Was going to start reading a new book today when, out of curiosity, I cracked open the next Nabokov MFA book, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I assumed the book I had was entirely that story, as the cover makes no other indication, but found that the story itself was a mere 80 pages, so I figured it would be good to dispatch another Nabokov book in the space of a day.

The biggest problem in reading Jekyll and Hyde, of course, is that it is written largely as a mystery as to the identity of Hyde, which is no mystery at all to a modern reader. So, it sort of had the equivalent of seeing The Sixth Sense upon someone’s recommendation that you’d never know Bruce Willis was dead the entire time.

Of course, there was perhaps some usefulness in the fact that knowing in advance that Jekyll and Hyde are one person. It allowed me to more fully appreciate the narrative, the way the story is told, how the clues are layered in slowly. Basically, it was like jumping to watching The Sixth Sense for the second time right off the bat and getting to appreciate how everything was told to you all along.

One of the things that was most interesting about the book, which is lost in the broad cultural knowledge of the Jekyll/Hyde character, is that it is not a duality of good and evil. That is usually how it is presented, that he divides himself into both sides, good and evil. Only it isn’t true. When he is Dr. Jekyll, he has both his good side and his evil side within him, although because of the presence of his good side, his evil side has remained in check constantly. When he is Hyde, his evil side takes over, and is also represented by the physical change of him becoming shorter and uglier, thus everything about him reflects his evil nature. It is shorter because it wasn’t as developed throughout his life; in theory, the longer Hyde exists, the taller he will get, presumably, as he matures that previously dormant side of himself. But even then, he is not pure evil, because he need to drink the a potion to return to living as Dr. Jekyll. So, there is still a hint of Jekyll in Hyde. So, the duality isn’t as cut and dry as usually gets told.

That said, it was inventive, as far as involving hyde in a murder that makes him a wanted man in town, known by everyone and wanted dead. This prevents him from coming out of hiding, basically having to live as a fugitive within Jekyll and not come out, because as soon as he reveals himself again, he will be put to death. It becomes a question as to whether it is better to die in spirit (within Jekyll) or in reality (as the dormant Hyde).

The narrative has an interesting twist in that the story ends before what was actually the best part of the reading experience. The story is capped with two letters from two characters who are dead at the time of them being read, which put all the piece in place. I assumed this would be something Nabokov enjoyed, as he loves using alternate narrative devices as ways to tell the story, but he didn’t go into it, too much.

In fact, this was the essay of his with the least depth. He spent most of the time retelling the story with passages from the text, going into the alliteration, etc. He be certain, he did draw a map showing how Hyde’s entrance to the laboratory linked to Jekyll’s house, although it wasn’t too hard to visualize that at all, really. He also goes into the lineage and possible meanings of the names but the most obvious is, of course, not very hidden: Hyde/Hide.

From the get-go, Nabokov seems to warn readers from taking this story in like a mystery, which is a genre bereft of style, since Stevenson, although writing a template that is still used in modern mysteries, writes with an abundance of style.

He points out two flaws in the story, mainly due to the story being told by two matter-of-fact narrators, such as they do not, nor should, have the language to properly express their revulsion at seeing Hyde’s face or the capacity to describe it for the reader. Nabokov suggests a workaround whereby just seeing Hyde brings out an artistic sensibility in the men, which would at least serve as a workaround for giving them better license to tell the story. The other issue is that we have two upstanding London gentlemen, and the story of Hyde always hints at pleasures and vices underneath the surface in this society, which again, they are not aware of to any significant degree to talk about.

One interesting aside is when Nabokov explores the possible homosexual themes in the story, which never occured to me at all, such as the absence of women, and the ways in which Jekyll has to cover up for Hyde, calling him his "friend and benefactor" in his updated will (redrafted in case he becomes Hyde full-time), as well as the notion that Hyde is blackmailing Jekyll for undisclosed reasons. Not much there, but good to note that Nabokov looks at these thigns from every angle.

Not as much from Vladimir on this, or me, but then again, compared to the mammoth Bleak House, this was still somewhat insightful for an 80-page novella.

