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Bend Sinister

Vladimir Nabokov

Start date: July 1, 2012

Finish date: July 31, 2012

Discussion: Bend Sinister

Discussion leader: Jason Lundberg

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Bend Sinister

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By Jason · 1 post · 9 views

last updated Jul 25, 2012 09:26PM

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Feb 12, 2008 Inderjit Sanghera rated it really liked it

On the face of it, Bend Sinister is an unusual novel. Nabokov, a self-proclaimed politically apathetic writer, writes a novel about the rise of newly formed dictatorship in a fictitious country. Yet, despite this, Bend Sinister is fundamentally not a political book, or even a book about politics per se, but is more a book about love, or in this case, paternal love, and just as the object of that paternal love dies and is removed from the novel, so the narrator himself, in a miracle of involution On the face of it, Bend Sinister is an unusual novel. Nabokov, a self-proclaimed politically apathetic writer, writes a novel about the rise of newly formed dictatorship in a fictitious country. Yet, despite this, Bend Sinister is fundamentally not a political book, or even a book about politics per se, but is more a book about love, or in this case, paternal love, and just as the object of that paternal love dies and is removed from the novel, so the narrator himself, in a miracle of involution, realises that the real tyrant is not the petty tyrant Paduk, but the author of the novel which Adam is trapped in, the unseen narrator who follows Adam wherever he goes, who Adam constantly catches brief glimpses of in various parts of the novel, such as on the bridge, the author who famously referred to his characters as "galley slaves" and who controls all of the characters in the novel. Adam's realisation of his own fictionality spirals into a descent into insanity and the end of the novel.

What are the other themes of the Bend Sinister, aside from Adam's relationship and love for his son? Namely, the miracle of conciousness and of each individual persons contemplation and experience of life. The novel is set just after the a coup d'etat in which a political party 'The Party of the Average Man' influenced by a philosophy called Ekwilism, which disparages individuality and seeks to convert all of its citizens into parts of the all encompassing "state". However, in seeking to deny us our individuality, the state also denies to us all that makes us human, and our appreciation of the world around us vanishes as it rests purely on each individuals observations of the world around them.

Unlike certain political novels about totalitarian regimes, Nabokov does not seek to make the state in his novel all powerful, or even half competent. The leader is a grotesque figure who was bullied by Adam at school and whose party leaders are leftovers of the freaks and grotesques of society. The petty bureaucrats and party members who were encounter in the novel are constantly seen as being incompetent, consistently bumbling or engaging in bawdy jokes or mindless fawning, indeed so idiotic is the state that it fails to realise that the key to gaining Adam's cooperation is not via capturing his friends, but by capturing his son, the sole thing Adam loves in the world, though, paradoxically the states inability to process emotions such as love mean it is unable to grasp this until Adam informs a secret agent of it. The novel is full of dark humour, there is a scene when secret agents of the state are attempting to capture a friend of Adam's and decide to send two organ grinders incognito to spy on them, unaware of the ridiculousness of having two such conspicuous individual in a covert mission or the nanny sent to spy on Adam and his son who makes it so obvious that she is a secret agent that is borders to the point of parody. Indeed, parody is a key element of the novel, as Nabokov himself stated "parody is a game, satire a lesson", the state itself is a parody of the many Soviet-esque autocracies that were springing about the world (and also a parody of any autocracy of any sort) and the ridiculous nature of the dialogue between the state officials, including several ribaldrous conversations between lustful (which also functions as an anagram of slutful, an apt description of certain characters) point to the black humour which dominates the novel, a black humour which is soon undermined by the tragic death of Adam's son, who is tortured the death due to a bureaucratic mix up. It is only then that we see that the incompetent members of the state, whose action perpetually descend into farce, are also people who wield power and the cruelty and tyranny behind their power.
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Apr 22, 2014 Publius rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nabokov, novels, american, re-read

An interesting deviation from Nabokov's self-professed abstinence from overtly didactic fiction, particularly of the political nature. In a quasi-Orwellian dystopian world, the doctrine of choice has now become Ekwilism (haha Vladimir...) - a thinly veiled double of Communism. Paduk, the implementer of this philosophy, draws striking similarities to Lenin (his city is even called Padukgrad). Unlike Orwell's 1984 , there are little bits of Nabokovian humour here and there, such as the chapter wh ...more

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