 Brilliant's Audio presents the unabridged recording of Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov Performed by Christopher Lane Tuvera One Here's the person I want Hello person Doesn't hear me Perhaps if the future existed concretely and individually as something that could be discerned by a better brain the past would not be so seductive its demands would be balanced by those of the future persons might then straddle the middle stretch of the seesaw when considering this or that object it might be fun but the future has no such reality as the pictured past and the perceived present possess the future is but a figure of speech a specter of thought Hello person What's the matter, don't pull me I'm not bothering him Oh alright, hello person Last time in a very small voice When we concentrate on a material object whatever its situation the very act of attention may lead to our involuntary sinking into the history of that object novices must learn to skim over matter if they want matter to stay at the exact level of the moment transparent things through which the past shines man-made objects or natural ones inert in themselves but much used by careless life you are thinking and quite rightly so of a hillside stone over which a multitude of small animals have scurried in the course of incalculable seasons are particularly difficult to keep in surface focus novices fall through the surface humming happily to themselves and are soon reveling with childish abandon in the story of this stone of that heath I shall explain a thin veneer of immediate reality is spread over natural and artificial matter and whoever wishes to remain in the now with the now on the now should please not break its tension film otherwise the inexperienced miracle worker will find himself no longer walking on water but descending upright among staring fish more in a moment two as the person who person corrupted Peterson and pronounced person by some extricated sample complete ready to continue