Personally, I also kept thinking of Fight Club, since narrator/Tyler live in one body, although in Palahniuk’s book, the narrator has to remain unaware of that fact, because he is telling the story and the readers aren’t supposed to know that information. Here, Jekyll knows what is going on all along, but he isn’t telling the story, so you can get the same "twist" toward the end, because no deception is used. Both narrators find out the information at the appropriate time for the reader.

For my own book, there is a section where Jekyll sees himself as Hyde in the mirror that might be able to tart up one specific scene in my book. We’ll see.

Next up in the Nabokov MFA Program… Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way (book one of Remembrance of Things Past)

The whole time I was reading Madame Bovary, the thought that kept running in the back of my head was why it had taken me so long to read this book. When I came out in college, the faculty advisor for our gay student group was the school’s French professor, who was doing translations and such of Gustave Flaubert. He would encourage me to read Flaubert, and I would tell him I’d look into it, and nothing more would come of it. There is definite regret that I didn’t take advantage of that point in the right direction early on, not to mention having the resource of somoene intimately knowledgable on Flaubert available to me at the time. Oh well, it didn’t happen, and now I’ve read it, so let’s move on…

Mdme. Bovary is one of those timeless books that read impeccably without requiring much in the way of translation or accounting for the fact that it was first released in 1856. Despite the fact that it is a novel, the piece has a beautiful poetry about it. Beautiful imagery combines to illuminate the hollow hearts of the characters.

The novel is basic enough on its surface, as it follows the meeting of Charles and Emma Bovary through to their marriage and (spoiler alert) graves. The whole novel seemed to be about restlessness, in some way. How Emma kept trying to find happiness in the arms of other men, rather than her distant husband. It was rather nice to have a novel where nearly none of the character are all that endearing.

Ultimately, the language of the novel was far more interesting to me than the story. It was interesting to see how Flaubert could make me such a conflicted reader so often, wanting to rush ahead for the sake of the action, but dragging my heels to admire the beautiful interplay of his words. Not to mention, how you are pulled along as a reader with characters that are not all that empathetic.

This book would have been finished a bit earlier had I not been in one of my writerly broodfests a while back, with all of the ‘woe is me’ nonsense regarding the glacial pace of my own work, which becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy. It is unclear whether reading something as masterful as Flaubert during such a period would serve to inspire or make one question why they would even be attempting such a well-worn path. In any event, my mood, writing, and reading all picked up recently, so Bovary was written in two major clips, with the bookmark resting at the end of Part One for longer than it should have.

The story basically shows Emma who, discontented with her husband, falls in love with another man. Despite it being an emotional affair, it never crosses the physical line, and when he leaves her, she is devastated. In her depression, they move to a new village where she begins a physical affair with a wealthy landowner. There is never any doubt that he doesn’t love her or share in her romantic fantasy of their relationship, and he eventually dumps her, which sinks her into another depression.

Finally, she meets the first guy again and begins having a long-distance affair with him under the guise of her traveling to that town once a week to have piano lessons. All this time, she starts piling up enormous debts unbeknownst to her husband. When her debts and adultery become known to people around them she (spoiler alert) commits suicide. Her husband, who despite not being her romantic ideal, remains loyal and true to her to the end, and he dies shortly thereafter.

As per usual, Nabokov geeks out over Bovary, constructing a timeline based on when Flaubert was writing the piece, and arcing back to compute that Charles Bovary was probably born in 1815, in order to place him on a historic timeline with French Kings of the time and such. This seems to be his first inclination with everything he reads, as the book always shows his markings on the first page of the first chapter, and it is always loaded with dates. The need for this exactitude continues to elude me. Maybe someday I’ll wonder why I ever took it so lightly, but we aren’t there yet.

Nabokov says it is important to understand that the characters are all basically philistines, and not mere bourgeois. For example, Emma is shown to be a voracious reader, but Flaubert points out subtly that she is a bad reader, by listing out the evergreen cliches around which she is most attracted, as well as that she uses fiction to put herself into the place of the female protagonist, which Nabokov detests of all readers. He writes:

"Books are not written for those who are fond of poems that make one weep or those whoe like nobel characters in prose as Leon and Emma think. Only children can be excused for identifying themselves with the characters in a book, or enjoying badly written adventure stories; but this is what Emma and Leon do."

