day in the future.  This has also been a very pleasurable "research" experience, as I hope to utilize some elements from both The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke in Batman in Brooklyn.  I may go back to Barnes & Noble today and read some more Batman comic books, actually.  That sounds like a pretty good idea, yeah....

Imperial Bedrooms - Bret Easton Ellis

A genuine literary event.

That is what it says at the bottom of the front jacket cover for this book, underneath a general description of the plot, which is this: the sequel to Less Than Zero, twenty-five years later. Clay is a screenwriter, who is interested in a girl, and he tries to get this girl a part in the new movie he's producing. Plus Blair, Julian, and Rip are back from the original.

But calling it "a genuine literary event" seems, I don't know, desperate?

And all of the praise on the back seems nice, until you realize it is for Lunar Park. Then maybe you venture over to Amazon to check the reviews to see if it will be worth the investment in a hardcover edition--and you see the reviews are scathing. And you wonder, oh great, what did I get myself into.

But I am here to tell you that you do not need to be worried--those reviews are wrong. This book is good. It may not deliver on every single level that every reader could possibly desire, but it is not a bad book. It is not poorly written, as much as amateur critics may point towards nonexistent complexity of language, poor, vague description, and meaningless run-on sentencing. It is a different sort of book in the same way that Lunar Park was. Obviously, it's not the classic that Less Than Zero is, or even up to the level of The Rules of Attraction, and of course its scope pales in comparison to American Psycho (which I haven't even read to the end) or Glamorama (which I think is the real masterpiece in his oeuvre, thus far). It's better than The Informers, and I like it better than Lunar Park, I think, though that book had moments.

Why is it so similar to Lunar Park? Because the theme is the same: paranoia. In that novel, it may be imagined, and it is played for horror. In this novel, it is not imagined, and it is played for mystery. If Lunar Park is BEE doing Stephen King, then Imperial Bedrooms is BEE doing Raymond Chandler. Aside from paranoia, and genre-hopping, Ellis pokes more fun at himself in the opening segment of the novel. In Lunar Park, it is one of the most dazzling sequences of any of his books, re-telling the history of his literary career, and the various lies and half-truths that have been told about him over the years. In Imperial Bedrooms, it is a parallel segment relating the history of Less Than Zero--except Clay is claiming that it all really happened, and none of their names were changed, and the author was someone they knew. Ellis takes advantage of the opportunity to critique the adaptation of his debut:

"In the movie I was played by an actor who actually looked more like me than the character the author portrayed in the book: I wasn't blond, I wasn't tan, and neither was the actor. I also suddenly became the movie's moral compass, spouting AA jargon, castigating everyone's drug use and trying to save Julian. ('I'll sell my car,' I warn the actor playing Julian's dealer. 'Whatever it takes.') This was slightly less true of the adaptation of Blair's character, played by a girl who actually seemed like she belonged in our group--jittery, sexually available, easily wounded. Julian became the sentimentalized version of himself, acted by a talented, sad-faced clown, who has an affair with Blair and then realizes he has to let her go because I was his best bud. 'Be good to her,' Julian tells Clay. 'She really deserves it.' The sheer hypocrisy of this scene must have made the author blanch. (7)

And then more obvious differences:

"The reason the movie dropped everything that made the novel real was because there was no way the parents who ran the studio would ever expose their children in the same black light the book did. The movie was begging for our sympathy whereas the book didn't give a shit. And attitudes about drugs and sex had shifted quickly from 1985 to 1987 (and a regime change at the studio didn't help) so the source material--surprisingly conservative despite its surface immorality--had to be reshaped. The best way to look at the movie was as modern eighties noir--the cinematography was breathtaking--and I sighed as it kept streaming forward, interested in only a few things: the new and gentle details of my parents mildly amused me, as did Blair finding her divorced father with his girlfriend on Christmas Eve instead of with a boy named Jared (Blair's father died of AIDS in 1992 while still married to Blair's mother). But the thing I remember most about that screening in October twenty years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separating our seats. He did this because in the book Julian Wells lived but in the movie's new scenario he had to die. He had to be punished for all of his sins. That's what the movie demanded." (8)

And here is a good opportunity to talk about spoilers: many of the reviews on Amazon say they are not spoiling anything by revealing two different plot points of this novel--but they are. In the same way they're idiots for calling the book a piece of crap, they're idiots for saying they're not spoiling anything (...because you wouldn't want to waste your time anyways, etc.)

Clay is in his mid-40's, splitting time between New York and L.A., and recently returned to L.A. for the casting of his new film The Listeners. It is perhaps worth noting that this is more L.A.-centric than anything Ellis has done since Less Than Zero. The city is used in almost every paragraph of the story. Angelenos will find Ellis's choice settings appropriate for the tone of the novel, and that they add another layer of enjoyment. By page 100, it seems clear that Ellis is writing a mystery novel in the tradition of Chandler or James Cain, and the L.A. setting circa 2008 or 2009 is a wonderful update on that sixty or seventy-year-old geographically-centered story.

Most of the plot hinges around one of the girls auditioning for a part in this movie--Rain Turner--and the mystery of her former employment, ex-boyfriends, and general lifestyle. It's a bit mundane--perhaps not all that imaginative--and there is a line near the end of the novel that seems to poke fun at how cookie-cutter/predictable the plot becomes--but even with that, it is surprising enough to keep reading.

Most importantly, Ellis delivers magic with this book: in a way that none of his other books have since, he captures the pace and intensity of the prose of Less Than Zero and puts it to use in a new narrative with old characters. Towards the end, again, there seem to be a few scenes that are reminiscent of the first novel, and this has something of a disquieting effect. The big relief though is that Ellis does not mess it up. Like the Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm, there can be a lot of doubt about the point of bringing back once-popular characters. And maybe there's no point to Imperial Bedrooms, but I don't see it as an opportunity to cash in on Robert Downey Jr.'s reinvigoration, or to reflect upon the passing of Michael Jackson and John Hughes and 80's nostalgia. No, it writes a new chapter in the previous book, and while its story is nowhere near as fresh and original as the first, it's still a pretty good story: tell me that a film adaptation of Imperial Bedrooms with the original actors from Less Than Zero would not be one of the coolest things ever done.

