His later works are more like perfectly devised chess problems. Pale Fire is one of his more abstract novels. You may enjoy it if you like artificial but beautifully constructed literary worlds. There is less of a raw human tragedy there. I actually tried to learn this poem by heart once (don’t ask me why).

By the way, I enjoy your posts. You a very well read and have a keen eye.

A friend actually just reviewed “Invitation to a Beheading,” so it’s on my to-read list. Thank you for the recommendations though! The other major Nabokov novel that everyone seems to have read is Pale Fire; may I ask what your opinion of it was?

May I ask how you found this blog?

Lolita is good, but I think Nabokov is at his best in “Invitation to a beheading” written just before he moved to the US. And “Transparent things”, one of his last novels.

I liked some of the points made in the book, and some passages were literally quite pretty (the reason why I like Gaarder novels so much). But really, Floria/Gaarder. Take it easy on the poor guy!

Bwahaha!! After I was done with exams and papers last term, I read King Hereafter and all of the House of Niccolo. I read all day and past sunrise every day because I couldn’t put the books down.

Oh yes, that’s what I meant. I didn’t think it was improbable at all—quite the opposite—just regretting that rhetoric is no longer the art form that it used to be, alas, to the point where I would never expect a plausible present-day character to make such stirring speeches. Politics will be much more interesting if our leaders could orate like Lymond does.

Lymond is continually ground down and put in crises of conscience, both emotionally and idealogically.

Oh yes, what keeps Lymond real for me is that he does show moments of weakness, e.g. when Richard manages to make him break down after mentioning Eloise. I think he’s also just perverse enough not to make himself completely endearing to the reader; there are times when he’s more dismaying than charming.

I think her writing became denser and more elliptical as she aged

Haha, and I thought this book was fairly dense. I’ll have to prepare to exercise my brain for the sequels then.

Thanks again for recommending the series to me! I ended up staying up late to finish the last third of the book on Friday because I simply couldn’t put it down even though I was dead-tired from the week. I’m really looking forward to getting the next book.

Ahahaha. The House of Niccolo series is far, far more difficult on this point, and the connections actually matter in the story there (likewise in King Hereafter, the novel on Macbeth). I think her writing became denser and more elliptical as she aged, in that much more is implied and elided and it’s up to the reader to remember X married Y, which means that this fragment of dialogue implies Z about the situation…

The swordfight between Lymond and his brother

Yes! The prose is beautiful, the imagery is descriptive–for me, the opening of that chapter is like seeing it as a black and white silent film shot from an aerial point of view, with the removed perspective and the distant description of the fight, suddenly zooming in on the characters and turning the sound on: swords clashing, harsh panting. The emotions behind everything are intense and the whole swordfight is viscerally thrilling. It’s just prose and it’s just fiction, but at the same time, it matters so much to me when I’m reading it. And now I’m resorting to italics for emphasis, so I will stop here before I lose my brain entirely.

Would you see such gifts of oratory in a modern-day character?

I think that such oratory is unlikely in a modern day leader, for the most part, now that rhetoric isn’t a part of education in the Western countries and there’s a sound bite culture in modern politics (U.S., at least). But in earlier times, such orators would have been more common, so Lymond’s oratory isn’t improbable. Look at Cicero (In Catilinam has great patriotic stuff) or Pericles’ funeral oration on democracy or even JFK, for a more recent example.

But then why would other characters even recognize the reference?

That’s a good point. I can’t recollect whether he knows Arabic at this point in his life. Perhaps some of the stories were transmitted into Europe orally through traders or Crusaders?

Lymond does edge dangerously close to being a little too ideal

That’s true, but he’s broken and messed up enough to make him fascinating, at least to me, rather than a revolting Mary Sue. The comparison that jumps to mind is Cassandra Clare’s Draco in the Draco Dormiens trilogy, whom she admits is heavily based on Lymond. The difference between the two is that Draco is too polished and although he has problems, they’re all in the “I suffer artfully and I never question my very being, the principles by which I govern my life” kind of way, whereas Lymond is continually ground down and put in crises of conscience, both emotionally and idealogically.

The best part of the series is that THEY ONLY GET BETTER.