Tournament of Books discussion

5/6/20 Booth Commentary:

I'm not sure I understand the purpose in rewriting an older story with so few details changed - and the changes fail to elucidate

Amy wrote: "I'm not sure I understand the purpose in rewriting an older story with so few details changed - and the changes fail to elucidate"

I didn't get the point of either story.

I didn't get the point of them either, so I looked to see how others had interpreted Signs and Symbol,s and it turns out there are (supposedly) codes and references to previous Nabokov stories throughout...So maybe the point is to make us act like the son did in the story, with his referential mania, trying to find meaning in everything? Meaning that may not actually be there?

I don't know...I voted for Referential because I thought the writing was more clever and interesting, and I liked the way Moore played with the Nabokov. They weren't my favorites, but it was fun reading them side by side to see what Moore had done, and I assume there's more there than I'm realizing.

This is the first outcome in our tournament that made me a little sad. I think the Nabokov story is amazing for its humanity, for the raw, true situation that Nabokov creates of these old people who love their son and whose life has been completely ruined by their son. The phone ringing: what do they want to hear when they answer? The terror they must feel to encounter the feeling in themselves that they might, even a little bit, be hoping to hear their son is dead.

Then the symbols throughout--referencing not only the son's mental illness but also reminding us readers that everything here on the page is an artificial construct, and yet somehow it moves us...that's just as crazy as the son in the story. But it happens when we read.

So I also read this story as an acknowledgement on Nabokov's part that words are meaningless symbols until they are received by a reader...and when they are, it's still up to the reader to interpret those symbols, and they may interpret the words in ways the author didn't intend. That are completely made up, in a way.

I've never read critiques or deep analysis of this story, so I might be off base. Mostly I find the story quite profound and sad.

I don't think this is Moore's best story, but I can get 100% behind a general upvote for Lorrie Moore for her story "People Like That Are the Only People Here" so I'll just think of this win as deserved for Lorrie's amazingness even if this story didn't do it for me. Go, Lorrie Moore!

Gwen: Thanks for joining me in the commentator’s box for this round. What an interesting pairing we have to discuss! The Nabokov story is a classic, but it was completely new to me when I read it for this challenge. Had you read this one before? It’s such a brief story, but despite its brevity, I still found it to be very powerful. As the title suggests, the story is filled with “symbols and signs” that give readers a sense of foreboding. As the couple travels to the sanitarium to visit their son on his birthday, their journey is filled with obstacles. There’s the subway train that “lost its life current,” the late (and crowded) bus, and the rain. On the way home, they pass a dying bird, see a weeping woman, and one of them gets locked out of the apartment. Even the ace of spades makes an appearance later in the evening. To top it all off, they never get to see their son because of his recent suicide attempt. Did anything go right on this day? I didn’t see a glimmer of hope anywhere. Did this feel heavy-handed to you? I found myself wondering if Nabakov perhaps took the “symbols and signs” a little too far so as to strain credulity.

Lee: Thanks for starting off the discussion Gwen! It's my first time here in the commentary booth, so by way of brief introduction, I'm a librarian in Little Rock, Arkansas, where I manage the interlibrary loan department for our fourteen branch public library system, a job I really enjoy as I get to see all kinds of books coming through. It also helps when it's time to track down a copy of all the novels in each year's ToB! I mostly read literary fiction, and actually just finished reading all 17 of Nabokov's novels he published in his lifetime, which took me almost four years of off and on reading. I hadn't read any of his short stories before now, but naturally I signed up for the commentary on the matchup involving a Nabokov story.

Gwen: Wow, Lee, what an interesting project!  Perhaps at the end of this discussion you can share with us your favorites among Nabokov’s novels.  I bet many of us have read Lolita and maybe nothing else by Nabakov.  I’d love to hear which of his other novels you’d recommend. Okay, back to the discussion.

