Someone Has Won

Martin Amis holds Vladimir Nabokov in the highest regard.  Reading “Despair” I sense the influence from earlier memories of “London Fields” or “Money” where a literary trap is set in motion.  We spend page after page springing this device.  Somehow it all feels less mechanical reading Dostoyevsky.  In “Crime and Punishment” where the trap, the device, is both obvious and subtle, the author’s enterprise is less pronounced and we almost forget about it so that when the trap springs, it is all the more powerful.  There never was any way out for Roslolnikov, even as we begin to appreciate the fullness of all he is.  A trap about to spring certainly captures the attention.  But the prospect of mapping one out all seems a bit laborious and forced to me.  The hammering and planning of the author is always present when I read the doppelganger murder scheme in “Despair.” 

The whole day inside the house.  Just grinding through emails.  The time to go to the gym comes and goes.  A break here to play chess with my daughter.  A break there to eat lunch and read a few pages of my novel.  But every break is acutely finite and it’s back to the desk, back to chipping away at the pile of obligation in front of me. 

My younger one and I have taken to speed chess.  No one wants a long game.   So let’s make a limit on how many seconds you have, with each move.  We don’t have a fancy timer you can slap down on so we call out the seconds audibly, slowly.   Sometimes it’s easy.  Sometimes it’s excruciating.  But soon, much sooner than would otherwise be the case, someone has won.

The older one is a veg, again.  “Make something with chickpeas.  Please.”  What do you do with chickpeas?  I can’t make humus.  Tahini isn’t easy to source over here.  So I consider what I do have.  Some olive oil, chopped up avocado and tomato, salt and pepper are assembled.  Shave some carrots.  She takes a timid bite.  Then suddenly wolfs it down before I’ve put the dishes away.   That seemed to work.