In the first instance I recall (although my memory is often for shit), Nabokov questions whether Bovary is meant to be a realistic or naturalistic novel, listing out some of the flaws that would be present were it to have actually happened, but concluding with some nice words about books in general:

"In point of fact, all fiction is fiction. All art is deception. Flaubert’s world, as all worlds of major writers, is a world of fancy with its own logic, its own conventions, its own coincidences. The curious impossibilities I have listed do not clash with the pattern of the book — and indeed are only discovered by dull college professors or bright students."

As he is the former, and I’ve never been the latter, none of these "impossibilities" even tripped my radar. To give you some idea, one of his quibbles is that Emma had not been horse riding for several years is able to get on a horse and gallop away with perfect poise and never feels any stiffness in her joints afterwards.

The most important thing I hope to take away from Bovary as a writer is his counterpoint method that he uses to fuse two parallel dialogues together. Here is a passage where an entire table of people
are all sitting around chatting, but we see how Emma and Leon (her first affair, although it hasn’t happened yet in this scene) steer the conversation from the topic at large to a more personal sub-conversation:

Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza;then, turning to his neighbour--

"Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably inour 'Hirondelle.'"

"That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about always amuses me. I likechange of place."

"It is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to the sameplaces."

"If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly obliged to be in thesaddle"--

"But," Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary, "nothing, itseems to me, is more pleasant--when one can," he added.

The conversation between Emma and Leon always stays on-topic with the others, and is carried out fully in front of them, but it is clear that they are bonding on a deep level during the course of it. there is another scene at a county fair where Emma and her second lover, Rodolphe, set their flirtation against the backdrop of farming awards being handed out in a ceremony one level below them in the town square:

And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it.

"For good farming generally!" cried the president.

"Just now, for example, when I went to your house."

"To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix."

"Did I know I should accompany you?"

"Seventy francs."

"A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you--I remained."

"Manures!"

"And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life!"

"To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!"

"For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete acharm."

"To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin."

"And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you."

"For a merino ram!"

"But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow."

"To Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame."

"Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall Inot?"

"Porcine race; prizes--equal, to Messrs. Leherisse and Cullembourg,sixty francs!"

Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quiveringlike a captive dove that wants to fly away; but, whether she was tryingto take it away or whether she was answering his pressure; she made amovement with her fingers. He exclaimed--

"Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! You understandthat I am yours! Let me look at you; let me contemplate you!"

If I am able to take anything away from the book, that would be a key stylistic element that really made those scenes come off the page (although I do not know if they have any similar effect out of context).

It was used most effectively when the characters stare at each other silently, after saying words that just hang in the air about the path upon which they are heading, and instead of them interjecting over the farming awards, the awards just drone on, adding dramatic tension that seemed heightened moreso than using text alone to convey the same scene. Not to mention, the comic potential which Flaubert even used, interjecting "Manures!" into the midst of watching a relationship bloom.

As for Flaubert’s style, Nabokov calls his judicious use of the word and preceded by a semicolon, which usually follows a list of actions or items, but the semicolon gives the reader a perfect pause, and the and flows the reader directly into a culminating image that resonates much deeper as a result. I know I do go out of my way to end certain paragraphs with certain words, because of the increased resonance (something I did get out of all that journalism and press release writing), so just another thing to try and work into the toolkit.

There is also an entire horse theme that, when pointed out, was clearly there all along, but I personally didn’t piece it together on my own. When Charles first meets Emma, he is on a horse that shies violently, which foreshadows his fate with her, etc., etc., and many other horse-involved things happen throughout.

The best part of reading about the horse theme is Nabokov’s delight in certain sexual overtones to the imagery, where he adds "Freud, that medieval quack, might have made a lot of this scene." and then later on, adds again "Old Freud chuckles in the dark."