Lee: Right off the bat the title invites us to read the story on high alert for symbolism, doesn't it? Some critics indeed read the story that way, while others seem to think that Nabokov was playing a trick, getting the reader to mirror the young man's madness, a "referential mania" as the story describes it, over-interpreting and finding hidden meanings where in fact there are none. Sometimes the ace of spades is just the ace of spades! And that was my thought at first, because Nabokov famously hated Freud's work and took jabs at "the Viennese quack" and Freud's interpretation of innocent things as symbols of other things entirely in a number of his novels. But now I don't think
that's it, not least because Nabokov told the editor of the New Yorker that there is a second story lurking behind the surface of the first story, though he didn't say what it was, giving us lots of opportunity to speculate!

I agree with you that the story is dark. What I see here, and I don't know to what extent this was Nabokov's intention, is a story about the presence of evil in the world. Certainly through the Holocaust references - Aunt Rosa's family, the German maid's beastly beau, and the "beach plum" jelly being a reference to Buchenwald through Nabokov's original (mis)spelling of it as "beech plum" (Buchenwald = beech woods), before the editor helpfully corrected the spelling for publication. But also through the young man's point of view: his seeing of man-made objects as "hives of evil, vibrant with a malignant activity". And nature being spoiled, in his mind not Edenic but malevolently focused on him. His suicide attempt is enigmatically described as a "masterpiece of inventiveness", stopped by an "envious" patient who thought he was "learning to fly" in his attempt to "tear a hole in his world and escape". This is all rather vague, but a metaphor for ascending to heaven, escaping the evil of the world? But I don't know, that might be a little heavy handed for Nabokov, who was not generally a religious man, although it was written soon after WWII and the Nazi atrocities coming out.

Gwen: I didn’t know that about the “beech plum.” Thanks for sharing that fact.  As for the suicide attempt, the reference to the “masterpiece of inventiveness” made the attempt even more tragic to me.  Here we have a young man who is clearly intelligent and very creative, and instead of turning his talents towards something productive, he instead focuses them on his own self-destruction.  This effect is heightened by the paragraph that describes the 6-year-old boy “when he drew wonderful birds with human hands and feet.”  Then the boy is describes at age 8 and 10 as he begins to suffer more and more. Through the narration of the family photos, Nabokov shows how something goes awry in the boy’s head along the way, transforming him into this “incurably deranged” man.  That progression was very sad to
me (and very well done by Nabokov).

And what about that last phone call at the end of the story? Of course we will never know who is calling or why, but I suspect the worst (i.e. the son has made another suicide attempt, this time successfully).  What do you think that phone call is about?

Lee: Yes, I think the same. The last sentence of the story is "He had got to crab apple when the telephone rang again." Having read a lot of Nabokov, I knew he sometimes put scientific name wordplay into his novels and he had a vast knowledge of such, and indeed I'd read about the "beech plum" reference, so I thought his choice of crab apple there might be meaningful as well. I don't know much scientific classification or Latin, but I learned that crab apples are part of genus Malus, and "malus" in Latin can mean either "apple"... or "evil". Not a doubt in my mind that's why he used crab apple there. An evil has occurred. The boy's death, or, maybe in Nabokov's second story, the Holocaust or the presence of evil in the world generally.

What do you think of Moore's adaptation of this story? Is it any more optimistic?

I found both of these just hard reads. Not bad, just difficult. I appreciated reading them back to back, but that left me feeling a bit wiped out.

Gwen: Actually, I think it is! I was fascinated to see how a writer takes a classic story and makes it her own. Referential keeps some of the same elements (the “deranged” son, the basket of jams, the trip to visit the son) but changes other key plot points. For one thing, the couple actually gets to visit with the son in this story, and there’s no mention of a recent suicide attempt. During the visit, the son expresses himself with humor, albeit a very dark kind of humor (“We’ll just have to grab the frosting and mash it into our eyes for blinding.”). These events are more positive than the Nabokov version.

Moore makes some other interesting choices here. For example, Moore made the decision that Pete is not the father, so that places Pete at a much greater distance from the story, or at least that’s how it seemed to me. This has the effect of isolating the mother more. She suffers because of her son in a way that Pete cannot share and isn’t even trying to share. In fact, we learn that “her child’s deepening troubles had caused [Pete] to pull back.” What do you think about Moore’s choices to chance certain elements while leaving others the same? Did she make the right choices in your opinion?

