Word: authored
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Nabokov's ultimate and realistic irony is to make the executioner, who is at first passed off as just another fellow prisoner, into a garrulous, sentimental clown. As the axman prattles on about being not some "unfamiliar terrible somebody, but a tender friend," Author Nabokov develops the memorable conceit that the rite of execution is both a public festival and a black sacrament, in which victim and executioner are as intimately linked as bride and groom...
...whole vulgar holiday is surrounded by rules and rituals of elaborate illogic. Finally, the moment nears "to do chop-chop," as M'sieur Pierre puts it childishly; and childishly, too, the prisoner seeks to save his last shred of self-respect as he mutters: "By myself, by myself." Author Nabokov saves a climactic surprise for the chopping block itself, where the novel ends...
Somehow, despite the dazzling dream dance of ironies, despite the poignant musings of the prisoner, the book is disappointing. Compared with the author's superior novels, it is only a kind of detour de force. It may be that, unlike Kafka, Nabokov sacrificed horror to hallucination -or that the young Nabokov did not really know what he was trying to say. Whether Cincinnatus was condemned by wicked masters, or whether he was self-condemned by his own conscience, the ending is both enigmatic and unsatisfactory; for, Nabokov appears to be saying, Cincinnatus can banish the carnival of evil around...
Fresh & Incalculable. Author Mattingly, professor of European history at Columbia University, begins his account with the execution of Mary Stuart, Roman Catholic Queen of Scotland, in February 1587. Partly as a result, Spain's King Philip II, known as "the Prudent," abandoned prudence long enough to let himself be talked into a campaign designed to cut Protestant Elizabeth down to size. The project, tersely referred to as The Enterprise, was hastily begun. From the start, nothing went right with armaments, provisions, recruiting, and 3½ months be fore the Armada was to sail, its aged admiral died. King Philip...
Beyond Survival, by Max Ways. U.S. foreign policy troubles, the author argues in this perspective study, are largely the result of the nation's lack of a coherent public philosophy...