Word: franz
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Nabokov lingers over the coincidence of the encounter, but his timing is nearly perfect. By drawing it out, he sharpens the anticipation of the impending adultery; before long, Martha, the frosty doll, and Franz, promoted from lifeless lump to "warm and pliant wax," can't get enough of each other...
...applied to the eternal love triangle. In Nabokov's idiosyncratic geometry, all three angles are obtuse: Kurt Dreyer, fiftyish, owner of a prosperous department store, is suffused with a jocular egomania; Martha, his 34-year-old wife, beautiful and sybaritic, is dimmed by compulsively romantic restlessness and anticipation; Franz, Dreyer's youthful nephew and employee, is a myopic, precariously balanced bumpkin...
Dreyer and Franz occasionally attempt to squirm out of the two-dimensional plane in which Nabokov holds them captive. But most of the time, all three are as flat and glossy as the playing cards suggested by the novel's title. This enables Nabokov to give them the nimble shuffle that characterizes the mercurial plots of all his Action...
Lifeless Lump. Franz first encounters his uncle and aunt accidentally in a train compartment. They are unaware of his identity, as he is of theirs. Not a word is exchanged between him and them during the entire trip from his small home town to Berlin, where he will work in his uncle's department store. Dreyer idly casts a professional eye over the young spectacled passenger, sizing him up by the low quality of his haberdashery. In Martha's peephole of a mind, Franz registers as little more than a lifeless lump...
Sobering Record. What makes Vienna so resistible? Doubtless, the fact that prospective directors are only too familiar with the job. They realize that inside, they would have to wrestle with stultifying traditionalism, intrigues, archaic business practices that date back to the time of Emperor Franz Josef, entrenched labor unions, and a recalcitrant Vienna Philharmonic. Outside, there is a formidable battery of critics, a musically conservative but demanding public, and an unpredictable Parliament that holds the purse strings...