Word: cincinnatus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...cell is bare except for the customary simple furniture, the hopeless messages from past prisoners scrawled on the walls and an overhead light that (perhaps like reason or the world itself) is naggingly off-center. The prisoner's name is Cincinnatus C., and he is under sentence of death for a misdeed that is not described; he only suspects that his crime is "opacity"-that stubborn, unknowing refusal to bare his soul which has always enraged a man's neighbors and masters. If the literary shades of other prisoners seem to be sharing the cell...
Time fof Chop-Chop. A million candles etch the initials P. and C. against the night sky of Cincinnatus' home town. On the ride to the scaffold, bouquets of flowers pelt P.'s and C.'s open car. The 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...
...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 him simply by coming to his senses. And that seems too easy...
Petition to Run. Like all young lawyers, Art Langlie talked politics. But he had not seriously thought of a political career until the New Order of Cincinnatus tagged him for the city council. Once in office, he turned practical reformer with a vengeance. Langlie and his reform colleagues, though they were the minority, forced centralized city purchasing, establishment of a police training school, a shutdown of gambling halls and brothels, and a $2,000,000 slash in a fat budget. In 1936 the Cincinnatus decided to run one of their councilmen for mayor, picked Arthur Langlie. He lost to Dave...
...city, they hurry to patch it up. When he wrote that Cincinnati's Longview Hospital was short of wheelchairs, 18 were quickly provided. Another time, he told about the hard time a family was having after the breadwinner was sent to prison for stealing a factory payroll. Reading "Cincinnatus," the factory owner called the holdup man's wife, hired her at $20 a week, and told her to earn it by staying home to care for her children...