But people in Hollywood are idiots, and one of the good things about this book is the way it casually acknowledges that. To sum things up, the best thing about Imperial Bedrooms is the way the pace matches Less Than Zero. This is a short book at around 170 pages, but for nearly half of it, let's say between pages 60 and 130, I didn't want to put it down.

And it should be clear at this point why most people like to trash Ellis--you either get it or you don't. You either love him or hate him. People that trash him don't get him. People that trash him might quote the passage I am about to quote and call it a perfect example of why his writing is terrible. Of course, I am quoting it to show the opposite, how a casual epiphany can come out of a commonplace situation:

"Dr. Woolf leaves a message on my landline canceling tomorrow's session and telling me that he can't see me as a patient anymore but that he'll refer me to someone else and the next morning I drive to the building on Sawtelle and park on the fourth floor of the garage and wait for his noon session to be over because that's when he takes his lunch break and I'm listening to a song with the lyric So leave everything you know and carry only what you fear...over and over again and I'm nodding to myself while smoking cigarettes and making a list of all the things I'm not going to ask Rain about and deciding I'll accept all the false explanations she's going to give me and how that's the only plan, and then I'm remembering the person who warned me about how the world has to be a place where no one is interested in your questions and that if you're alone nothing bad can happen to you." (107)

That is all one sentence but I happen to think it is a very good one. And while I totally acknowledge that this book is not a masterpiece, that Ellis has done better, there are totally memorable moments in this novel that will exist comfortably alongside previous ones. I'd rather read Less Than Zero again (especially since my copy was lost)--because that book, more than any other book, can be viewed as a guide to writing your very own breakout novel--but Imperial Bedrooms is a nice treat. You can read it even if you haven't read Less Than Zero, but it helps.

I'm just sad that I'll probably have to wait until I am 30 to read a new book by Bret Easton Ellis. He has continued with his relative consistency, and has not done anything to make me lose any interest in his work. If I were Ellis, I would want to write a Pulitzer-worthy, six-hundred page piece de resistance for publication around my fiftieth birthday, to silence all doubters and haters, but it seems too easy. Perhaps people want to criticize Ellis for not attempting to write a masterpiece here--but he has accomplished something that many in the "industry" often fail at: he's delivered a sequel that isn't disappointing. Who knows if he is going to go back to writing longer books, or books that get mentioned as the best of the year, and who cares. He's about as commercial as you can get, as far as fiction writers go, but I don't consider him a sell-out in the least, and maybe that is what continues to impress me about him.

Closer - Dennis Cooper

We follow up one re-read with another in what will not be a continuing trend (our next item is the much-anticipated Imperial Bedrooms, referenced quite a long time ago on Flying Houses, here http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2009/05/informers-bret-easton-ellis.html?) with Closer, what could be considered Dennis Cooper's breakout novel, published in 1989. This preceded Frisk, and later Try. They form a trilogy which can be considered his strongest work.

In the same way Ziggy is the central figure of Try, George Miles is at the center of Closer. However, the story is not as narrowly-focused, which distracts, but also allows the work to delve into a few experimental episodes that coalesce and form its own unique symmetry. There are eight relatively short chapters in 131 pages with seven narrators, or protagonists in what could be considered short stories, all of which link. This is definitely a novel, though.

John, where the novel starts, draws portraits of his classmates, and gets involved physically with them. He meets George Miles, who takes several tabs of acid every day and smokes grass in between and keeps a shrine to Disneyland in his bedroom. Sex ensues, thoughts of violence ensue, and then they end up meeting a punk who goes with them into a purportedly haunted house and then later the punk describes his predicament:

"'Hurt me,' he yelled in a hoarse voice. 'Fuck me up and I'll never forget you. I really fucking love violence. I want to tell all my friends what we did so they'll hate me or call me a fag or whatever, but fuck them. I'm not a poser like they are. I want to do everything so when I die they'll say I lived and tell bad jokes about me but who cares. I like getting crazy and you seem okay. Anyway, why not?'" (10)

The second chapter is narrated by David, who believes he is a pop star, or fantasizes about it often enough to become his fractured reality. The novel shifts its tone and voice drastically in this chapter and becomes a bit humorous, while still very dark. David is paranoid and talkative, the chapter is breezy, and it serves as a nice transition between the 1st and 3rd chapters.

The 3rd chapter is George's first chapter, and in it he describes getting asked to leave school one day, hitchhiking, getting picked up by a carpenter, more sex, going to a school dance, smoking a joint with his teacher, who is a closet case, and then later meeting Philippe. The segments with Philippe are the point at which Closer tips the obscenity scales at 10. Philippe has a particularly gross fetish that is four letters long and starts with the letter s. That is all I will say about that. But it does become an important plot point.

The next two chapters are 1st and 3rd person alternately with Cliff and Alex, who are more of the same, basically--they are friends, and they watch old scary movies together, sometimes they smoke pot together, they talk about George Miles, and how obsessed they are with him (as does everyone), and then there is always more sex. Cliff watches Philippe perform his act with George, and then later tells Alex about it, who wants to recreate it for a project in his film class. Later an accident happens.

George's second chapter comes next, and it has the probable climax of the novel in his encounter with Tom, who attempts to kill him, because that is what he understood their meeting to mean.

Philippe is the next chapter, and in it he describes the root of his perversion in relatively original prose, such as the interior-dialogue he has with himself as he tries to sleep:

"'What are you feeling, Philippe?' Tired. 'Then you should sleep.' But I am too tense; I keep thinking. 'What kind of thinking?' Well, everything. 'Of Georges?' Some. He represents something I have desired for a long time. 'How long?' Since before I came to America.
'Why did you come?' I came because in my own country I felt afraid. 'Of what?' Everything, but mainly of myself. I was beginning to want what I could not have. 'Can you be more clear?' No. When I try, my beliefs or desires come out beautiful. They are beautiful to me, but I cannot understand them in that form.
'You wanted to kill someone?' That is too simple. I thought about killing someone, though I did not know who. My ideas about death are very beautiful, so I wanted to think about killing a beautiful person. 'A boy?' Yes. 'And you could not find him there?' I could not find myself there. I was known as what I am not.
'Who are you?' I am trying to find this out. It is hard. I am driven to do certain things, and I believe they are helping me, because they seem strong. 'Why Georges?' He makes me feel something. I do not know this answer. 'He has been hurt?' Yes. 'By someone you know?' Yes." (109-110)

The novel's final chapter is narrated by Steve, who starts a nightclub called the Forefront in his parent's four-car garage. Later he meets George, and then an accident occurs, and the novel ends, in fairly effective order.