Which calls to mind why I like Nabokov so much in the first place, the joy and love he brings to what he does, even when he is, at the same time, being sort of dry and academic.

It seems that perhaps the next move isn’t reading the next Nabokov MFA book (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is up next), but maybe something that Nabokov penned himself. It has been too long since I’ve read one of his works.

Finally finished the second book in the Nabokov MFA program, Charles Dickens’ Bleak House.

It was definitely a challenging book in every way possible, and my oftentimes dread of reading it resulted in me reading a lot more nonfiction in the past few months while Bleak House sat idle. I do think that was detrimental to a book with such a broad tapestry of characters who were vague upon first reading, let alone when I didn’t get around to reading it regularly.

I think my biggest problem with the book, and a problem I have with many artistic outputs is whether they fall into what I call "window" or "mirror" paradigms. "Window" works of art basically show you a world, culture, experience outside of yourself. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. My problem with them is when it doesn’t circle around and teach me something about myself.

This is the definition of art to me. I read to learn about myself. I write to learn about myself. So, if there is a movie shot in Brazil about a drug gang in a small village, it somehow needs to teach me something about me. If not, the experience isn’t as rich or as meaningful. Many independent films, especially the foreign ones, lose me on this front. I’ve never just been a big fan of learning something new for the sake of learning something new. I’m not saying this is proper, or required. Just that it is how I view things at present.

By contrast, you’ve probably figured out the "mirror" part of the equation. I look into a work of art and see myself, or something relatable to myself. It doesn’t have to be about some middle-aged white homo or anything, it just has to make something resonate within me.

While I was not a total fan of Mansfield Park, the first book in my Nabokov MFA series, I found it far more delightful and enjoyable than Bleak House. It just seemed to move so fluidly and enjoyably.

That said, there was a decided mastery to Bleak House. It was clear why Dickens is considered a master, and most of the beauty of the metaphors and the wordplay and the language all found me. It just never connected with me on a deeper level. Even the section fo the book narrated by Esther in the first person didn’t really invite you deeper into the narrative. The whole time, it just seemed like my role was to stand outside the window and look in, which is a pretty passive role for a 880 page book.

Whenever I would mention that I was reading Dickens, which I’ve been forced to mention for some time now, people would immediately bring up that he was paid by the word. This seems to be his legacy. And while his command of the language was admirable, and it did paint indelible pictures, I’d be lying if I didn’t mention that after the third page of him yammering on about a character being a well-respected man merely as set-up, and taking his time to explain who the character even is, why we should care, and what they have to do with the story…. well, this book was read aloud just to ensure I wasn’t daydreaming quite often.

I actually finished this book in one ten-hour sitting, mainly to just make it end already. But, that said, it was also the most enjoyable reading I’d had of the book. I’m not sure if that was due to the growing intensity of the mystery of the book, it getting easier to juggle all the characters as more of them died off, or that not reading it small clips let the characters more easily find their voice in the text.

Nabokov once again went all clinical with the book, drawing maps to sort out where the action was happening, charting character arcs, and all of his usual stuff. Reading Nabokov’s take on things again immediately makes you wonder if this is the proper way to read a novel and, if so, doubting whether you would ever have the capacity to write one that would live up to his scrutiny. Hell, it’s taking me long enough to write one up to my own level of scrutiny, which is exponentially lower (although I have enough ego to think it higher than the current standard).

The book mainly consists of an ongoing lawsuit that has gone on for a ridiculous length of time, to the point where noone engaged in the suit even understand what the suit is even about anymore, and then there is a mystery around a death that affects a lot of the players directly and indirectly. Nabokov cited an additional theme of miserable children and their relationships to their parents and guardians.

But, as I said, the problem with all of this is that, by not relating to, empathizing with, caring about, or being interested by a single character in the book, it just never takes off for me. I just feel I would be far less critical of a book with which I related if it were a little sloppy in its execution, rather than a book that is written by an obvious master than connects with neither my heart nor mind.

