Customer Reviews

Transparent Things. Vladimir Nabokov (Penguin Classics)

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This is typical brilliant Nabokov, with plenty of detail and mysterious threads laid down throughout that the imaginative can choose to follow or ignore. Because it was written in English rather than translated, Nabokov's prose is at its most powerful and organic - by far. The stories in this are extremely haunting, at least for me, musing on the nature of life after death, among many other themes. It is true genius and you can read it in a single sitting. Get it. You won't be disappointed.

nor a good starting point. While stylistically very much in keeping with works such as Lolita and Pale Fire (lyrical, smooth, entertaining, moving. A passage describing a pencil stub found in a hotel desk sticks in my memory. Nabokov gives it more life in a long paragraph than other authors can bestow upon a human character in a hundred pages), Transparent Things seems to trade the clever warmth of the earlier novels for a more experimental cleverness which gives the book the cooler feel of a puzzle box or jigsaw puzzle.

While its comparatively inaccessible structure is off-putting, what I found most bothersome about Transparent Things was my inability to relate Nabokov's fragmented narration to the story being told. The text feels like a camera with a macro lens following Person through his life, picking up this object here, this scene there, all in magnified detail, but to an end that escapes me.

One of Nabokov's greatest strengths is the multilayered nature of his novels. He is one of the exceptionally rare authors who allows a reader to take away exactly what they bring in. But this is not a one-sided trait, by which he crafts a text that runs infinitely deep and from which only the exceptionally scholarly are able to extract every last allusion and nuance from the text. It also means that over this depth there is a simple story that any reader can follow. In Transparent Things, this gift of Nabokov's seems employed in reverse, in that what is in essence a very simple story lies not on the surface, but is occluded by a layer of decidedly opaque murk.

Perhaps this is the point of the novel--that things are not transparent, that every object does not present its story as simply as a novel does, but rather gives us hard, solid surfaces. However, an author such as Nabokov wastes his talent in making such a point. There are enough inscrutable surfaces in the world, but not enough books like Pale Fire, which offer, like cut diamond, varying degrees of transparency, depending on a viewer's angle.

Save this one for later.

While Vladimir Nabokov is perhaps metafiction's most important literary lion, he is far from its founder. However, with his penultimate novel, TRANSPARENT THINGS, he actually takes transcends metafiction, quite literally removing it from this world and placing it firmly in the next. To put it bluntly (and putting aside all questions of quality), TT is an incomparable work.

Although barely 100 pages, TT is one of the world's very most complex works of literature. To speak of the plot is deceiving since the perspective from and the manner in which the cynosure (viz., Hugh Person)'s tale is told -- and how he eventually relates to the teller(s)/telling -- is what the text is "about"; and comprehending this is no easy feat. While I personally don't consider John Updike a great mind, I don't think he can be derided for admitting that he was completely baffled by TT. (Incidentally, he still professed to admire and enjoy it.) This was, in fact, the general reaction to this book, a reaction which so frustrated Nabokov that he was prompted to break with his general reluctance to explicate his own work (an explication which he was obviously quite annoyed (and baffled to have) to give, as the confusion on the his readers' collective part was not due to any insufficiency in the book). (I hesitate to divulge where this interview can be found, but if you read the book and are similarly perplexed, any decent compendium on Nabokovian criticism will contain it, as there is VERY little that has been written on TT.) What can hardly be debated is the singular narrative approach Nabokov employs -- nay, creates! This novelty alone puts the reader in a place (s)he has never been and so a form or degree of literary vertigo is to be expected.

As with all Nabokov, no matter the complexity and subtextual goings-on, the plot and character development of TT is not slighted -- and it is perhaps this Nabokovian trait which often allows even those who realize that they are perhaps missing the bulk of Nabokov's artisanship to still appreciate his art. Personally, I have neither enjoyed nor admired a work of art any more profoundly than I do this one.

Ok, it's not one of those change your life books like Ada or Lolita, but frankly, if you're considering reading Transparent Things, you've already read those anyway. If you've been burned before by Nabokov, you can trust this one, and better yet, it's 100 pages, so what's the risk? A good rule of thumb is that anything after Lolita is worth the time. Anything before is hit and miss.

Another nice thing is that this is a follow up to Ada and Nabokov's still cranking. There's new philosophical and stylistic ground covered, and one would have thought that there wasn't anything else to cover after the big A. It isn't another love story for the ages, but it's well crafted and entertaining. Oh, and this, unlike most Nabokov doesn't leave you with that, good lord he's a conceited (expletive) feeling.

Some writers--early Ian McEwan comes to mind--seem to be less interested in plot and character than they are in the power of their prose to capture a scene, a moment, or an experience. In TRANSPARENT THINGS, Nabokov performs his variation on such magic, creating a story that, in summary, is very dark and tragic but that is also secondary to its playful and droll tone. Undeniably, Nabokov's protagonist, Hugh Person, is both the agent and victim of tragedy. But the Nab's writing is so precise and masterfully amused that this novella's sad story seems almost incidental. For this reader, TRANSPARENT THINGS was primarily a wry comedy as Nabokov leads the goofy Hugh from scene to scene. Then, inexplicable anger, and perhaps madness, erupts.

Nabokov's writing in this novella is superb, especially near the end. Here's just one example, which only he could write:

"Earth and sky were drained of all color. It was either raining or pretending to rain or not raining at all, yet still appearing to rain in a sense that only certain old Northern dialects can either express verbally or not express, but versionize, as it were, through the ghost of a sound produced by drizzle in a haze of grateful rose shrubs. 'Raining in Wittenberg, but not in Wittgenstein.' An obscure joke..."

