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What kind of car I drive, the girls I used to date, personal hygiene: these are all things for which I’ve never really had high standards. A book by Vladimir Nabokov, now that’s a different story. For a good portion of my reading, I was seriously considering giving this a mere two stars. It takes way too long for the plot to develop—because of this the pacing is off and parts are simply boring—and one can really see the artist behind the book. By that I mean that some of Nabokov’s brushstrokes are a little too heavy to make this a masterpiece. For one, the irony is laid on thickly, even when he tries to invert it. Take, for example, in mid tryst one adulterous lover to another mentioning “Imagine if [your husband] were suddenly to come in now—just like that� and she reassuring him “Oh he won’t be coming home for a week yet. That’s as sure as death� (155, 157). All the while, of course, the reader knows that he is returning early. The sounds of someone entering the house downstairs make both the reader and the lovers nervous, nervous enough in the latter’s case to call it a night. But it’s only a false alarm—a close call—for despite the setup, the husband does not arrive until the lover has safely left. After all, “[the husband] was too naively self-centered to realize how thoroughly those sudden returns had been exploited in ribald tales� (154). Then there’s the later chance encounter that the husband has with an ex-lover of his. Without knowing anything, she tells him his wife is likely cheating on him, which he faithfully scoffs at. At least Nabokov sums this one up accurately: “On the whole, an unnecessary encounter� (176). Then there’s the time when the husband is walking home imagining/inventing all of the horrible secrets/misdeeds that every person he passes must hide, thereby warping these people’s images to him. That is, until he finally arrives home and feels “a pleasant relief at seeing at last two familiar, two perfectly human faces� (209). Finally, there’s the ultimate irony of the ending that I’m not even sure can rightly be termed “irony� because it is clear enough what will happen, thereby preventing it from actually upsetting one’s expectations.
Another Nabokovian staple that is a bit too heavy-handed are all of fate’s subtle coincidences. Because they are not so subtle and because they don’t really contribute to the story, I find them a bit superfluous. There is the coincidence of the “meeting� on the train; the coincidence of the inventor staying in the same hotel room as Franz (107, 253); there are the numerous parallel car crashes (49, 115, 129). These are Nabokovian, but they just don’t achieve what I have come to feel are Nabokovian standards. (That really makes sense since this is one of his earlier works and it’s one of his final works that I’m reading.)

Want some unexpected irony after all that complaining? I also nearly gave this four stars. “Why?� you may ask. Well I’m glad to tell you: this book really made me think. Here’s what I’m thinking about: Is the story all a dream? Knowing whether or not it’s a dream wouldn’t change my enjoyment at all, but it presents a puzzle. And those are often my favorite parts of Nabokov books. This time, since I don’t have a definitive answer I’m stuck mulling it over. Anyone care to help?

If so, here’s reason for my hypothesis:
- It all starts with chapter 2, which begins with all that “false awakening, being nearly the next layer of a dream…and what seemed reality abruptly loses the tingle and tang of reality� stuff (20). That introduction ends with, what is to me, the central question: “Is this reality the final reality, or just a new deceptive dream?� (21).
-So much depends on how one reads the following: “And in order to free himself from this gold-tinted vagueness still so strongly reminiscent of a dream, he reached toward the night table and groped for his glasses. And only when he touched them, or more precisely the handkerchief in which they were wrapped as in a winding sheet, only then did Franz remember that absurd mishap in a lower layer of a dream� (21). In that mishap he broke his glasses. How does one read “were wrapped�? Are the glasses STILL wrapped there? If so then he did not break them and not only was that but everything subsequent is a dream. If they aren’t there, then he did break them…but I think everything could still be another layer of the dream.
-The rest of the chapter he’s relatively blind without his glasses, giving everything a dream-like quality. There are soooo many examples to pick from this chapter alone, I’m just listing the chapter. What follows is all from other chapters.

Here’s my evidence:
-“The workmen were moving as in a dream� (52)
-“suffering as if in a dream� (63)
-“With dream-like unexpectedness they emerged� (69)
-“moving with the slow motion of a sleepwalker� (74)
-“sleep, with a bow, handed him the keys to the city� (74)
-“already lost in a dream� (76)
-“how much will you pay me for dreaming� (89)
-“I am duty-bound to believe in a dream but to believe in the embodiment of that dream—Puh� (90)
-“Your dream is enchanting� (90) A description of this book???
-“Stop harping on dreams, sir� (90) Advice to me????
-“maybe I’ll see your invention in my next dream� (91)
-“when the express pulls out of a dreamy station� (97)
-“everything changed. As happens in dreams…every time we dream of it� (104)
-“noble slowness of a sleepwalker’s progress� (109)
-“Franz, too, tried to shake off this strange drowsiness� (111)
-“despite her long-standing dream� (113)
-“he could not remember afterwards how he said good-by, or put on his overcoat, or reached the street� (128)
-“Let’s dream a little� (134)
-“One cannot deposit dreams at the bank� (135)
-“Franz was oblivious to the corrosive probity of his pleasant daydreams� (138)
-“he lay supine on his bed not knowing whether he was asleep or awake� (153)
-“He would dream at night of a treacherous handshake. Half-awake, he would recoil� (162)
-“she could not rid herself of the dream of magic powders� (168)
-“trying to persuade himself that it was only a bad dream� (186)
-“some kind of atrocious dreamland was encroaching upon her� (197)
-“a curious debility blurred his movements as if he were existing only because existing were the proper thing to do� (200)
-“ephemeral glints of consciousness; he would instantly revert to semi-existence. Then at night in his drugged sleep� (202)
-“fatal veil between him and every dream that beckoned to him� (224)
-“But he still saw it all as if through a dream� (245)
-“like a recurrent dream image or a subtle leitmotiv� (254)
-“Barely awake and still blinking� (256)
-The very end.

My Conclusion (maybe):
-This is like the end of Bend Sinister, where the author breaks through and it becomes clear that it was a book. It’s just more subtle. There’s the weird-ass landlord who decides everything is a story of his creation (226-228), and there’s the (directly mentioned leitmotiv) “foreign girl in the blue dress with a remarkably handsome man in an old-fashioned dinner jacket…Sometimes the man carried a butterfly net� (254). Thus, Franz’s adventure is nothing more than a dream, a magician’s invention, an author’s story.