Without Lifting A Finger

Finished with Invitation to a Beheading and I have to admit (though my "underscores" point to flashes of N's usual brilliance): I was a bit disappointed with the master. I kept thinking Early and Nabokov practicing Nabokov , but I know (because I've looked) that others think this one is chock-full of ideas (something N usually pooh-poohed) and heavy (light) stuff. I'll only say: Let me revisit it in a couple years. First readings are sometimes "first readings," and, admittedly, I've had some "life-objects" in my way. Let me also point you to two interesting essays I've unearthed (unfortunately I haven't the time to read them in toto): The Informing of the Soul by Gennady Barabtarlo Nabokov's Invitation to Plato's Beheading by Alexander Moudrov

A few more "underscores" from Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading : Accused of the most terrible crimes, gnostical turpitude Again a butterfly wing would slide between his fingers, leaving colored powder on them the bliss of relieving oneself, which some hold to be on a par with the pleasure of love Around his left nipple there was an imaginative tattoo--two green leaves--so that the nipple itself seemed to be a rosebud (made of marchpane and candied angelica) flashed by so quickly as happens only amid very familiar surroundings, in the dark, when the varicolored fractions of day are replaced by the integers of night

One of the few novels by Nabokov I haven't already read, and it took me a while to get started (ever since a friend's reading it inspired me to read it, it has been patiently waiting for me on the "list"). I picked it up before Stiller (got through the intro in which Nabokov denies Kafka's influence; made a couple false assaults on the text), but finally Stiller won out. Anyway, now I'm up for it (already 20% through a relatively short text: 180 pgs), and a somewhat lackluster beginning (or was it only me?) has been followed by a carriage of words that has steadily pulled me in and along. Perhaps the first underscore worth repeating: . . . but here is what I want to express: between his movement and the movement of the laggard shadow--that second, that syncope--there is the rare kind of time in which I live--the pause, the hiatus, when the heart is like a feather . . .