Lee: I like your pointing out that Moore adds some humor to the story. I thought it was a pretty funny reference when the mom offered Pete a white Russian! (Nabokov and his family, being on the opposite side of the Bolshevik Revolution, belonged to the side known as White Russians during the Russian civil war.)

I think her choices changed the focus of the story. Referential seems to place more attention on the relationship between the son's parents, or parent and step-parent in this case. The story is modernised, with nice details like the jars now not being allowed as a gift because the glass could be used as a weapon, and that's reflected in this changed relationship. Instead of a long married couple, we have a non-traditional family, the adults not married, maintaining separate residences, and tensions between them that were not present between the couple in Nabokov's story. Pete seems like a modern lit sort of somewhat irresponsible man-child, jealous of her son's place in her life, unwilling to "man up" to meet his responsibilities in the situation, apparently hiding that he's seeing someone else. The mother is the one who suggests bringing the son back home in Moore's story, he's resistant, whereas in Nabokov's story it's the husband making the suggestion and the wife quietly going along. So the domestic scene is quite changed, and that's where I thought Moore made her biggest mark.

Gwen: Interesting that we have such different interpretations about who might be in Pete’s apartment. I thought about the possibility of a paramour, but that didn’t feel quite right to me. I’m wondering if it might be a child, a grown child. Like the mother, perhaps Pete also has a troubled young adult child, and he’s made the decision to bring the child home (which could explain some of Pete’s recent changes in behavior). If he does have a child, that makes it more understandable that Pete doesn’t have the emotional bandwidth to take on the mother’s troubled son as well. But if this is the right interpretation, then why wouldn’t Pete share this fact with the mother so they could commiserate and support each other? So perhaps this isn’t correct either.

Lee: The ending of the story seems just as enigmatic as Nabokov's. It references two even older short stories by authors who were writing before Nabokov, The Monkey's Paw and The Lady or the Tiger. What do you think Moore might be getting at there?

Gwen: I’m not familiar with those other, older stories, but I wonder if Moore wanted to take a final opportunity to drive home the fact that this story is responding to Nabokov and heavily referencing him. As for the enigma of the ending, I agree it’s mysterious, but it didn’t seem as foreboding as the Nabokov ending. In Symbols and Signs, I got the clear sense that the third call is from the sanatorium with bad news. In Referential, Moore includes this last line: “But there was nothing at all.” This doesn’t reveal anything about how this couple’s relationship resolves or the fate of the son, but it does make it clear there is no bad news today. Things will continue on as they have been. Circling back to my point above about optimism, this ending is one of the key reasons I think the Moore story is more optimistic and hopeful overall.

Lee: Yes, I can see a case for that. I'm wondering if Moore doesn't sort of leave it up to us, deciding how optimistic that ending is. In the story The Lady or the Tiger, a man has to choose which of two doors to open, behind one of which is a tiger that will eat him, while behind the other is a lovely maiden he would marry. The doors appear just the same and he doesn't know which is which. The author presents some complicating factors and then asks the reader, well, which do you think he got? The reader gets to decide for herself. Is Moore saying, I'm not telling you what's next - you decide which way this goes?

Gwen: I think we’ve come to the point where we have to choose favorites. Which of these stories did you vote for and why? I voted for Lorrie Moore’s Referential. I know it’s not really fair, but I felt like Moore’s story layered on top of Nabokov’s story was a more interesting reading experience overall. True, the experience wouldn’t even be possible without the Nabokov story, but I still prefer the “dialog” between the stories that Moore’s story creates more than reading the Nabokov story. What about you? And before we finish, please do tell us which Nabokov novel we should read next. Thanks for sharing this commentary with me. I’ve enjoyed it!

Lee: I voted for Symbols and Signs. I liked both stories, but Nabokov's precise and brilliant prose is so hard to beat, and the mom and Pete relationship question didn't fully bring me in. And as with different versions of songs, where people tend to favor the version of the song they heard first, maybe a similar factor may influence me here?