Highly recommended.

I read that book and was a bit baffled.

After reading the book, it was clear to me that one would need some help in trying to sort out exactly what the book means. Many other people such as John Updike have been baffled by the book. According to professional analysis found elsewhere, Transparent Things was first published in December 1971 in Esquire. And, from what Nabokov said, he finished the slim novella on April fool's day, of that same year. Is that the first tip? Is this book a bit of a sophisticated joke?

Most people have a hard time understanding what it means, and it takes at least two reads to get any sort of an understanding. Nabokov himself was amused by the critics and probably would continue to be amused today if he was still alive, and he said: "Amongst the reviewers several careful readers have published some beautiful stuff about it. Yet neither they nor, of course, the common criticule discerned the structural knot of the story."

And his biographer is quoted:

Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd's analysis attempts to untie that "knot" with a more specific elucidation: "Within the small compass of Transparent Things and the bleak life of Hugh Person, Nabokov ruptures the relationship of reader, character, and author more radically than he has ever done, in order to explore some of his oldest themes: the nature of time; the mystery and privacy of the human soul, and its simultaneous need to breach its solitude; the scope of consciousness beyond death; the possibility of design in the universe."

So where does that leave us average reader? What are we to make of it all? What is Nabokov's "knot." Without giving away the story, I can only guess but it is a "dream like" narrative of a man who is delusional and later near the end he is in a schizophrenic state? But as noted by others, it is not the protagonist himself who narrates the tale in a wild fashion, but a third party who is (presumably) lucid.

Correct me if I am wrong, and I am happy to discuss the book with anyone; but, was Person not in some sort of delusional state at the end? And, how does his described actions show us a window on our soul, or even blur the boundary between life and death? Or is there a whimsical element here? Or is to make us think, or again is it just literary art?

Many call the book a masterpiece. I think it is a very imaginative and hard to fathom piece of literature. It is literature as art, or art-for-art's sake. Nabokov has removed all the boundaries on his writing, mixing time and events. So, understand it or not, it is an interesting read.

Vladimir Nabokov is one of the giants of the 20th century literature, and this very short novella is a perfect example of his writing genius. Despite the book's brevity (about 100 pages in the print edition), it is exceedingly complex and probably one of his more ambitious works. Its complexity will probably be insurmountable to someone unfamiliar with Nabokov's, especially later, writings. If you are looking to read something by Nabokov for the first time, this would not be the best place to start. The book is replete with wordplays, literary allusions and other tricks of trade for which he is famous. The plotline as such is hard to discern, and one cannot help but feel that the entire book is some very elaborate practical joke on his unsuspecting and naïve readers. This is especially likely since a lot of the material in the book deals with writing and publishing professions, even though these are touched upon in the most oblique of ways. Nabokov also peppers his narrative with instances of his protagonists' rather salacious sex lives, although these references are intellectualized to the point of being unrecognizable as passionate affairs of the flesh. This relentless intellectualization of people's lives done in a masterly literary style is precisely the most intriguing aspect of Nabokov's writing, and the reason why most of his works, this one included, are worth reading and rereading. Each repeated reading brings into focus new aspects of his work, and makes his novels feel eternally fresh and interesting. Few writers are able to accomplish the same feat.

With nary a page wasted nor too many, Nabokov dissects the life of one Hugh Person--a life otherwise unworthy of particular note except for what Person does one night...in his sleep.

In just over 100 pages Nabokov has crafted a surprisingly rich and evocative psychological thriller that is also high literary art. The stunning use of language and narrative technique is every bit as enjoyable and challenging as the story itself. Nabokov is a prose stylist with very few peers and that makes this novelette something quite special.

The story of Hugh Person, murderer, starts off without much hint of what is to come. Indeed, it takes a while, even in such a short work, to figure out what Nabokov is up to in telling the life-story of such an unspectacular person-age. But Hugh will fall rather hopelessly in love on a business trip to Europe with a woman as complicated as he is "simple." Working as an editor/proofreader to a great--if eccentric and notoriously difficult--author Hugh, who seems doomed to mediocrity in his own life, is not only out of his league, but out of his orbit in the company of Armande. She has him wrapped around her little toe, almost literally, and this sort of obsessive relationship can never end well. In fact, its always only a matter of how badly such connections end.

This one ends just about as badly as it gets.

Nabokov is a joy to read--if you love the sensual and intellectual possibilities inherent in language when utilized by a virtuoso. Transparent Things is minimalist Nabokov--allusive and elusive. --but no less challenging than anything else he's written. A late novel, but a great one, it's often overlooked when looking at Nabokov's oeuvre--it shouldnt be!

Sorry, I hate to be a pedant (but who appreciated passionate pedantry more than Nab?) but I have to correct the reviewer below me and point out that Transparent Things is one of Nabokov's LAST works, published when the master was still milking his mind at the age of 74 and still residing on Terra the Fair. Also, easy does it, and keep your eye on that bombastic critic.

What _Pale Fire_ and _Lolita_ don't represent about much of Nabokov's work is the fact that it often seems to shut the reader out of its world--or at least leave him/her looking in through a frequently obscured peephole. _Transparent Things_ is a novel which epitomizes this inaccessibility but it is this very difficulty of "identifying" with characters or "connecting" with the book's themes that makes it fascinating. A more cereberal adventure, perhaps, even, than _Pale Fire_ (and certainly more than _Pnin_, _Speak, Memory_ or _Lolita_), this novel is nonetheless worth the quick read that it requires.