I also don’t think it is a matter of when the book was written, in that I find many books from the 1800s perfectly readable and accessible. If anything, I did learn how language can really set an atmosphere above and beyond the words used. Dickens can take three pages to describe a fog to the point where you feel you are enveloped, surrounded, and suffocated by it just as much as the characters are. Compared to my own terse, minimalist writing, it was jarring at first. But there are clearly lessons to be gained there.

Even Nabokov pokes at holes in the story, a few too many coincidences, and says:

"A writer might be a good storyteller or a good moralist, but unless he be an enchanter, an artist, he is not a great writer. Dickens is a good moralist, a good storyteller, and a superb enchanter, but as a storyteller he lags somewhat behind his other virtues."

Nabokov seems to delight in the small choices Dickens made that make his writing come alive, whether it be how a single word in a sentence gives it a perfect gravity, or how an incidental character, upon receiving a twopence, tosses it into the air and catches it overhand, brings the character to life in the mind of the reader.

Next up, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. After, of course, some modern palate cleansers that won’t be discussed here.

I’m just getting my footing as to what it is that I intend to say about the book in the Nabokov MFA series. The process, to rehash, is that I first read a classic book, in this case "Mansfield Park" by Jane Austen, and then the auxiliary text from Nabokov’s "Lectures on Literature," to get his perspective on the novel.

For some reason, there was a sense of dread in starting this book, or perhaps the weight of the whole proposed Nabokov MFA was in play, because I know Mansfield Park has traveled with me extensively, with the goal of being read. It was with me at least once in Pennsylvania, maybe twice now, and also sat untouched in Texas for two weeks. There was always "one more book" that demanded my attention before it.

Part of it was the weight of it being serious literature, from the early 19th century, and one of the links I found online beforehand calling it Austen’s "most difficult and least accessible work," or words to that effect.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to begin the book and find it very readable and delightful. If I had to guess, I probably read 80 percent of the book aloud in my living room. I much preferred this to reading silently in public, as did occur less often, because the silent read never seemed to have the same rhythm and cadence. Plus, there is nothing like reading aloud to crystallize the focus.

My first impression upon reading it was the delightful voice of the book. The book is narrated in the third party, but the narrator is not omniscient as it shows us the inner life of the protagonist (and the protagonist only, if I am not mistaken), so we are clearly rooting for Fanny Price from the beginning.

This is not a book report, so this won’t really be a plot summary, aside from the broadest of strokes. Fanny is taken in to live with her aunt in the delightful manor that serves as the title of the book. At home, Fanny was one of ten children, in a poorer family, and this move propels her into high society.

So, with Fanny at the center of the novel, all of the other characters go about their class issues, and romantic interests, and everything else and we see most of it from Fanny’s perspective.

The narrative was just so delightful. And any latent fears the thought of curling up with serious literature had evoked in me prior were no longer present once the book was in full swing. I am delaying writing that I, in fact, understood everything about the book at all times, which was probably just Cliff Notes flashbacks of old haunting me.

Austen’s delicate weaving and storytelling really paint a picture of this time and its people, but also tells a simple human story. I’m not a follower of the 19th century, British class system or anything else, but that was never oft putting in reading it.

I don’t really think my intention is a plot synopsis, though. So, we will move on to the Nabokov portion of the program, which was always going to be the spookier half of each lesson in my mind. There is something about wanting to glimpse what he finds beautiful and important about the work on my own, without having to read it in his words and then say, "Oh, but of course, how could I have been so stupid."

His introduction alone frightens, when he talks of the level of detail he finds important: "The color of Fanny Price’s eyes… and the furnishing of her cold little room are important." My mind races to remember this detail and, aside from her room being cold, I’ve got nothing. But I am bewildered as to the importance of her eye color to the book. This is foreshadowing for what would come later.

Nabokov has very clear guidelines even as to how a work of literature should be read. In fact, he insists that you cannot read a book, you must reread it. He likens the physical aspect of reading a book the holding, the eye movement, everything really as preventing artistic appreciation, because the work never gets to live as a painting does, which is to say it is experienced on the viewer’s terms, without the constriction of starting at point A and moving toward point B. When you reread, you get to stand back and admire the work.

