Mary - Vladimir Nabokov (Russian)
This short novel was Nabokov’s first, written when he was twenty-six years old and newly-married. It displays more of his flaws than his virtues. Ganin had a brief love affair with Mary; an improbable coincidence may reunite them after a five year separation. Nabokov tries to evoke their love through Ganin’s memories; but Ganin is unappealing and Mary (who exists entirely offstage) never comes to life. I cared more about the old poet and the lonely young woman who live in Ganin’s rooming house; they were flesh and blood characters. The ending – in which Ganin is to meet Mary at the railroad station and whisk her away from her repugnant husband – is a copout. On the last page he abruptly decides that she should remain as no more than a memory and he heads for another railroad station to make his getaway. Recently I started The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (written fifteen years after Mary) but didn’t read enough of it to do a review. In both novels Nabokov tried to capture elusive emotional states and to describe the inanimate world in fresh ways. He believed that the magic of his prose and perceptions could carry the day. This was his major flaw. He needed vital characters in compelling situations. He needed Humbert craving Lolita.

Saint Augustine’s Pigeon - Evan S. Connell
In reviewing Connell’s Double Honeymoon I called it “a terrible mistake from an author I greatly admire.” His books that I admire are Mrs. Bridge, Mr. Bridge, Son of the Morning Star, Diary of a Rapist and The Connoisseur. They need to be duly noted, because this collection of selected stories includes many terrible mistakes. There are only two full-fledged successes. In the four page long “The Marine” a pilot who had not yet left the United States asks an injured Captain what it’s like on the front lines. In the monologue that follows we get a harrowing look at how war allows a warped person to indulge his gruesome urges. The other success is an essay on the subject of celebrity (with “numerous digressions”); it was pleasurable to follow Connell’s inventive mind along its labyrinthian paths. As for the rest of the book, there are many short pieces, some interesting, some a waste. What baffled me are the five long stories. Two are about a character named J.D., a man who wanders the world; he occasionally returns to tell his stay-at-home school friends of the wondrous things he has seen and experienced (including love affairs with exotic women). J.D. came across as one of Walter Mitty’s more foolish incarnations. Then there are three very long stories featuring a character named Karl Muhlbach. In struggling through them my wandering attention was caught by a line describing a telephone conversation: “. . . it goes on and on, a long, dreary, stupid, inconclusive affair.” These words aptly described the story I was reading. All the characters – not only Muhlbach, though he’s the worst of the lot – could be aliens from the planet Boffo. My bafflement has to do with how Connell could get Mr. and Mrs. Bridge so right and then show no understanding of human nature (nor any inkling of how to tell an engrossing story). The answer may lie in the psyche of the author. Connell observed the Bridges with scientific detachment; in precise images he captured stages of their lives. Though the images are artfully created and arranged, his scrupulous intelligence was the main factor at work. With Karl Muhlbach Connell tried for intimacy. This character appeared in both The Connoisseur and Double Honeymoon. The first book was successful because it focused on Karl’s obsession with pre-Columbian art; the latter failed because it was about a sexual relationship. Connell, a brilliant but very odd man, was at a loss when presenting the firsthand feelings of humans in everyday situations. He needed to work from a place of detachment, either in the subject matter or the way the story was framed.