If there's anything to criticize about this book, it would be its subject matter, but that is a discussion I don't care to offer. I think it's unfair. More to the point: this novel meanders. Sometimes the meandering is great, and Cooper will find some new way to say something simple, in a sentence that the reader feels they might have read before, but with a word or two exchanging positions in order that changes the meaning. Other times, when a new narrator enters the picture, the reader can feel that they're losing the story, or missing the point. My first time reading it, I didn't like it as much.

The second time, I must admit it seems much longer than its 131 pages, but is consistent all the way through, and offers many quotable passages, as deranged as they may be. One of my favorites is more innocent though--it is George's declaration to change his life, in his diary:

"'I'm going to use this to make myself change, like a starting point. I think that's the best thing to do. I won't buy any more drugs. I'll try not to do what I always do. I never do anything other than school and Philippe.
'Tomorrow I'll clean up my room and make it look like a normal place. I think I'll burn all my Disneyland stuff so I can't change my mind. Nobody else was ever interested in the stuff anyway and all my feelings for it are destroyed by the drugs now.
'I called Cliff tonight, just to talk. He doesn't care anymore. He kept saying how cute David was. I guess they're in love. He said that David is sort of obsessed or whatever with me. I don't know why, but it pisses him off. I hung up.
'It's strange I'm not sad about Mom. I guess it took such a long time I felt everything I could feel already. I wish I hadn't been there, but I'm glad the last person she looked at was me. She really loved me once. Likewise, I guess.
'I think I'm afraid of stuff. Maybe that's it. I was afraid Mom would die, but now she has and it's okay. I can't let it stop me from doing things. I'm going to keep that in mind from now on. I mean it." (97)

Closer envisions an alternate reality of sex and violence that many will find shocking, and while it does not reach the heights of Try, it is nearly as good as Frisk, and a decent enough introduction to Cooper's work. It's definitely above-average, but something about it does seem longer--and there is something else worth noting: compared to the rest of the work in Cooper's oeuvre, it seems bland in some way. Like, there is no defining factor that makes it memorable.

For me, this isn't exactly true, but I could see how others might regard it in this light. The final chapter in particular, and the idea of the Forefront, stuck enough in my mind to imagine a parallel setting in my second novel. All of Cooper's work in general influenced my writing it, but several details reminded me of specific scenes, or even phraseology that I would later use, that were pleasures to re-discover. Though it is not a pleasurable read! Reading any of Cooper's books is not a pleasant experience, but it can also be cathartic in ways few other books can match.

Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle - Vladimir Nabokov

An excerpt from The Paris Review interview with Vladimir in 1967 (two years before the publication of Ada):

Interviewer: If you had the choice of one and only one book by which you would be remembered, which one would it be?

Nabokov: The one I am writing or rather dreaming of writing. Actually, I shall be remembered by Lolita and my work on Eugene Onegin.

And yes, in an ideal world, every class in American literature post-World War II or "postmodern" literature would feature Ada and not Lolita. But Ada is 625 pages long--a bit heavy for an undergraduate assignment. Let us hope that grad students at least will study this work for years to come, as it surely makes a larger "statement" than Lolita, or any other book by Nabokov for that matter. You'd have to hold a gun to my head to ask which novel is the best, but the simple answer is time. If you have the time, Ada is the best. If you don't have as much time, Lolita is best. If you have even less time, Pale Fire is best. And if you have even less time than that, Pnin may be your best option. However, Pnin is the only one of those four that may disappoint a reader because it does not reach the heights of the other three. All three are masterpieces, and Ada is the most redoubtable and grandiose of all.

So now--the difficult and fun question--what is Ada about? When I brought it with me into my restaurant of work all of my co-workers expressed intrigue as to the nature of the story of such a big book. If I only had a short time to describe it, I would say, "It's about incest." And if I had a long time, I would say, "It is a one hundred year love story and if you thought Lolita was risque, well, Ada is way worse."

And it's true--Ada does not quite portray illegal sexual abuse as in Lolita--but its descriptions of sex are far more graphic, about twice as crudely clever, and arguably more offensive. Now, why more offensive?

The main character is Van Veen, born in 1870, firmly implanted in my mind after spending three months in his company. Van has a cousin, Ada, whom he meets in 1884. She is two years younger than him. Actually they might be more than cousins. To what degree they are related I will not explain--but let me just admit that it was one of the many points that I was unclear on after finishing the book, and so I had to re-read the first 20 pages, where I did find my answer.

And this is another important point to mention: Ada is probably the most difficult Nabokov book to read. Apart from its intimidating length, the first 50 pages in particular pose a great challenge to the reader. Think 100 Years of Solitude but without the weird magical realism--and keep in mind that though the first 50 pages go as far back as great-great grandparents, of special importance is the description of Van's and Ada's parents--Demon and Aqua, and Daniel and Marina--who it seems incredibly, are 2 twins married to 2 twins, further complicating the family tree.

But who is Van? Van comes from an affluent family. He walks on his hands when he is fourteen. He is an acrobat. He visits his cousins for a summer at Ardis, their estate in the northeast...in Maine, is it, spelled Mayne?

Van lives on Antiterra (or what we might call "Earth"), in Estotia, which is the U.S. and Russia combined. Much of the time he lives in Manhattan. It's necessary to mention that Ada occurs in a parallel universe, or utopia, and this is hinted at in the very first line of the book, which is a reversal of the extremely famous first sentence of Anna Karenina. Happy families are not all alike--they are actually "more or less dissimilar" (3)--and unhappy families "are more or less alike"(3)--not unhappy in their own way. Ada is not science-fiction though--a reader will primarily notice that something is vaguely askew, and their investigation into the element that alters from "reality" as we know it will often yield epiphanies or profund ruminations on the nature of existence. This topic will be revisited later in the review.

Van goes to visit Ada for the first time in 1884, and lo and behold, they fall in love. This is really the moment at which Ada becomes easier to read. Because up until this point, I had no clue what direction this novel was going to take. The long sequence in Ardis is perhaps the major part of the novel itself, also the most risque part.

