More Nabokov

I'm really enjoying this book, Bend Sinister, it's another dystopian novel, ficition, and yet fearsome. It's amazing and horrifying what happens to Krug's son after Krug is hauled in. I'm breathlessly awaiting Krug's fate, and only about 10 pages to the rest of the book. Nabokov hasn't let me down so far. In his foreward, or introduction, Nabokov disses Orwell's dystopia, and I can see why. In some ways Nabokov's delves into the real psychological throttling of a society by an idea, the idea wringing such acts as just mentioned, Krug's son's fate, or Krug's friends disappearing for the sole purpose of isolating him and removing his support. By being more myopic than 1984, Bend Sinister acheives a more directed attack, that of society against an independent thinker. As we follow Krug along his turn for the worse, the incredible, disgusting, and out-of-control society is seen along the way like glimpses of a larger madness.

In other news, how about something of a personal nature?

My wife and I are going through some growing pains, together, and I wrote her this today:

one thing that i have realized is that many people are wrong when they
say that the problem in most marriages is communication. the people
who say the problem is communication are not being specific enough.
the problem is that a new couple will communicate quite a lot, because
they are convinced that the problem is communication, but that won't
be a problem for them, they will communicate as much as possible.
what happens is the other person hears everything that the spouse is
saying, but realizes that the spouse doesn't understand at all. then
slowly, both of them feel like they can't say what they really think
and feel. they are committed to the marriage however, so they stay
together, but the whole time, they are feeling less and less like
expressing themselves. short bursts of conversation will take place,
and they spend the next few days trying to clean up the mess, which
causes them to feel cautious the next time around. and so on. so the
real key becomes, how do we break this cycle?