Just finished Nabokov's Bend Sinister, a book I really need to mull over and possibly re-read all or parts of.

It struck me as a tad on the pomo cutesy side. Intrusive, unreliable narration, recurrent motifs and symbols, Preciously self-aware in places, filled with word games (he pushed through the shoulders of the soldiers, Paduk's pink palace, and others). Not really my cup of tea. I think back in 1947 when this was initially published this kind of thing was edgy, novel, and strange, but today, sadly, it strikes me as trite, unnecessary, and a bit showy. However, I will say that his treatment of Mariette combined with what I have heard about Lolita, a book I have yet to read, indicates to me an obsession with young, teenaged, girls. Was Nabokov a rain-coat wearing, dirty old flasher in real life, or is that just the way his fantasies ran? ( )

Bend Sinister is a decidedly unusual work, one that feels as if it should owe a part of its unusualness to the circumstances of its creation -- it being the first novel Nabokov published in America. It eventually becomes an engrossing, powerful work, but it takes quite a while to get to that point.

The novel concerns the events of the professor Adam Krug, a world-renowned philosopher who has steadfastly rejected the dictatorial government of Paduk, a toad-like leader who was Krug's former schoolmate and who received much bully-like abuse from the renowned academic as a child. Now, with the tables turned and Krug resistant to supporting the government, he finds his world being turned upside down as threats are lodged and friends are arrested.

The premise sounds intriguing enough, but much of the impact of the work is spoiled by the pacing of the first half of the novel, which revels in complex language and uncertain scenarios. It forces the reader to take the work in patiently, perhaps to appreciate the many levels upon which the imagery is working, but it detracts from the ability of the reader to be interested in the action because it takes so long to simply understand what's going on.

By the time the story of the novel kicks in, there are quite a few points of interest that are left as little more than dangling threads -- notably, the academic tribunal that appears early in the text. The novel ultimately ends up boiling down to a rather simple but engrossing man-to-man conflict between Krug and Paduk, and is resolved in several chapters of genuinely powerful suspense, but here the novel's weakness is revealed. Its density overwhelms its readability; its plot invites the reader to race past its intricacies.

As I alluded to before, it may be that this novel reflects Nabokov's feelings about not only writing in English but living in America. Whether this theory has any legs to it, Bend Sinister is an uneven but worthwhile effort, and its attempts notably set the stage for the masterpiece he would write thereafter.

With a New Introduction by the Author

Clearly a very clever book that works on different levels - a description of a rather pathetic but vicious totalitarian state, comedy, the compromises a proud man makes when in extremis.

On balance I didn't really enjoy this book - it required very close attention to understand. ( )

Doom-laden but beautifully written tale of totalitarianism