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dillarhonda's review
5.0
Having now read several of Nabokov’s early novels in order, I can see a pattern of muddy beginnings and strong endings emerge. Bend Sinister, though written after Invitation to a Beheading covers a lot of the same ground – authoritarian state, senseless persecution, and a deux ex machina ending that spins your head right around. The protagonist, Krug, takes a dim view of the dictatorship which is led by a former classmate that Krug bullied in school. Initially believing himself to be untouchable, things spiral out of control once Krug refuses to play by the government’s rules. The loss of his wife and then his son send Krug into a spiral which only a moment of transcendence can pull him out of. Though typically I’m charmed and delighted by Nabokov’s wordplay, his quadrilingual puns and syntactical culs-de-sac deadened rather than invigorated my reading experience. ⠀
ecari's review
3.0
I should start this review by saying that I love Nabokov - there is very little he could write that I would not give multiple stars. That said, I have to also admit that I find him challenging to read and this book was a great example. Nabokov plays with the lines between character, reader and author - at times with great success, but in this book I found myself getting lost at times in the imaginative asides, wondering whose voice I was listening to. However, I stuck with it for the imaginative language and the incredible passages about the main character's grief at losing his wife (he's left with his young son in a totalitarian society). I could actually feel my own heart-breaking during some of those sections and it really demonstrated the power Nabokov has when he is using language to its fullest. I did not find this an easy read, but I would say it's worth it.
vanjr's review against another edition
1.0
A good book to expand your vocabulary and a short book so one can say they have read Nabokov-that is about as much good as I got out of this. Nabokov's writing it several levels above me and while I think I could "get" him, to be honest I am not sure it is worth the effort it would take.
iammandyellen's review
5.0
something Jonathan Swift's "Indecent Proposal" and something Huxley, but finally a darker thing. perhaps the contrast between the professor's inability to grasp his peril to its ultimate manifestation, also his belief in the indisputability of the myriad inequalities between individuals, a belief in the primacy of the intellect, a thing wrecked in the end by all manner of backwardness (sinistre).
tasmanian_bibliophile's review
4.0
‘Less books and more common sense – that’s my motto’
In a fictitious European state now known as Padukgrad, lives the world-renowned philosopher Adam Krug. A new philosophy, known as ‘Ekwilism’ has led the takeover of the state which is now being run by Paduk and his ‘Party of the Average Man’. Ekwilism discourages the idea of anyone being different from anyone else, and promotes the state as the prominent good in society. Naturally, equality and happiness for all does not require (or tolerate) individualism or freedom of thought. Adam Krug is grieving over the recent death of his wife and, at first, believes that there is no threat in Paduk’s activities. After all, Krug knew Paduk at school where he once bullied Paduk and referred to him disparagingly as ‘the Toad’.
‘Nothing can happen to Krug the Rock.’
But those who oppose Paduk’s Ekwilist philosophy are being arrested, and this includes many of Krug’s friends. Paduk attempts to persuade Krug to promote the state philosophy, but Krug refuses. When Krug’s young son David is kidnapped, he capitulates and is prepared to promote Ekwilism in order to have David returned. Alas, there has been a mix-up, and the child returned to Adam Krug is not his son David. David has been accidentally tortured and killed. Krug is also killed, after being driven to madness by the realization that freedom of thought is no longer his once the person he cares for most in the world is killed.
‘Individual lives are insecure; but we guarantee the immortality of the State.’
And the title, ‘Bend Sinister’? Nabokov wrote that: ‘This choice of title was an attempt to suggest an outline broken by refraction, a distortion in the mirror of being, a wrong turn taken by life, a sinistral and sinister world.’
It’s not the story so much that held my attention in this novel as the way Nabokov structured it. The use of chess metaphors: a form of constrained movement and confrontation which sees the story finish in checkmate; the crossing of bridges; and reflections on the qualities of puddles each have a role in the narrative. In this novel, Nabokov has constructed and controls a dystopian society which he also extinguishes once he’s finished with it.