Why offensive? Because Van and Ada "discover" each other at an age that most today would deem premature--12 and 14--and the descriptions of their "embraces" hold very little back--in fact, they are probably more explicit than any of the later scenes involving prostitution, which is legalized. There is also the "taboo" nature of their relationship, obviously, but for a clear example, witness the "barn burning" scene (not a reference to Faulkner, I imagine), referenced perhaps a dozen times in the course of the book, with its first display in this nearly unthinkable moment:

"'Van, poor Van,' she went on in the narrow voice the sweet girl used when speaking to cats, caterpillars, pupating puppies, 'yes, I'm sure, it smarts, would it help if I'd touch, are you sure?'
'You bet,' said Van, 'on n'est pas bete a ce point' ('there are limits to stupidity,' colloquial and rude).
'Relief map,' said the primrose prig, 'the rivers of Africa.' Her index traced the blue Nile down into its jungle and traveled up again. 'Now what's this? The cap of the Red Bolete is not half as plushy. In fact' (positively chattering), 'I'm reminded of geranium or rather pelargonium bloom.'
'God, we all are,' said Van.
'Oh, I like this texture, Van, I like it! Really I do!'
'Squeeze, you goose, can't you see I'm dying.'
But our young botanist had not the faintest idea how to handle the thing properly--and Van, now in extremis, driving it roughly against the hem of her nightdress, could not help groaning as he dissolved in a puddle of pleasure.
She looked down in dismay.
'Not what you think,' remarked Van calmly. 'This is not number one. Actually it's as clean as grass sap. Well, now the Nile is settled stop Stanley.'" (126-127)

The "Ardis" section of the book almost exclusively takes this tone, and perhaps this is one of my very few criticisms of the book: this section can nearly firmly be categorized as "erotica." The first two hundred pages of this book (so 1/3 of the whole) follow Van and Ada as very young teenagers trying to figure out different places in the palatial estate to experiment with each other's bodies. It is perhaps worth noting that both characters are ridiculously precocious, to the point that practically no one today would be able to match their intelligence or powers of articulation. See first review ever on Flying Houses for similar example (third paragraph of post): http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/04/doctor-faustus-thomas-mann.html

So it seems to me that during "Ardis" (or Part 1, as it were, which actually goes up to page 350) Nabokov is overly preoccupied with unsettling the reader's expectations, and the episodes become rather repetitive. There is the important introduction of the third major character, Lucette, Ada's younger sister by two years. Eventually Lucette becomes the primary voyeur of their escapades. And it is unclear to what extent she becomes involved in anything resembling or approaching a menage a trois with them, but later on, oh around page 400, she comes to visit Van about fifteen years later in Manhattan, and she reveals a secret that even Van doesn't know about, and to me this constitutes one of the most over-the-top scenes in the book.

After Part 1, the book concerns itself a bit less with sex, and a bit more with Time, the intricacies of Antiterra (and Terra, which we might call "Heaven" or "Mars" (i.e. another planet that could house a civilization)), and the manner in which Ada and Van hope to spend their adult lives. They cannot be married for various reasons they give at many different moments. Ada does marry. Van does not. Van sleeps with hundreds of women (most of them prostitutes). They write letters back and forth. They meet every fifteen or twenty years, often drastically altered by time. Van becomes closer with Lucette for the majority of the remainder of the novel.

A lot happens, but one chapter I cannot figure out (Part 2, Chapter 3) is basically a description of how prostitution came to be legalized in Estotia (or Antiterra? I'm not sure.) -- and it basically has nothing to do with the rest of the story, so I found it amazing. It is quite risque, but also hilarious, particularly the wrinkle introduced into the common paradigm of the "whorehouse":

"One clause in the Rules of the Club seemed to indicate that Eric, though frenziedly heterosexual, had enjoyed some tender ersatz fumblings with schoolmates at Note (a notorious prepatory school in that respect): at least two of the maximum number of fifty inmates in the major floramors might be pretty boys, wearing frontlets and short smocks, not older than fourteen if fair, and not more than twelve if dark. However, in order to exclude a regular flow of 'inveterate pederasts,' boy love could be dabbled in by the jaded guest only between two sequences of three girls each, all possessed in the course of the same week--a somewhat comical, but not unshrewd, stipulation." (369-370)

Also of personal interest: Van attends school at Chose, and this description of "Note" does seem to indicate that the master himself was aware of those bizarre institutions of the northeast selling elitism. Of course, they are the finest schools, and that Van attends one fits perfectly with his character--which is, a spoiled brat, who automatically starts off with more money than he would ever know what to do with. Van is not the most likable character. For one, he has a pretty sketchy major romantic relationship in his life. For two, he is an "arrogant bastard." For three, he seems to take pleasure in psychologically (and intellectually) torturing those closest to him in life. The most likable things about him are that he is an excellent tipper and that he is a scholar and thinker of the highest level.

He retires at an early age and spends the majority of the next decade working on what will become his greatest masterpiece, The Texture of Time. But I am getting ahead of myself: what does Van do? It's rather difficult to pin down, but he is a psychologist that studies bizarre disorders related to the comprehension of time and memory. Nabokov displays learning on the topic, and much derision towards Freud (Froid), which is par for the course. He becomes a doctor at Chose, and lives in Manhattan, while frequently traveling to Switzerland for various examinations, procedures, and investigations.

There is the matter of Ada's sister, and Ada's husband, and many of the other characters in the book: Cordula, Demon, Marina, and Mme. Lariviere, Ada's governess who becomes a famous author that is almost definitely a stand-in for Guy de Maupaussant. But they are incidental. There is one major suicide that takes place near the end of the book that is one of the most effective methods I have ever read of making sure that you will be dead. The scene is horrifying and one might almost call it beautiful.

And there is no shortage of beautiful writing, which is why this is Nabokov's greatest: amongst the greatest quantity in his oeuvre, some of the greatest quality is to be found. One could argue that Lolita is a more concise, consistent, high-quality read, but for its sheer ambition and leisurely methodology, Ada is that all-too-rare book that actually eclipses Lolita. If anyone was going to do it, it would be the man himself!