I've enjoyed this so much as well! About Nabokov's novels, I'd recommend my two favorites, one early novel and one late novel. Laughter in the Dark (1932) is one of his Russian novels that he later translated into English himself, it's a really funny black comedy. Secondly I like Pnin (1957), about a bumbling Russian professor at an American college for whom nothing ever goes quite right.

Gwen: Stepping back from the details of these particular stories for a moment, I was glad to see that we have a couple stories here that highlight some of the challenges surrounding mental illness. While those suffering from mental illness undoubtedly have it the hardest, I appreciate that these two stories explore the toll mental illness takes on immediate family members as well. In “Symbols and Signs,” the father even claims to be dying at one point in the story, and in Referential, the son’s mental illness clearly puts a strain on the couple’s relationship. In both stories, one of the parents feels a strong urge to bring the son home. Will this solve anything? Does this reveal some buried feeling of guilt for putting their sons into institutions rather than keeping them at home? These brief stories raise so many questions and answer so few of them. I’m glad we get a chance to discuss them and to hear the commentariat’s views as well.

Thanks Gwen and Lee! Appreciated the background on Freud and Nabokov especially! I certainly read Toward Happy Civilization frantically attempting to find and interpret symbols. I asked Gwen “the dog’s gotta mean something right!? What does the dog mean!?”

Thanks for the great commentary.

I read Moore's story when it was first published in The New Yorker and was oblivious to it's connection to Nabokov. When I finally read Nabokov's I was oblivious to the second story and all the symbols. Perhaps this is a real life example of ignorance/oblivion is bliss but I thoroughly enjoyed both stories with no awareness of the larger context. Moore's struck me particularly because of how she highlights the mom's struggle to parent, to be in a relationship, and to just move through the world.

Like Gwen, I think the representation of mental health struggles is important and I was grateful to see it in these stories in ways that seem real and compassionate.

Finally, it's interesting that another story from this tournament - What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank - leans on an earlier classic - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver.

Thanks for this informative commentary, Lee and Gwen! I would never have picked up on the various symbols and hidden connections in these stories, so I'm grateful you both took the time to explore those here.

I wasn't familiar with either of these stories before the tournament so I read Referential first once I noticed it had enough votes to make it to the bracket shortlist. I think this matchup is better served reading Symbols and Signs first though. The phone call ending of Referential really confused me so I went into S&S hoping to clarify the ending, but that didn't work.

It's great to learn more about Nabokov, and like Gwen mentioned, I've only read Lolita so far. I found the writing engaging, even though the plot was predictably disturbing, although not the most disturbing thing I've read. That prize probably goes to Ruby for fiction, and White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide for nonfiction. I definitely recommend the latter, but not so much the former. I'm now terrified of the town of Liberty (where the Ruby takes place)
which is only about a three-hour drive from my home. Anyway, Pnin sounds fun - thanks for the recommendation!

Also, for additional reading on mental health impacts on family, I thought this book (nonfiction) provided important insights: No One Cares About Crazy People: The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Health in America. Challenger Deep is a good fiction read for this subject as well.

Challenger Deep was $.99 yesterday on kindle so I picked it up!

I always know in theory that much literature is building off earlier literature and in dialogue with it, but I’m sure that often when I’m reading something I’m not aware of how exactly that is playing out in what I’m reading, what other specific works it is referencing. But that’s okay, I can enjoy it anyway! Knowing that dynamic certainly adds something however, which made reading Moore this week more interesting than if we’d read it without also reading Symbols and Signs.

What if going forward we think of Referential competing as a Referential/Symbols and Signs powerhouse combo? Especially since I favor the Nabokov. 😂

Lee, I agree that these two stories need to be viewed as a “powerhouse” duo. I voted for the Moore but only because I so enjoyed how it played off of the Nabokov. The story doesn’t stand on its own with nearly as much richness, in my opinion.

I agree! In my mind, anyway, I'll be judging them together, since Referential is meant to be read alongside S&S.