Random Thoughts, 10-27-2024

Books, Novel Writing, Portland Weirdness, OCD

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1.    Books:

As any of you who’ve been following me a while know, I am always, and I mean *always* reading books, usually 2-3 at a time. I recently finished Andrew Field’s 1986 biography (very good) of Nabokov, VN: The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov. I am now, as a result, rereading the classic 1955 masterpiece, Lolita, which I picked up at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne in Portland, where I live. I’m about 60% through the book. *(Update: as of 10/31/24 I have finished Lolita.) The last time I read it was, I think, pre-sobriety, so around 2008 or 2009. So far it’s blowing my mind. Plot-driven, dialogue-tight, metaphorically and sensorily and sensually juicy in all the ways possible, a tale of the post World War II American road, nation and middle-class, as well as a sordid, desperate (and horrific) tale of rape and complex (yet fascinating!) “love,” the novel is a sweeping overview of the human experience in 1940s America.

I’m also listening to a Great Courses via Audible entitled, The Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. *(Update: As of 10/31/24 I have finished this as well.) It covers the period roughly 1865 (immediately after the Civil War) to 1920, when women were finally granted the right to vote. It. Is. Fascinating. Theodore Roosevelt—fifth cousin to FDR and uncle to Eleanor—is quickly becoming my historical hero, with his trust-busting and pro-labor stances, his environmental protection of Yosemite and hundreds of other national parks, his assistance of organized labor fighting against tyrannical corruption in mining, railroads, steel, meat-packing, coal, etc, and much more.

A wealthy man inheriting about 60K at age 20 (this would have been 1878, and 60K would be close to $2 million now), Roosevelt nevertheless reinvented himself as a war hero (Spanish American War), cowboy (sheep-herding in the Dakotas) and politician (starting as assemblyman in New York City, then becoming secretary of the Navy, governor of New York, and beyond). His trajectory is ironically similar to his much younger fifth cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR. Theodore—“T.R.”—even created the predecessor to FDR’s 1930s New Deal, which helped pull us out of the Great Depression. Theodore, when he was president in the first decade of the 20^th century (1901-1909) called it “The Square Deal” and he managed deals between organized labor and major corporations, broke up massive corporate trusts, and tried hard to let working-class Americans feel seen and heard.

I love listening to two chapters of this set of history lectures and then writing. (I read Lolita at night.) *(Now, as of 10/31/24, I’m reading Nabokov’s final Russian novel [that is, his final novel written by him in Russian before he switched to English], The Gift.)