Nabokov also advises a detachment from reading. He eschews the notion of empathizing with the protagonist, but rather floating on top of the text so that you can admire it from more than one perspective. He writes:

"It seems to me that a good formula to test the quality of a novel is, in the long run, a merging of the precision of poetry and the intuition of science. In order to bask in that magic a wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle even though we must keep a little aloof, a little detached when reading. Then with a pleasure which is both sensual and intellectual we shall watch the artist build his castle of cards and watch the castle of cards become a castle of beautiful steel and glass."

I point this out and go through the trouble of excerpting his reading methodology in part to understand it better.

The Nabokov book actually has some of his drawings and notes written directly over the Austen text included. It really shows the importance he placed on detail.

Mansfield Park begins "About thirty years ago," and his notes start figuring out in which precise year the novel would take place, based on the year of its authorship. His answer comes later in the text, as Fanny is received at a formal ball, which takes place at a specific age, month, and day of the week. Armed with this information, Nabokov checks against calendars in the late 1700s to determine in what year the ball would have taken place, thus establishing when all other events are occurring.

He also draws maps of how he imagines the grounds of Mansfield Park and other locations in the novel. I must admit that at the present date, I see no larger purpose here as to how the ball taking place in 1795 or 1793 affect the story in any manner. I bring it up because of my curiosity as to why Nabokov found it so important. If I recall properly from other Nabokov writings, when I read the Kafka, he finds it of the utmost relevance that after reading the book, you should be able to sketch the layout of the apartment. You should also understand that the lead character turns into a dung beetle, based on his corroboration of the details in the book with an insect guide presumably (although Nabokov was a noted fan of lepidoptera, that is to say, butterflies, so this may have been easy for him).

He points out that in his college classes (and these were undergraduate classes, by the way, despite my calling this my personal MFA program), that in having his students read Mansfield Park, they also had to read a bunch of additional texts. One character makes reference that he could recite the speeches from Henry the Eighth, so Henry the Eighth must be read. The characters intend to stage a play in the book’s second volume, so the text of the play is added to the curriculum. Fanny references a poem; so two cantos of that larger work are required. But, as much as it seemed to show his amazing resolve to details, the conclusions were not elusive without them.

The play let the characters in the book experiment with interpersonal relationships that tended to not exist in their normal interactions, which stirred up some of the romantic feelings between people where it would not have been proper otherwise. But, since they are acting, they are allowed to put themselves in those situations. Reading the Austen, all of that is clear, though.

The first half of Nabokov’s lecture, though, preserved beautifully because he was more of a reciter at the podium than an engaged speaker in class, shows the importance he puts on words. It tells the story of the novel using Austen’s words as often as possible, with him merely paraphrasing to link her quotations together artfully. There is such a respect for her language shown by this methodology that indicates the importance he gives the craft.

While reading the book, I was actually struck that although the language was beautiful, there were no monologues or quotable passages that linger, and while that is true, Nabokov goes out of his way to find some of the best phrases in the book to let Austen nearly tell the story to his class herself.

To that end, it is rather easy for people to only read the Nabokov book, just to get insight into his mind and a sense of the novels. Although, I am sticking with the program as originally intended, which means nearly a thousand pages of Dickens next.

He highlights words Austen uses repeatedly to steer the reader’s perception of the characters, and details how Austen delivers characterization within the voice of the novel.

At one point, he notes that "Style is not a tool, it is not a method, it is not a choice of words alone. Being much more than all this, style constitutes an intrinsic component or characteristic of the author’s personality."

When Austen ties everything up at a much quicker pace than the rest of the novel, though a disdained method of information arriving in letters, Nabokov notes that the proper choice might have been another volume of 500 pages, but that Austen chose a "shortcut of no great artistic merit."

That said, he closes out the essay with a backhanded compliment:

"I do not believe anybody can be taught to write fiction unless he already possesses literary talent. Only in the latter case can a young author be helped to find himself, to free his language from clichés, to eliminate clumsiness, to form a habit of searching with unflinching patient for the right word, the only right word which will convey with the utmost precision the exact shade and intensity of thought. In such matters there are worse teachers than Jane Austen."

