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At the heart of the book is the ongoing battle between order and chaos (much like my desk). As I mentioned in an earlier post, I started reading the book as a rational, orderly tale. I came to realize it was a chaotic nightmare. It is illustrative that Chesterton chose the name Gabriel for...

There is a causal link (albeit not the only cause, to be sure) between anarchial asssassinations, the nationalist assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the outbreak of the First World War, the fall of Russia to the Bolsheviks, defeat of the Germans in the war, the takeover of Germany by the...

I have come to realize I have been reading the book in the wrong way. I was reading it as a conventional mystery/adventure story. Instead, it needs to be read as its subtitle suggests - a nightmare. That accounts for the impressionistic way the story jumps around - and far more besides...

Here is a fuller account of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and the conspiracy that led to his killing. I couldn't access Wikipedia earlier today. Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Man Who Was Thursday was written six years before the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by "dynamiters". His assassination led to the First World War that in turn almost destroyed western civilization. Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, 1914

I'm maybe half-way through. So far I am finding it delightful but disappointing. His quips are there, but the plot is not hanging together. I have read about half a dozen other Chesterton books - two Father Brown mysteries, two biographies, and one or two philosophies. This one falls...

Libra - You may find this journalistic critique of news coverage on the abstinence pledge study to be of interest: http://www.getreligion.org/?p=5313. The critique points out the limited scope of the study, the difference between an abstinence pledge and abstinence education, and the tendency...

It was page after page of thinking about sex, talking about sex, and acting out sex in all kinds of ways. sex romp - Google Search

I'm past the half-way point, but still finding this to be true. All the characters seem to be stereotypes, without much depth or an original thought among them. This seems like a modern American sex romp, with just enough of a plot to give the reader an excuse to stay with it. Somewhat like...

However, before he goes, Nabokov makes one more journey into his understanding of time. In Chapter 14-1, he puts forward the idea that "the spiral is a spiritualized circle" and describes the "essential spirality of all things in their relation to time." In the west, we sometimes think of...

The book really tailed off for me during the last few chapters. What had been a slow saunter through an idyllic childhood began to be a jumpy journey through what may be thought of as a somewhat dissolute life. Some would say Nabokov's childhood ended with the Bolshevik takeover of Russia...

I was delighted to find Nabokov come back to the question of time and space in Chapter 11. He takes the somewhat humorous concept I set out above several steps further by suggesting that "while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that...

On the other hand, I could have done without Nabokov's "romantic agitation" in Chapter 10.

I especially enjoyed Nabokov's remembrance of his father in Chapter 9. Nabokov refers to "the tender friendship and underlying respect" for his father, and that comes through in every word of the chapter. In an earlier post, I commented on Nabokov's looking through the "magic glasses" with...

I was surprised to see mention of last month's BOTM, Uncle Tom's Cabin in Chapter 8-4. I had no idea this book about an essentially American problem and written in an essentially American style would be known to a teenager in Russia. In same paragraph Nabokov mentions "the unforgettable...

I got through the tedium of flittering with the butterflies, and loved the train ride in Chapter 7-1 with its remembrance of the valise, the "hardiest survivor" of his Russian heritage, the imagery of the six black wires that in a "triumphant swoop of pathetic elation" were about to reach the...

Congratulations on finishing the book. I'm still stuck with the butterflies.

I find it telling however that, as Nabokov reflects on his childhood, it is not the "magic glasses" through which his "parched nostalgia longed to peer", but rather the "small square of normal, savorless glass" where "one saw a matter-of-fact white bench under familiar trees".

I cannot begin to understand how color played such a great role in Nabokov's childhood. He talks about "colored hearing" in Chapter 2/1, where "color sensation seems to be produced by the very act of my orally forming a given letter while I imagine its outline." He expands upon this in Chapter...

It may have elements of that, but I think he intends something deeper. He is taking about his first realizing the sense of time as a child. I commented in my earlier post that time may be like a journey on open road without any ability to turn back or turn to the side. I realize on...