It is hard to find quotable passages, but there are at least two of incredible beauty. One of them comes from what is arguably the most famous chapter in the book, which is a literary experiment on the level of Joyce or Mann (who eventually we will get around to discussing again), a "chronography" for lack of a better term, highly abstract, potentially positively sleep-inducing, and replete with notions that could be discussed for hours. The other takes place at a crucial moment, whose spoiler will be avoided in the interest of an open view:

"...Hunched up in a last band of low sun, on the bench where he had recently fondled and fouled a favorite, lanky, awkward, black girl student, Van tortured himself with thoughts of insufficient filial affection--a long story of unconcern, amused scorn, physical repulsion, and habitual dismissal. He looked around, making wild amends, willing her spirit to give him an equivocal, and indeed all-deciding, sign of continued being behind the veil of time, beyond the flesh of space. But no response came, not a petal fell on his bench, not a gnat touched his hand. He wondered what really kept him alive on terrible Antiterra, with Terra a myth and all art a game, when nothing mattered any more since the day he slapped Valerio's warm bristly cheek; and whence, from what deep well of hope, did he still scoop up a shivering star, when everything had an edge of agony and despair, when another man was in every bedroom with Ada." (480-481)

The other passage I recall occurs when Van comes to as close a synthesis as his Texture of Time is bound to relate, which bears a slight resemblance to the final scene in Waking Life:

"...This act of attention is what I called last year the 'Deliberate Present' to distinguish it from the general form termed (by Clay in 1882) the 'Specious Present.' The conscious construction of one, and the familiar current of the other gives us three or four seconds of what can be felt as nowness. This nowness is the only reality we know; it follows the colored nothingness of the no-longer and precedes the absolute nothingess of the future. Thus, in a quite literal sense, we may say that conscious human life last always only one moment, for at any moment of deliberate attention to our own flow of consciousness we cannot know if that moment will be followed by another. As I shall later explain, I do not believe that 'anticipation' ('looking forward to a promotion or fearing a social blunder' as one unfortunate thinker puts it) plays any significant part in the formation of the specious present, nor do I believe that the future is transformed into a third panel of Time, even if we do anticipate something or other--a turn of the familiar road or the picturesque rise of two steep hills, one with a castle, the other with a church, for the more lucid the forevision the less prophetic it is apt to be. Had that rascal behind me decided to risk it just now he would have collided head-on with the truck that came from beyond the bend, and I and the view might have been eclipsed in the multiple smash." (585-586)

Nabokov's knowledge of quantum physics or quantum mechanics or the theory of relativity is tested, and while I am unable to ascertain its verisimilitude, it seems clear that real physicists would take issue with some of Van's pronouncements, but on a purely artistic and linguistic level, while proving quite difficult, this chapter is ultimately more essential than any other part in the work.

There is not much else about Ada that requires reportage. It is for mature audiences only, it is a very challenging read (it took me longer than any other book on Flying Houses, though there were mitigating circumstances...)--and on a purely coincidental level, during the course of my reading this novel, my life became rather strange and heartbreaking. I recommend Ada more highly than any other book on Flying Houses--but I have decided, that when I leave, in August, for Brooklyn, I will do a top 10 books on Flying Houses list. All 3 of Nabokov's masterpieces will be included. 3 by Thomas will be there too.

And so our review ends--but it is not quite over because there is this issue to resolve. I would almost do a different post for this discussion but Ada still figures in conversation. Basically I just want to quote more from The Paris Review interview. I will post a link here. http://www.theparisreview.org/media/4310_NABOKOV.pdf Read it. I am perverting all of The Great One's notions. To witness the genius contained in the responses is to regard the enchantment of a bygone era, when writers were more like gods than people.

That is not to say that I do not take issue with any of his responses, and I wish he were able to respond to my accusations/criticisms on this count, because I really would appreciate the education, which is no longer of this earth. In particular, a phrase he has created, so to speak, and that was quoted at length in his obituary in the New York Times in 1977, primarily because it contains the ultimate zinger against Thomas, which is quite rude, I think, to include in an obituary (shame on you, newspapers of the intellectual elite):

Interviewer: What is most characteristic of poshlust in contemporary writing? Are there temptations for you in the sin of poshlust? Have you ever fallen?

Nabokov: "Poshlust," or in a better transliteration poshlost, has many nuances, and evidently I have not described them clearly enough in my little book on Gogol, if you think one can ask anybody if he is tempted by poshlost. Corny trash, vulgar cliches, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudo-literature--these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in contemporary writing, we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, the journalistic generalities we all know. Poshlost speaks in such concepts as "America is no better than Russia" or "We all share in Germany's guilt." The flowers of poshlost bloom in such phrases as "the moment of truth," "charisma," "existential" (used seriously), "dialogue" (as applied to political talks between nations), and "vocabulary" (as applied to a dauber). Listing in one breath Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Vietnam is seditious poshlost. Belonging to a very select club (which sports one Jewish name--that of the treasurer) is genteel poshlost. Hack reviews are frequently poshlost, but it also lurks in certain highbrow essays. Poshlost calls Mr. Blank a great poet and Mr. Bluff a great novelist. One of poshlost's favorite breeding places has always been the Art Exhibition; there it is produced by so-called sculptors working with the tools of wreckers, building crankshaft cretins of stainless steel, Zen stereos, polystyrene stinkbirds, objects trouves in latrines, cannonballs, canned balls. There we admire the gabinetti wall patterns of so-called abstract artists, Freudian surrealism, roric smudges, and Rorschach blots--all of it as corny in its own right as the academic "September Morns" and "Florentine Flowergirls" of half a century ago. The list is long, and of course, everybody has his bete noire, his black pet, in the series. Mine is that airline ad: the snack served by an obsequious to a young couple--she eyeing ecstatically the cucumber canape, he admiring wistfully the hostess. And, of course, Death in Venice. You see the range.

It is an all too rare occasion that the words of a dead writer from more than forty years ago make me want to cry in defense of another. I cannot stand by silent any longer. I will admit this: Nabokov is probably a better writer than Mann. He has many more books to his name. Both have an equal number of masterpieces (as I have indicated earlier)--and I do have to say that Thomas is the more consistent than the two--you can pick up a Nabokov book and not be sure you're going to "get it" or not--and with Thomas, provided you stick with him the whole way, you will at least "get it." They lived to a similar age. Thomas is older by more than twenty years. They both fled to the U.S. in the wake of totalitarian regimes. They lectured at schools like Princeton and Cornell. And arguably, they wrote very similar "most famous" books about taboo desire-- and evidently, Nabokov thinks Thomas is quite a fraud. Now, I will not argue that Death in Venice is better than Lolita. That's a losing battle I am not willing to fight. But to insist that Death in Venice is "poshlost?" Coming at the end of that tirade makes the statement all the more offensive.