‘Twang. A good night for mothing.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
In a fictitious European state now known as Padukgrad, lives the world-renowned philosopher Adam Krug. A new philosophy, known as ‘Ekwilism’ has led the takeover of the state which is now being run by Paduk and his ‘Party of the Average Man’. Ekwilism discourages the idea of anyone being different from anyone else, and promotes the state as the prominent good in society. Naturally, equality and happiness for all does not require (or tolerate) individualism or freedom of thought. Adam Krug is grieving over the recent death of his wife and, at first, believes that there is no threat in Paduk’s activities. After all, Krug knew Paduk at school where he once bullied Paduk and referred to him disparagingly as ‘the Toad’.
‘Nothing can happen to Krug the Rock.’
But those who oppose Paduk’s Ekwilist philosophy are being arrested, and this includes many of Krug’s friends. Paduk attempts to persuade Krug to promote the state philosophy, but Krug refuses. When Krug’s young son David is kidnapped, he capitulates and is prepared to promote Ekwilism in order to have David returned. Alas, there has been a mix-up, and the child returned to Adam Krug is not his son David. David has been accidentally tortured and killed. Krug is also killed, after being driven to madness by the realization that freedom of thought is no longer his once the person he cares for most in the world is killed.
‘Individual lives are insecure; but we guarantee the immortality of the State.’
And the title, ‘Bend Sinister’? Nabokov wrote that: ‘This choice of title was an attempt to suggest an outline broken by refraction, a distortion in the mirror of being, a wrong turn taken by life, a sinistral and sinister world.’
It’s not the story so much that held my attention in this novel as the way Nabokov structured it. The use of chess metaphors: a form of constrained movement and confrontation which sees the story finish in checkmate; the crossing of bridges; and reflections on the qualities of puddles each have a role in the narrative. In this novel, Nabokov has constructed and controls a dystopian society which he also extinguishes once he’s finished with it.
‘Twang. A good night for mothing.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
unbyronically's review
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
wanderlustsleeping's review against another edition
3.0
3.8
I'm so glad I pushed through to finish this! While some of the wordplay and Krug's mental musings were a bit too wordy for me, I ended up overall enjoying the writing.
I saw a reviewer on here mention 1984 by Orwell (apparently Nabakov hated Orwell? thought he was a hack) and how 1984 views totalitarianism as an evil, but Bend Sinister views it as terminally stupid. Perfectly true and a perfectly brilliant observation.
I'm so glad I pushed through to finish this! While some of the wordplay and Krug's mental musings were a bit too wordy for me, I ended up overall enjoying the writing.
I saw a reviewer on here mention 1984 by Orwell (apparently Nabakov hated Orwell? thought he was a hack) and how 1984 views totalitarianism as an evil, but Bend Sinister views it as terminally stupid. Perfectly true and a perfectly brilliant observation.
lestowskij's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
rosquet's review
4.0
Immediately after Trump's inauguration, sales of 1984 increased by 10,000 percent. But this is the book everyone ought to be reading. What Nabokov knew that Orwell did not is that stupidity and sloth (and poor aesthetic sense) are just as effective (and brutal) as evil and cunning. And they are in much greater supply.
leerazer's review against another edition
4.0
Bend Sinister is the second novel that Nabokov wrote in English, the first he wrote in America; a novel fated to live in the shade of his later American novels, destined to be considered about something that is not what Nabokov himself said it was about, which is different from what it seems to be about to me. Contemporaneous reviewers no less than current ones were struck by his otherworldly mastery and use of his adopted language, though not always in a net positive sense. Reviews were mixed, with The New Republic's literary critic complaining that the novel reflected Nabokov's "apparent fascination with his own linguistic achievement," or in other words, that Nabokov was being a smarty pants show off.
Bend Sinister is typically said to be about living in a totalitarian state, and gets compared to Orwell's 1984. It certainly is set under a new totalitarian regime, a bumbling one that reflects Nabokov's opinion that dictatorships are marked by incompetent buffoonery more than by competent evil, and concerns a free man's absolute destruction by said regime. In his introduction written almost two decades later, Nabokov disputed this interpretation, writing that, "The story in Bend Sinister is not really about life and death in a grotesque police state... The main theme of Bend Sinister, then, is the beating of Krug's loving heart, the torture an intense tenderness is subjected to - and it is for the sake of the pages about David and his father that the book was written and should be read."
