On "A Matter Of Chance"

     This flash fiction piece of Nabokov's resonates the style of O'Henry. It has multiple unrelated characters that gradually become intertwined in their respective pasts, heading towards indistinct futures.

     The plot follows a russian man, Alek Luzhin, who has taken work on a berlin-to-paris diner train, and the narrative bounces back and forth between this man's actions and the passengers in one of the train cars. His past occupations are detailed, symbolizing the day to day struggle involved in making a living as a commoner. From the start, the text has an existential flavor. Another characteristic of note is the fact that he is addicted to pharmaceutical cocaine, which leads him to spend his evenings after work scribbling out imaginative plans to reunite himself with his wife, lost in the tumult of a recent political upheaval.
     In Alek's present, however, he has lost the hope to find his wife in the throes of his morning come-downs, in which he reviews his writings and regularly finds them distasteful. This hope is replaced by the need to control the final days of his life. The particular method our protagonist chooses is deciding on a day and an hour to end his life. This is the bit of the text's anatomy in which its existential flavor is metabolized.
     We see in Luhzin a classic of the working man with a dream. When the vast improbability of that dream confronts the blight of reality, he is faced with the question of whether or not his life is meaningful. This arc in the character's story is paralleled by the up and down of his cocaine abuse. Nabokov applies lavish imagery to the high, and adopts a tone of neutrality with regards to the down, an accepting of the fate. In between, there are scenes of fiending for the substance, of Alek being distracted from his work by the urge. Thus, his characterization is also a compartmentalized study in the outward and inward appearance of an addict.
     As the protagonist calmly plots his death, a handful of passengers board the international car. One, we soon discover, is Alek's wife, for whom he has all too recently lost hope of finding. On the other hand, she who had written him off as dead has newfound optimism for reunion, as an acquaintance has recently assured her of his wellbeing.
      Very quickly, the story's titular events stack up. By chance, his wife boards with an older woman that was a past family friend of her husband. By chance, her husband bypasses his routine passing-out of dinner slips to the passengers by locking himself in a bathroom with his drug. When he does finally make it past her car, his wife is elsewhere and he cannot place the face of the other woman. On her way to dinner, Ms. Luhzin is sexually harassed by another passenger, causing her to return to her room early – all jarring foreshadows of the inevitable climax.
     The events unfold at an elegant pace, giving literary love to each detail and showcasing each pertinent human trait as either the nastiness it is, or as beautiful tragic hope. The author carefully balances labor and leisure, while also defining the median betwixt the two in the symbolism of drug addiction. Leisure, we see, is the ability to hope. Misguided human nature, however, has lead Alek to look to the drug for his escape, though through crafty context we soon see that this break from routine has become all too routine for our protagonist.
     The true juxtaposition of the piece, of course, remains that between hope and abandon. Besides the unavoidable nature of tragedy, we are left to question moral decisions and where we place importance. The progression of one's life, we are reminded, is always inches away from digression due to the chaotic nature of choice. Though the image of this is a helpless one, it is also implied that one may simply choose to be happy.

Pubescent tide moths,
The idle constructs of distance
And amplitude of crossed paths.

Passionless, their blip of exist,
As it stems from a fuck
Not a kiss

Yet entitled are we to beauty,
Nuance,
Tho capable
To be born of threesoms
And fisting
Not simple conception.

An era of misdirection
Dead erections 'less
Eight+ writhing bodies
Find presence on th' screen;
Cameos indeed,
Of leather and masks–
Piss-sodden baths.

Still it's found in most intellects,
Even in naivete,
To distinguish a man from a moth,
Passion from necessity.

Hard to see from this plane
That they're one and the same.

Don't trip.

Nabokov flash fiction analysis tomorrow, beginning drafts of an original short fiction piece.
Thoughts for maintaining direction with the existential-to-post-modern focus? I think we need to hash that out again relatively soon.
Yours truly.

Preguntas.

Do deaf kittens
mew with un-opposable paws?

Do signs,
like literature, slap?

How goes
honest evenings alone?

And is honesty yours
when your answer don't know?

"XIX", from Neruda's "Book Of Questions" 1973

Have they counted the gold

in the cornfields? 

Do you know that in Patagonia

in midday, mist is green?

Who sings in deepest water

in the abandoned lagoon?

At what does the watermelon laugh

when it's murdered?

     Neruda's Book Of Questions, published posthumously, is a curious work of simple aesthetic meandering. It is nonetheless impossible to withdraw much meaning from its pages. The first couplet here contains many possibilities. To me, it reflects an oversight of the relative wealth possessed by the farmsman.  With this interpretation, "the gold in the cornfields" may refer to the simple joys that the burden of labor contrasts in the common man's life. Historically, it could represent the longevity of heritage and culture in Latin America. Despite the many conquests that destabilized working systems of government, and despite the many riches that were seized, there is still a common humanity in things so arbitrary as cornfields. 

     The second couplet is mysterious. The text, overall, seeks a near childish simplicity in harmless images of surreal joy. On page XLIV, for instance, the author laments "where is the child I was? Still inside me or gone?". This is the theme I will suggest the second couplet corresponds to; A strive towards innocent wonder. 

     The third couplet is a reference to the sirens of greek myth. The text is rife with them. Aesthetically, it is an intense questioning of feminine mystery – futile as it receives no answer. There is much mythological reference in this work, perhaps harking to an imbedded spiritualism in its author. I tend to believe that in this broad array of questioning reference, the author also shakes his head at the conventional moral lock-down present in modern religion that often makes a point of stifling intellectual doubt. In a line from page XXV, he wonders " how do we know which is God/among the Gods of calcutta?". Perhaps he is also considering the unification of popular religion in post-conquest Latin America; Considering that loss of culture. 

     The final lines are a mental play on images – that of a sliced watermelon characterized into a post-mortal grin. The powerful composition counts on the reader's easy connection to the referenced shape, as well as the unusual thought – somewhat morbid – of being overjoyed with death. Beyond its base of structure, the image's full scope of reactive questionings suggests possibilities of absurdism.