Perhaps Nabokov is actually stating that Death in Venice is his other "bete noire" in the series, in addition to the airline ad, but I doubt it. His contempt for Thomas knows no boundaries. His airline ad, then, is the one element in Ada that I find annoying: Van's virility, his energy, and especially his relationships with all female characters, I find quite offensive. If anybody is interested in prolonging stereotypes about men not being able to be friends with women unless they are sleeping together, or only possible en route to sleeping together, then we have a very difficult "truth" to overturn in our future. I would prefer not to be lumped in with a gender that dictates bodily pleasure accompany regular discourse if it happens to be with the opposite sex. Of course Van does love Ada and does not leer at any other women when they are together. But it's the element in Van, and often Nabokov's other characters that I wish he would not portray with no explanation.

I totally disagree with Nabokov's assertion that Death in Venice is poshlost. Its merits as a work of literature are debatable, but it is certainly not cliched (though many might consider it vulgar), some may consider it "trash" but I don't believe it is "corny," I don't see how it is an imitation of an imitation--it is extremely original and unprecedented--um, just asking, but would Lolita exist without Death in Venice?--it may be "crude" but it is not "moronic," it is the opposite of Philistinism, it may contain "bogus profundities" depending on your view, but I do not find it to be "dishonest pseudo-literature" in any sense. Sometimes I think Nabokov is more interested in piquing the reader's interest with his acid-tongue criticism than giving a more transparent view of his "rules" for "sucessful art." I am hard-pressed to think of a more idiosyncratic figure in relation to criticism of any sort.

That criticism notwithstanding, Nabokov is The Great One and I will continue to worship him as I would a god. I wish he would have a higher opinion of Thomas so that I would not feel so foolish as to canonize him as well. But they belong together, as I lump them in the final page of my second novel, as they complement one another so thoroughly: a German and a Russian, a rebel against the Nazis and a rebel against the Soviets, a Nobel Prize Winner and a notorious iconoclast, intellectual giants both (though one might disagree) and careers that I would be more than happy to experience firsthand. I would have to favor Nabokov's life over Mann's, the Nobel notwithstanding, due to its rather fabulous and incredible nature. Not that either is within my grasp--but I must say--who amongst us bloggers in 2010 America debate the superiority of Nabokov over Mann? Very few, and so I would hope, that while I am sure neither cared much for their "immortal reputation," that if they were able to review blog posts beyond the grave, they would be able to make up and be friends and realize that few others beyond their years were able to equal their heights, and that this comparison would cement their work as essential, in the 21st century.

Ugly Man - Dennis Cooper

Ah, finally Dennis Cooper came out with a new book. I never read The Sluts because the cover looked too gay to me. Maybe it is good, I don't know. But I've read everything else by him, and Ugly Man is average in comparison with the rest. It is certainly different. It's definitely far more comic than anything else he has ever put out.

The closest reference point for this book would be Wrong, his collection of short stories published in 1992. Since that year, his star has grown bright, and he is probably more popular than ever before, thanks in no small part to his blog. I first read Try in 2003, followed quickly by Guide, then later My Loose Thread, Frisk, and Closer. For a while I didn't read anything by him, convinced the rest was not necessarily worth it--but God Jr. came out relatively recently, and that was interesting to see a different side of the writer. Finally while in L.A., I capped things off with Period and Wrong, later re-reading Try, which is the only other book by him reviewed on this blog http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/05/try-dennis-cooper.html. Now I want to read Guide again because I look back upon the part of his oeuvre that I have read, and I feel compelled to rank it in this order:

1) Try
2) Frisk
3) My Loose Thread
4) Guide
5) Closer
6) God Jr.
7) Ugly Man
8) Wrong
9) Period

And if you were to include Userlands, his anthology of online literature (the impetus for this blog, and its 12th post, http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2008/04/userlands-new-fiction-writers-from.html), it would rank beneath Period, probably. I could discuss them all, but let's keep things on Ugly Man, because there is a lot to discuss. Basically, I think it is better than Wrong, while still being very similar, because of the strength of a few of its pieces that go beyond 70% of the rest of the material--in particular, "Jerk," "The Worst (1960-1971)," and the powerful, closing "The Ash Gray Proclamation." Mostly it consists of really short pieces, varying in length from one paragraph to three pages. Flash fiction, I guess.

Sometimes the really short pieces work ("The Boy on the Far Left," "Graduate Seminar," and "Brian aka 'Bear'") and other times they just bleed into each other and seem pretty pointless. "Knife/Tape/Rope" is pretty decent as far as the other pieces that avoid categorization--or rather, fit neatly into the preconceptions of what a short story should appear to be. "The Hostage Drama" is another example of something that works in the end.

But pretty much everything else winds up sounding like an echo of Wrong--and what went wrong with it, pardon the pun. Which is that, forced to work within the confines of a smaller piece, much of Cooper's work loses its emotional impact and instead more closely approaches "torture porn," as with the shorter pieces the torture and the porn are introduced rather quickly, and violently, abruptly cut off. The plot is practically the same for every single one of these pieces--sexually confused teenage boy wants to die, and he happens to find friends that get off by murdering and raping him at the same time, and then sometimes the story will shift to the perspective of his executors. That is what this entire work is "about," so to speak, the nature of sex and violence, taken to the extreme example.

While we are on the topic of obscenity, what with Ulysses being one of our most recent posts, let me just say that Ugly Man, like the rest of Cooper's work excluding God Jr., which is practically family-friendly, would rate a 10 on the obscenity scale, which makes it more obscene than Naked Lunch, primarily because it makes sense.

One piece deserves special note--"The Anal Retentive Line Editor," which is probably the most exasperating thing in the book. It is like the centerpiece of the collection, and probably one of its longest pieces. It is funny, it is clever, and some may enjoy it immensely, but for me it got old rather quickly--though some of Cooper's self-consciousness makes it one of the highlights of any of his work, period.