That's right, you think this is a grand political novel about totalitarianism, a useful Cold War cultural weapon fashioned by an anti-communist Russian exile, but really it is an affecting love story about parenthood. The editors who solicited and published this later introduction seem a bit incredulous themselves, writing in a preface, rather plaintively one feels, that "It is always a bit hard to say whether Nabokov is spoofing."
I read the novel in yet a third way, a novel about writing a novel. This is due to its meta-fictional elements (the text also includes homages to Joyce, for what its worth). Nabokov inserts himself as author directly into the work right from the first page. Although initially it appears the "I" in the brief first chapter is the main character, Krug, the final page shows that it is in fact Nabokov, or at the least a combined Krug/Nabokov. The book's opening:
Supposedly this is Krug looking out a hospital window and taking in the view. On the novel's last page, Nabokov has just brazenly broken the fourth wall
Nabokov has taken his persistent fascination with doubles and reflections into the realm of meta-fiction here, mirroring the opening "fictional" paragraph with a closing "non-fictional" paragraph, making plain the author's incorporation of real life into fiction. At other times in the novel the perspective shifts from third person to first and back to third, drawing attention to the author's consciousness in deciding between approaches, and at times the author's thinking intrudes even more plainly, as in Chapter 5 when Krug visits his friend Ember in the latter's bedroom:
Nabokov will leave the bedroom undescribed, then. Fair enough.
Also interesting are the comments on translation included in the text. Nabokov had written nine previous novels in his native Russian. He had translated one, Despair, himself, in 1937. Another, Laughter in the Dark, had been translated in 1936 by an English translator, which Nabokov claimed to be greatly displeased by, and which was then re-written/re-translated by himself in 1938. He thus had some experience with the topic. Nabokov first addresses the subject in chapter 3, in the guise of Ember's translating of Hamlet:
Even more direct is he in chapter seven:
The remaining seven of Nabokov's Russian language novels would eventually be translated over the next three decades, always involving Nabokov himself, often including his son Dmitri. Never left to the "suicidal limitation" of some unrelated translator who had submitted themselves to Nabokov's genius in the making of a mechanical imitation. Nabokov clearly wasn't going to have that.
Bend Sinister is typically said to be about living in a totalitarian state, and gets compared to Orwell's 1984. It certainly is set under a new totalitarian regime, a bumbling one that reflects Nabokov's opinion that dictatorships are marked by incompetent buffoonery more than by competent evil, and concerns a free man's absolute destruction by said regime. In his introduction written almost two decades later, Nabokov disputed this interpretation, writing that, "The story in Bend Sinister is not really about life and death in a grotesque police state... The main theme of Bend Sinister, then, is the beating of Krug's loving heart, the torture an intense tenderness is subjected to - and it is for the sake of the pages about David and his father that the book was written and should be read."
That's right, you think this is a grand political novel about totalitarianism, a useful Cold War cultural weapon fashioned by an anti-communist Russian exile, but really it is an affecting love story about parenthood. The editors who solicited and published this later introduction seem a bit incredulous themselves, writing in a preface, rather plaintively one feels, that "It is always a bit hard to say whether Nabokov is spoofing."
I read the novel in yet a third way, a novel about writing a novel. This is due to its meta-fictional elements (the text also includes homages to Joyce, for what its worth). Nabokov inserts himself as author directly into the work right from the first page. Although initially it appears the "I" in the brief first chapter is the main character, Krug, the final page shows that it is in fact Nabokov, or at the least a combined Krug/Nabokov. The book's opening:
An oblong puddle inset in the coarse asphalt; like a fancy footprint filled to the brim with quicksilver; like a spatulate hole through which you can see the nether sky. Surrounded, I note, by a diffuse tentacled black dampness where some dull dun dead leaves have stuck. Drowned, I should say, before the puddle had shrunk to its present size.
