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4.0 out of 5 stars
A timely satire on anti-intellectualism, Jan 29 2004
By A Customer
This is an intelligent, black satire of a state where mediocrity is celebrated and intellectualism denigrated. Ironically many American reviewers (above) identify the political philosophy of this state as essentially communist. Nabokov repeatedly denied this. In fact he was trying to get at something deeper than simple left or right labels. What happens when confirmity becomes the norm? The obtuse, arrogant, intellectual non-conformist - like Krug - is inexorably drawn into conflict with a society that demands his allegiance. And like Kundera's character in The Joke or Oscar Schindler, or even Socrates the bloody minded become heroic. Not out of an impulse to heroism, just because they refuse to conform. After the fall of communism it is interesting to reflect whether the US with its relentless celebration of folksiness and denigration of "intellectual elites" more resembles Nabokov's dystopia than we realise. Doesn't a semi-educated president resemble Paduk? Don't all American children swear an idiotic oath of allegiance to the fatherland in much the same way as was demanded of Krug? Don't officials lock up hundreds without trial in the name of protecting freedom? - apparently unaware that they are busy destroying it. Isn't America the land of overgrown adolescents, ignorant, unreflective, blithe, pleasure seeking and armed? Of course non-conformists are not killed these days. They are emblazoned with the scarlet letter of Anti-American. A modern-day word for heretic. It is interesting to reflect that there is no equivalent word for people who criticise Britain, or France, Sweden, Canada or Spain. Why? Because the nation is not so closely identified with a national philosophy and because criticism is not regarded as threatening. This how evil arises in the world. We stop reflecting why and simply assume that our actions can only be for the good. Ekwist lives - unfortunately.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A glimpse at the wounded inner child of the beast, Mar 18 2002
In 1984 Orwell gave us a terrifying study of the mind of a totalitarian socialist state. With BEND SINISTER, Vladimir Nabokov confronts a similar beast but instead of dissecting its addled brain, he explores its pathetic heart. And BEND SINISTER, for my money, is the more frightening of the two. Bad ideas often prove less dangerous than madmen and madwomen who would tear down to world to avenge childhood slights. Look out. The common man has taken over Ekwist and his name is Paduk. Paduk, the socially inept son of an inventor of insane gadgets such as a typewriter that duplicates oneĄ¯s own handwritten script, has seized control of the Eastern European backwater and only one thing stands in his way of complete domination: Adam Krug. Krug, a world famous though colossally misunderstood philosopher, is EkwistĄ¯s only claim to global fame. Paduk needs KrugĄ¯s allegiance if he is to have legitimacy. There are also unspoken old scores to settle: Krug and Paduk went to school together and the young philosopher had tormented the young dictator, dubbing him with the nickname toad, embarrassing him sexually and sitting on his face at every opportunity. When Krug refuses to be bought with the highest academic post in the land, one of his friends after another starts disappearing. Krug, however, still refuses to sign a ridiculous oath of allegiance (which is partly plagiarized from Lenin). His resistance appears less heroic than an act of sheer stubbornness and intellectual snobbery, almost a personal indulgence. But PadukĄ¯s henchmen finally get to Krug through his young son, David. How they do it is simply too horrible for me to repeat. Imagine something nearly unthinkable and you are half-way there. To be honest, the unspeakable fate David suffers (far worse than anything Lolita endures) soured the book for me. But such as with NabakovĄ¯s other controversial works, LOLITA, with its pedophilia, and ADA, with its paean to teenage incest, I canĄ¯t honestly say that I regret reading the book, nor would I deny the experience to anyone else. Nabokov is that damn good. I also canĄ¯t honestly deny that this book is the work of a genius. It boasts several comic scenes worthy of the best of Monty Python. In one, Krug bounces from checkpoint to checkpoint on a bridge manned by idiotic and paranoid soldiers because he has no entry pass for one gate and no exit pass from the other. Equally side-splitting is KrugĄ¯s savage dismissal of a mediocre academic sent by Paduk to woo him. An optional course in this mini-feast of a book (it is only 201 pages) is this red herring served by Nabokov in his later essays, in which he claimed (it is hard to spot this when reading BEND SINISTER) that during the book Krug becomes aware that he is only NabokovĄ¯s creation, prompting him to undertake an existential revaluation of his own bonds with his friends and family. Krug seems to come to the conclusion that his love for his son is real whether he is or not, which may be NabokovĄ¯s biggest joke or his greatest truth or both.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Nabokov's most political novel, by turns funny and tragic, Aug 30 2001
Bend Sinister (1947) was the first novel Vladimir Nabokov wrote in the United States, and his second novel in English. Like one of his later Russian-language novels, Invitation to a Beheading, it is explicitly political, in a way generally foreign to Nabokov. (Indeed, to write a "political" novel was rather against Nabokov's usual artistic philosophy, and in his 1963 Introduction to this novel, he takes pains to point out that the focus of the novel is the main character's relationship with his son, not the repressive political conditions which drive the novel's plot.) Bend Sinister opens with the death of Olga Krug, beloved wife of philosopher Adam Krug. Krug is left with an 8-year old boy, David, in a country torn by a revolution led by an oafish schoolmate of Krug's, Paduk, called the Toad by his fellows at school. The new regime attempts to gain Krug's support, offering both the carrot of a University presidentship and the stick of veiled threats conveyed by the arrest, over time, of many of Krug's friends. The brutal climax comes when the new regime, almost by accident, realizes that the only lever that will work on Krug is threats to his son, then, due, apparently, to grotesque incompetence, manages to fumble away that lever.
The novel is (one is tempted to say "of course") beautifully written. Passage after passage is lushly quotable, featuring VN's elegant long sentences, lovely imagery, and complexly constructed metaphors; as well as his love of puns, repeated symbols, and humour. The characters are well-portrayed also -- Krug, of course, and his friends such as Ember and Maximov, as well as villains such as the Widmerpoolish dictator Paduk and the sluttish maid Mariette. The novel, though ultimately quite tragic, is filled with comic scenes, such as the arrest of Ember, and comic set-pieces, such as the refugee hiding in a broken elevator. As VN asserts, the relationship between Adam Krug and his son is the fulcrum on which the novel turns, and it is from that the novel gains its emotional power. But much of the novel is taken up with rather broad satire of totalitarian communism. The version portrayed here is of course an exaggeration of the true horror that so affected Nabokov's life, but it still has bite. The central philosophy of the new regime is not Marxism per se, but something called "Ekwilism", which resembles the philosophy satirized in Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" -- it is the duty of every citizen to be equal to every other, and thus great achievement is unworthy. (It is not to be missed that Paduk was a failure and a pariah at school.) All this is bitterly funny, but almost unfortunate, in that it is so over the top in places that it can be rejected as unfair to the Soviet system which it seems clearly aimed at. That's really beside the point, however -- taken for itself, Bend Sinister is beautifully written, often very funny, and ultimately wrenching and tragic.
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by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
by Vladimir Nabokov
