Nabokov's The Gift; Or How Proust Should Read

For those of you who know me, few of you I am sure, as I have just begin this this little journal today, and this will take some time for my milieu to catch on and condescend to read my little rants, I took an interest in Marcel Proust partially because of the twin headrush of reading that other proto-Modernist and hugely discursive masterpeice Moby Dick, partially because of my francophilia and my love of huge complexley plotted sentences, and to show up Marguerita, the Russian Countess and my esteemed intellectual adversary who was having a difficult time of it. Well to put it plainly, Proust is a bitch, not the man himself, (of course the case could be made,) but the work, En Recherche du Temps Perdue (le spelling francaise n'est pas facil). So I put the novel down, and went about the rest of my summer ina thouroughly dissapointing reading slump. Mind you the first month of my summer vacation was spent like a fever dream speeding through book after book, hacking through some two thousand pages of fairly hight quality literature. Imagine the disapointment I must have felt when I couldn't read anymore- when the idea of beginning a new book was like my visceral reaction to chocolate covered espresso beans. Oh how I once relished those perfect little spheres of sweet chocolate and bitter caffeine, and how after their volatile combination with cheap Italian marinara spaghetti, oranges, the flu, and some bizzare cola called Cricket* I couldn't smell them without having to drag myself, gagging into another room where queezily I lay in bed watching Adaptation, a good but cruel film. That awful espresso bean hagover hasn't disappeared, no, it still rests within me. My birthday was only about two weeks ago, and friends of mine sweetly made me a delicious cake, covered with toasted coconut, and garnered with dried cranberries and, alack those dreaded chocolate beans. I attempted to hide my dissapointment at their unintentional physical faux pas. It was actually nice of them, they probably congratulated themselves on the personal touch- What would that silly pseudo-intelletual like more than coffee candy atop his cake- and I did my best to eat around them. I finally gave up, and tried one. Like wood the roasted bean cracked under my tooth, releasing it's once magical properties. I grabbed hold of the dining room table, and then grabbing my wine, the only liquid available, I tried to wash it down, which just increased the awfulness. In any event, I had a book hang over, and Proust was nigh unreadable.


Now, fast forward a few brief months. It is a monday. Well I guess I whould explain, my mondays and to do that myself. My name is Nick Medina, and for right now what you need to know materially about me is this: I go to UC Berkeley this is first month of my second year here where I tenuously study English. I am also a very busy person, having been dreadfully slothful during the first bits of my youth, my creative energies never fully realized, from about high school on, I threw myself into all sorts of enterprises requiring vast amounts of time and energy. As the school year began in late August, I was working two jobs, I had to take a sabbatical from one because of my new play, which will be fleshed out for your reading pleasure in future posts; and I live a little less than a mile from school (.73 miles according to a very recent Mapquest search) making it unfeasible to return home. This means that I'm out of the house from 9:30 in the morning to about 10:30 at night. There is only one day that I get a respite, and that is Monday, when I only have my class on Vladimir Nabokov. I only realize now that this information is only tentatively connected to the real impetus behind this post, which was to discuss the experience of reading The Gift, however I don't want to retreat and erase it all, and any way it's all very good exposition isn't it?

It's a gloomy Friday, (two days ago) and I've two hours on campus after Nabokov. Having already experienced in miniature the raptures of The Gift for a few moments on monday, I was ready to delve into the book, which I uneasily worried would need to be read in one week. One week! To read a four hundred page book, a book so excruciatingly detailed that it describes, before introducing a character, introduces the shading of the letters on the side of a moving truck. I knew I needed to read it, and I knew where.

Gentle Reader, if in the course of this blog entry, replete with an aside in french, a lenghty discurion on espresso beans, discussions of proto-modernism, and a relentlessly insecure tone of condescension, you have not realized how pretentious the blogger you are engaging with is, all I can say is you are not a close reader- I'm an English major at Berkeley, for God's sake. And, there is one place on Campus more prententious than any other... and I'm not talking about the English Lounge, or the French Library, no! It is the Morrison reading, and Friends (if I may be allowed to call you anonymous folks out their that intimate term) I have never been in it. Oh reader, This post will continue in the future, worry not, I will consumate this story, but I need to collect my wits to describe the orgiastic experience of reading the Gift in the Morrison reading room.

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Now, I pick back up a little later on in the afternoon to finish this mundane story. Perhaps it would be best to describe where I am right now, and why exactly I am writing about Vladimir Nabokov's last Russian novel The Gift and the Morrison Reading Room. I am currently behind the counter at the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, my shift is fifteen minutes from its end. I've got Andrew Bird queued up on the seeqpod, and I've got the Gift sitting beside me with about three hundred and fifty pages to go. I've also got a dratted computer in front of me. Now the Gift enacted a very strong reaction in me while I was sitting in that reading room, and I'm spooked. I'll admit it. I'm scared to pick it back up. So I started a blog, botched the first, which was Divers Mental Perambulations (I liked the old spelling of Diverse better), by accidentally using my coworker's Blogger account, hopefully she forgives me, and then started this one, fearing that my little write up on The Gift would be too brief. As you can see it has not been.

The Morrison Reading room is located in Doe Library, one must pass under the bust of Pallas Athena, and turn right through glass doors into a relatively small room (about the size of my high school library.) It is a dark room, mahogany, but with a beautifully ornate ceiling. Leather Armchairs, stone busts, globes, antique books, and sleeping people fill the room. If I had to trapped in one room for the rest of my life it would be this one. It is extraordianry, like something in a wet dream. Classical records line one wall, and a record player too. There's an upstairs that looks down, one reaches it by climbing up a flight of narrow metal stairs. I tkae out the book, and a pen and start again. I wanted to talk about how it's Nabokov aping Proust, and doing it wonderfully, but I suppose I can end here. I suppose this is just a you getting to know me time, if you've been nice enough to give me the time. I 'm sure my future posts will be more interesting. Have a fine day all.