Supposedly this is Krug looking out a hospital window and taking in the view. On the novel's last page, Nabokov has just brazenly broken the fourth wall
Krug ran towards him, and just a fraction of an instant before another and better bullet hit him, he shouted again: You, you - and the wall vanished, like a rapidly withdrawn slide, and I stretched myself and got up from among the chaos of written and rewritten pages, to investigate the sudden twang that something had made in striking the wire netting of my window.Looking out his window, now writing a page of memoir rather than fiction, Nabokov notes
I could also distinguish the glint of a special puddle (the one Krug had somehow perceived through the layer of his own life), an oblong puddle invariably acquiring the same form after every shower because of the constant spatulate shape of a depression in the ground.
Nabokov has taken his persistent fascination with doubles and reflections into the realm of meta-fiction here, mirroring the opening "fictional" paragraph with a closing "non-fictional" paragraph, making plain the author's incorporation of real life into fiction. At other times in the novel the perspective shifts from third person to first and back to third, drawing attention to the author's consciousness in deciding between approaches, and at times the author's thinking intrudes even more plainly, as in Chapter 5 when Krug visits his friend Ember in the latter's bedroom:
Ember gratefully adopts the subject selected. He might have asked: "Why then?" He will learn the reason a little later. Vaguely he perceives emotional dangers in that dim region. So he prefers to talk shop. Last chance of describing the bedroom. Too late. Ember gushes.
Nabokov will leave the bedroom undescribed, then. Fair enough.
Also interesting are the comments on translation included in the text. Nabokov had written nine previous novels in his native Russian. He had translated one, Despair, himself, in 1937. Another, Laughter in the Dark, had been translated in 1936 by an English translator, which Nabokov claimed to be greatly displeased by, and which was then re-written/re-translated by himself in 1938. He thus had some experience with the topic. Nabokov first addresses the subject in chapter 3, in the guise of Ember's translating of Hamlet:
The unfinished translation of his favorite lines in Shakespeare's greatest play - follow the perttaunt jauncing 'neath the rack / with her pale skeins-mate. - crept up tentatively but it would not scan because in his native tongue "rack" was anapaestic. Like pulling a grand piano through a door. Take it to pieces. Or turn the corner into the next line. But the berth there was taken, the table was reserved, the line was engaged.
Even more direct is he in chapter seven:
Nature had once produced an Englishman whose domed head had been a hive of words; a man who had only to breathe on any particle of his stupendous vocabulary to have that particle live and expand and throw out tremulous tentacles until it became a complex image with a pulsing brain and correlated limbs. Three centuries later, another man, in another country, was trying to render these rhythms and metaphors in a different tongue. This process entailed a prodigious amount of labor, for the necessity of which no real reason could be given. It was as if someone, having seen a certain oak tree (further called Individual T) growing in a certain land and casting its own unique shadow on the green and brown ground, had proceeded to erect in his garden a prodigiously intricate piece of machinery which in itself was as unlike that or any other tree as the translator's inspiration and language were unlike those of the original author, but which, by means of ingenious combinations of parts, light effects, breeze-engendering engines, would, when completed, cast a shadow exactly similar to that of Individual T - the same outline, changing in the same manner, with the same double and single spots of suns rippling in the same position, at the same hour of the day. From a practical point of view, such a waste of time and material (those headaches, those midnight triumphs that turn out to be disasters in the sober light of morning!) was almost criminally absurd, since the greatest masterpiece of imitation presupposed a voluntary limitation of thought, in submission to another man's genius. Could this suicidal limitation and submission be compensated by the miracle of adaptive tactics, by the thousand devices of shadography, by the keen pleasure that the weaver of words and their witness experienced at every new wile in the warp, or was it, taken all in all, but an exaggerated and spiritualized replica of Paduk's writing machine?"
The remaining seven of Nabokov's Russian language novels would eventually be translated over the next three decades, always involving Nabokov himself, often including his son Dmitri. Never left to the "suicidal limitation" of some unrelated translator who had submitted themselves to Nabokov's genius in the making of a mechanical imitation. Nabokov clearly wasn't going to have that.