The most pleasant surprise about Ugly Man, however, is the "P.S." feature at the end of the book, which is sort of like a DVD extra, brought by Harper Perennial. It seems that Cooper has hit the big time with this kind of attention--I've only previously seen one of these in Francine Prose's "Reading Like a Writer." And this one was much cooler. It has an interview with Cooper, by one of his fans, of whom Cooper is also a fan, apparently (Robert Gluck), and most interestingly, lists of his top 50 poems, top 50 songs by Robert Pollard, top 50 songs in general (which includes songs by Robert Pollard also), top 50 novels, and top 50 films, I think, in no particular order. This was easily the best part of the book. The interview provides the most quotable material:

"Well I guess I did become the writer I imagined I'd be, didn't I? My work seems to mean a lot to a certain kind of young person, and I get a lot of really moving e-mails and letters from young writers who say my work inspires them to write. So I guess your theory makes sense. Of course I never imagined the whole publishing world nonsense and the difficulty of cracking the literary establishment and the lack of financial reward for being this kind of writer. But, yeah, when I'm discouraged by the insurmountable problems that my work creates for itself and for me, realizing that I've achieved what I dreamed of achieving keeps me on track." (4, P.S.)

As if that were not enough there are also five poems by Cooper. Basically, I don't recommend this if this is your first time reading him--but I think fans of his will find much to like about it. I do think it is better than Wrong, and certainly Period, which threatened to collapse under its overwhelming desire to experiment. Ugly Man is experimental, but in a way that adapts the present climate of fiction, which has moved increasingly towards this "flash" thing--something between a poem and a story. Cooper may not be the master of this genre yet, but he has certainly added his own personal stamp to it, and on that basis alone, much of what he has created can exist comfortably alongside more celebrated short, short fiction.

I really hope that he comes out with a new novel soon, though. That would be cool. If I could I would read his blog and ask him to read S/M, because I never would have written it if it weren't for reading his work.

Try - Dennis Cooper

Of all the books that friends could recommend you, Try may be the most hit-or-miss. You may have a friend tell you to read it, and you may end up hating that person forever. Alternately, you may have a friend tell you to read it, and you may think that person is really fucked up, but you’ve probably already taken the time to understand them, so instead you are just, concerned. In the last case, you’re told to read it, you do, you are blown away, you do not think about modern literature quite the same way again, and you decide, even if they’re not as good, you want to read the rest of Cooper’s books.

Oeuvre rule: I shared an apartment in Paris with a girl who had The Hipster Handbook, which was mostly a joke-text, but which did pin down the Williamsburg-type to a T. However, some elements of hipsters struck me as oft-kilter, namely the “hippest authors,” which included your usual bunch (Salinger, Hunter S. Thompson, Kerouac I think…) but placed Cooper at the #1 position and simply said, “Hipsters have read all of Cooper’s novels.” I find this hard to believe. I can count on one hand the number of people I know that are familiar with his work. Now, all five of those people may be hipsters, but I know more than five hipsters. This really doesn’t matter at all. My point is, Cooper is 55, Try was published in 1994, and if you don’t know who he is by now, then you probably won’t hear of him in the future, though that is up for debate, as one of his more recent texts, God Jr. has him flirting with the mainstream. You can find that volume in many mass-market arenas, but you will almost never find Try anywhere except in a library.

In my opinion, Try is Cooper’s definitive volume, at least so far. His other books explore similar terrain, but always with a focus on violence that at times I find confusing. Try is an extremely violent book, and contains at least three scenes that will make you audibly gasp. I found myself surprised that I took everything in stride until the penultimate scene in the novel, when I had to groan for a graphic description of “fisting.” However, this is my second time reading it. The first time was in Paris, and with a bottle of wine. The second time was in Silver Lake, and with a bottle of wine. Both times it was read in one evening. I feel it is appropriate to read the novel this way because all of the characters get so fucking messed up through the course of its 200 pages that you don’t feel so left out if you’re getting shitfaced as you’re activating the text with your mind. Also, it may make you cry more easily. I did not cry last night. I cried this morning (for different reasons, but probably because of some of the emotional turmoil left over from reading it last night). Try is extremely emotional. The last two pages are about as good as the last two pages of anything else I’ve read. You’d think I’m fucking crazy if I described this as a “tender” book, but on the second reading, that side of it seems more apparently resonant than the violent aspect.

A note on structure seems prudent, as Try is one of Cooper’s least –structured and most predictably forward-moving novels. There are several different “perspectives” that break up the text into chapters of sorts, though the action takes place over the course of two or three (really) crazy days. Upon reflection, it is not all the different from my first novel, except there are way less characters here, and there is nothing so pretentious as separate chapter titles for each different character perspective about to push through the next several pages of the story. No, the perspectives are Ziggy’s, Calhoun’s, Roger’s, Ken’s, and that’s sort of it. You go back between those four characters—the main one, his best friend, his father (the only one in first-person POV), his uncle—with a nearly symmetrical precision until all of the energy contained within the work is used up and exhausted.

Regardless of the deeper implications of the text, the story in Try is clearly its most salient element. The majority of Cooper’s other volumes sacrifice some level of story in favor of abstraction. Or else, their stories tend to be too similar. Frisk seems to have a very intricate story drawn up around it, but while it may boast an intelligent structure, the “page-turner” aspect is not quite the same. Do not get me wrong—while Try may be a page turner, it is not destined for Oprah’s Book Club. Giving away the story probably ruins a few surprises, but I will summarize it quickly anyways: Ziggy is 16, obsesses over Husker Du, edits a zine entitled I Apologize, a Magazine for the Sexually Abused, lives with his father Brice, rarely goes to school, when he does it is only to see Annie, a drug dealer who supply things with names like Superchunk, has a best friend named Calhoun who is a year older than him and so has graduated high school, but is only working part-time in a record store and is a massive junkie who slowly writes fiction, has an uncle named Ken who spends the entire novel sexually mutilating a thirteen-year-old Slayer fanatic on film, and finally has another father named Roger, who is a rock critic in New York, and who has decided that he is going to take Ziggy back with him, all while being somewhat overly-obsessed with “rimming.”

The subject matter is obviously a bit rough and sketchy. However, few books tend to take up this material so head-on. Anybody interested in figuring out the long term (though the work mainly deals in the short-term) effects of sexual abuse would be well-served to begin here, as there are few other novels to deal in it so unflinchingly. What is different is the complicity, the realism, the lack of options, the truly confused state. Anyone who has in fact been sexually abused would no doubt reap a great benefit from reading this text, even if it may force them to revisit painful memories. However, in that potential case one risks becoming fixated on Ziggy, perhaps the only character one could clearly state “is more fucked up than you are.” The part that makes the novel a masterpiece though, is that, despite how fucked-up Ziggy is from everything life has given him, he doesn’t complain, he does what he has to, and he does not give up on his search for happiness. Try is life-affirming in its own extremely fucked up way.

