Transparent Things

My First Thoughts.

To be quite honest I read Transparent Things in one sitting. It helped that I was stuck inside the room of a mountain home for the whole weekend. Outside were chilling temps and a hungry mountain lion, in the other room was a loud TV playing soap operas. Therefore, my best option was to read.

I loved it, and am about 1/3 through my second reading. I really enjoy how much Nabokov plays with layers of meaning in his novels. On one level, Hugh Person makes repeat visits to Switzerland, the last time to derive meaning by giving himself spatial reminders and memorable landmarks. It is interesting how the levels of the story become totally jumbled at the end when he is in the hotel. The story lines cross and cross back again, straying into ambiguity and eventually ending with the death of poor Person. Is meaning gained from looking inside layer after layer after layer? I was reminded of the film Synecdoche New York. The main character of the film tries to find meaning in increased depths of layers and eventually dies somewhere in the depths of the all the layers. He thought he was directing the story, until he realized that he was only a part, like all the other actors, in the bigger story.

I am glad that we discussed narration in class today because I was aware of the odd multiple narration going on. On page 521, the scene is being described with Julia, Armande, and Hugh. "... Julia and he (alias Alice and the narrator) ..." I think that this is pretty interesting. Is Hugh a narrator as well? I think this story will be a great peak at Nabokov's ideas of time and the afterlife and how they are related. Hugh dies, but do ghosts rise above the constraints of time and jump from the future into the past? hmm. I'll keep this in mind on the second read.

Also as a reminder, we are supposed to pay attention (underline) every instance of fire and associated imagery, ghosts and synonyms, and foreshadowing of strangling.

happy reading.