Programming note: Fitzie is returning from a brief holiday and unable to provide timely links today. Please enjoy the miscellaneous links provided:
Your hoddler-in-chief will be spending the day flying from Colorado back to Washington DC.
There isn’t much for entertainment on Frontier Airlines, but I tell you what I do have: my book. And a plane can be a much more comfortable place to read than the DMV.
But first - a quick update on the previous edition: I was previously reading The Angels Die, by Yasmina Khadra. The book followed an Arab boxer born into destitution in Algeria between the first and second World Wars. The book dealt with all sorts of themes including race, religion and class divides between Europeans and Arabs during this time period.
I had expressed fear about our hero Turambo, who climbed out of poverty through his git of boxing. And there was a point where I was quite hopfeul about how it would end. But, man oh man, was my initial feeling right.
In the span of just a couple of pages, Turambo’s life had completely unravelled beyond repair. I spent the entire night finishing it, reading page after page in the hopes that there’d be something to cling to. But no.
It was one of those books where the misfortunate end hung over me for days.
And so I thought I’d read something happier. And when I think of happy-go-lucky books there is only one author that comes to mind: Vladimir Nabokov.
Nabokov!
I had first picked up Invitiation to a Beheading a year ago while scrolling through the second-hand bookstore. I had no intention to read it at the time, but I felt I should pick it up.
I don’t understand what it is about him that draws me to him. Was it Reading Lolita In Tehran that did me in? Certainly that is what introduced me to this writer.
And ever since then I am drawn to his section every time I go to the book store. In search of The Great Gatsby? Nabokov! In search of anything? Nabokov!
In beautiful prose, the book follows what appears to be the final days of Cincinattus C., who was imprisoned and sentenced to death. But his prison and those charged with watching over him appear to torture him in untraditional way - in which it seems the character is being slowly destroyed.
Of course, I’m not finished with it yet so I cannot say how it unfolds. But maybe I’ll be done with it by the time I land in DC.
And maybe then I’ll start reading a real feel-good story, like Lolita.
Fitzie’s track of the day: Linger, by The Cranberries
And now for your links:
Vladimir Nabokov in the New Yorker (previously unpublished) from 2019: “Man and Things”
NPR (from June): “Here are the nonfiction books NPR staffers have loved so far this year”