The fact that it is fiction lends the outside world the same appearance after reading it. It seems so, so made-up. It’s totally not realistic at all—at least the Ken sub-plot is completely absurd, unless you’re trying to say there are still more Gacys and Dahmers left that the world will never know about. But even though it’s ridiculous, even though few people will find themselves caught up in a situation like Ziggy’s (as atypical a nuclear family scenario as is practically possible), you cannot help but be moved to attempt to glean something from the text. One can dismiss the book in the first place, saying it’s “pulpy” or something, but Cooper never exactly stops writing about his characters like they’re still real human beings, and for that there is a whole world of understanding that can be brought out of his literature. I recommend reading Try while getting your choice of really-fucked-up, alone in your dwelling.

Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov, born 1899, died 1977, published Lolita 1955, published Pale Fire 1962, remains one of the foremost intellectuals in the better part of 20th century literary world. Notably fluent in Russian, German, French, and English, it almost appears as if Nabokov is not so much interested in plot, character and story as he is flaunting his erudition and obscure knowledge under the guise of tricky wordplay. Regardless of his eccentricities as a stylist, he does not disregard or sacrifice story.

In keeping with the oeuvre mandate, let it be acknowledged that the critic has read Bend Sinister, Laughter in the Dark, Lolita, Speak, Memory, and a fair number of short stories. Pnin, Ada, or Ardor, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Despair, and Look at the Harlequins! are on my list of future books to read. Nabokov was extremely prolific but relatively underappreciated. For all the controversy that Lolita has brought about in the past fifty plus years, Pale Fire follows innocently undetected, while containing more than a few controversial episodes itself. While Lolita may continue to compete for greatest 20th century American novel, I recall seeing Pale Fire on more than one sort of list of books that people would like to read before they die, or a book that was so profound they wanted to read and study to unlock some sort of secret revelation.

That is not surprising given its structure. There is no other book like it. It begins (like Lolita) with a preface. The "foreword" is penned by Charles Kinbote, neighbor to the author of the poem "Pale Fire," John Shade. In the foreword, Kinbote explains how he came to teach at the same university in upstate New York as Shade, and how he happened to rent the house next door to his, and how he happened to run into him and become friends with him. Then he says he is getting too far ahead of himself and stops.

"Pale Fire," a poem in heroic couplets, 999 lines, divided into four cantos, comes next. For all the profound aspects of the novel Pale Fire, the reader might be urged to start here, particularly the majority of canto 3, though Kinbote refers to canto 2 as "your favorite, and that shocking tour de force," which concerns John and Sybil Shade's doomed daughter. We are told in the foreword, that Shade died shortly after completing the final line of the poem--indeed he wrote the poem over the last three weeks of his life.

After the "primary text" comes the "Commentary," which forms the majority of Pale Fire. In it, Kinbote notes some three or four dozen line references with varying degrees of copious analysis and confession and storytelling. Truly, this part is Kinbote's story, and soon he reveals a story he liked to tell Shade about, which was the escaped King Charles of Zembla. As we move closer to the end of Shade's poem, we get closer to the final revealing of the entire story as Kinbote has let us see it. He is meant to be mad, and indeed he seems overly obsessed with Shade, but like Humbert Humbert, he is not a narrative slouch. Indeed, Pale Fire becomes mostly about King Charles at a certain point.

I have almost no idea what these scenes are meant to mean, but they are certainly just as eye-opening as almost any scene in Lolita. What is strange is that Kinbote narrates the story of King Charles at a curious point of disconnect. The reader can almost easily guess the connection between the two by the 2nd or 3rd time Kinbote mentions him. The first time, in fact, I began to think, "how does Kinbote know such intimate details of the king?" Perhaps it is rather obvious, but anyhow, some of the scenes resulted in my doing double takes, memorably while making my way through what must be the most morally offensive segment of the book to conservative minds while reading in an outdoor hot tub at a hotel in Rancho Bernardo, CA on a weekend trip with my parents.

Kinbote becomes rather obsessed with the King Charles story, until eventually the King escapes Zembla, and manages to make his way to America, to happen to teach at a university...And like Clare Quilty in Lolita, there is Gradus, a man suspicious of all those who possess too much knowledge, who stalks the escaped King, and who eventually plays as intrinsic a role in the novel as that aforementioned "double" of a villain. But Charles is not only interested in exotic royal pasts--his ardor for Shade and his work shines through almost as clearly. Most memorable is a scene near the end of the novel, where Kinbote calls Shade on the phone, after not attending a party Sybil threw for the poet's 60th birthday, and screams that he must seem him at once and bursts into tears over the phone. His knowledge of the poet's life, and his possible (and idealized) influences, puts a funny spin on the academic snooping going on in any modern edition of any classic text.

Furthermore, Pale Fire introduces the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure genre, in a manner. The commentary is written so that the reader can refer back to the poem for greater elucidation, and read more than a line, a stanza, or even pages at a time. Also, within notes are references to other notes with references to other lines so that a times a narrative thread can be found with all ensuing references already marked out by Kinbote. Whether Nabokov intends the work to be a massive cryptogram, I do not know, but his typical obsessions like butterflies and chess and intellectualism arise and are treated here as well as in anything else I have read by him.

Nabokov is a master. He did not accumulate the Nobel, or the Pulitzer, but he is clearly a master, and a fine model to follow. Of course, one cannot hope to attain his level of erudition, but it is fun to see what he was capable of, given his talents, his knowledge, and his artistic spontaneity. Pale Fire may not be as densely-layered or as descriptive a work as Lolita, but its poetry is unmistakable. It is more entertaining than Bend Sinister or Laughter in the Dark, and it is more intellectually compelling than Lolita, though it would be difficult to say it is a greater novel than that nearly-untouchable work. It has the same quality of his finest short stories, such as "The Vane Sisters" (which, I have to admit, is really only the first one of two or three which truly amazed me). It may make you gasp, it will most definitely make you laugh, it might confuse the hell out of you, but when you finish Pale Fire, you will feel a sense of literary domination, and for how complex everyone wants to make it out to be, it's really not bad at all. Taken slowly with a painstaking line-by-line close analysis, or speed-read like your typical mass-market trade paperback, Pale Fire will please no matter the method.