So, that is it for Mansfield Park. While Nabokov was a fan of rereading, it will not be reread again so soon. Although, to be clear, none of the Nabokov MFA books will be traded after finished. They all get to stay on the bookshelves here, so that someday, they can teach me more when I have hit a place where they will contain entirely new lessons.

The biggest takeaway from Nabokov going into the Dickens is just trying to appreciate his propensity for detail, and hoping to better read the book in a manner that he would consider instructional.

OK, just about to post the first Nabokov MFA essay on Mansfield Park, but figured that (on the odd chance anyone else takes up this literary challenge), a warning is required.

When reading "classic" books, it is very important to NEVER read the introduction before reading the text itself. I learned this in Thailand when I was reading a lot of classics and started the introduction to The Great Gatsby. I don’t have the exact sentence, but basically it comes right out and says "With the death of Gatsby, the novel spirals into…"

And, I’m there like, Dude! Why tell me a character in the book is going to die like that?!

A faulty argument could be made that I just gave you, unsuspecting potential Gatsby reader, the same information just as brazenly. But I would have to disagree. That book has been around for decades, so Gatsby’s death is not really a secret. It is not like a hot new movie that you have to make sure not to hear about until you see it. Like referencing Samuel L. Jackson’s character dying in the new Star Wars movie coming out in May. THAT would be wrong to post randomly beforehand.

However, that Gatsby information had somehow eluded me or I had forgotten it, and there I was ready to read it for the first time in Thailand. So, to have the "spoiler," using today’s terminology, actually printed as an introduction to the book you are about to read just baffles me.

It is like a title card appearing before The Crying Game saying, "It is really a dude," and then it fades out, and the movie begins.

So, as soon as I hit a lenghty introduction to Mansfield Park, I immediately jumped past it and started with Jane Austen’s text. And, having read the introduction that appears before the novel, and a former introduction that now appears after the novel, it was the right decision. There is WAY too much information in these things.

They are actually not introduction at all, but literary and historical interpretation of the novel. Which is an amazing resource to provide, and one that I rather enjoyed reading after finishing the book. Beforehand, though, it would have been a massive waste of time that robbed me of the intricacies of the novel that was about to unfold.

So, should anyone decide to take on the Nabokov MFA, or if one of the books tickles your fancy, just remember: Skip the introductions.

I’m alluded to this many times before, but it has FINALLY begun. I have been diligent about reading the whole time I have been working on my book, and now I will be folding some higher end stuff into the fold.

The premise, based on my love of Nabokov, and his inability to speak in public, is that I have three books, which are lectures he delivered while teaching college. They include Lectures on Western Literature, Lectures on Russian Literature, and Lectures on Don Quixote.

Each lecture is on a specific novel, and I will be reading them all, in order, beginning with Mansfield Park by jane Austen.

The complete listing is:

Lectures on Western Literature

• Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
• Bleak House, by Charles Dickens
• Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Walk By Swann’s Place, by Marcel Proust
• The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka
• Ulysses, by James Joyce

Lectures on Russian Literature (includes novels and short stories)

• Dead Souls, by Nikolay Gogol
• "The Overcoat", by Nikolay Gogol
• Fathers and Sons, by Ivan Turgenev
• Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevski
• Memoirs from a Mousehole, by Fyodor Dostoevski
• The Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoevski
• The Possessed, by Fyodor Dostoevski
• Anna Karenin, by Leo Tolstoy
• The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy
• "The Lady with the Little Dog", by Anton Chekhov
• "In The Gully", by Anton Chekhov
• "The Seagull", by Anton Chekhov
• "On The Rafts," by Maxim Gorki

So, the plan is to read these in this order, followed by Don Quixote, which has its own book.

Each bulleted item will get its own blog entry, less about the book than what Nabokov discussed and I learned.

There is also a Nabokov MFA category on this blog now, so at a future date and starting with this entry, you will be able to find all of these entries easily.

I will be reading some other recent works between these as palate-cleansers, too. Need to read from this century too once in a while.