I notice that the phrase, in its current meaning, appears on page 168 of Bend Sinister, published in 1947: “it is better for a man to have belonged to a politically incorrect organization than not to have belonged to any organization at all”. I wonder if this is its first occurrence.

I’ve been reading Nabokov’s early novel Bend Sinister, about political tyranny. I would call it a “crowd-displeaser”: brilliantly written, of course, but deeply depressing about politics and people. It seems to capture our current moment of mediocre pallid (or orange) men with obscene amounts of power and bad personalities. The figure of the ruler Paduk (nickname “the Toad”) is both terrifying and risible. The philosopher Krug used to bully him at school by sitting on his face, but now the tables are turned and you know it’s not going to end well for the philosopher. Nabokov’s theme is Stupidity with a capital “S”. Amen to that.

I have to say this book is the bleakest and most disturbing novel I have ever read. It’s all about political tyranny and bureaucratic incompetence. Yes, that. Human evil in all its revolting forms.

Yesterday when I was playing tennis with my friend Eddie a large reptile wandered onto the court–a lizard about three feet long, splendid green belly, striped tail, spikes on its back, quite a specimen. After a while it made as if to leave, but it was too heavy to climb back up the wind covers and the holes in the wire mesh were too small. We left it there with the gate open, hoping it would discover the only exit. But today when I came back to play again it was still on the court–still trying, in vain, to make an exit. It could die here, I thought. I decided to take matters into my own hands: I took my tennis sweat towel and approached it. The beast began ramming its head through the wire mesh at different points, but got stuck in one hole at its shoulders. I placed the towel over it and tried to pick it up–but it was firmly stuck. It took me a while to pull it out backwards, being careful not to hurt it (why are these things never easy?). Then I picked it up, fat and heavy in my hands, hoping it couldn’t bite me from that position, and carried it out to the gate of the court. It didn’t struggle and made no attempt to bite me; it didn’t even wriggle, remaining quite calm. I put it down outside the court and it ran into the hedge and climbed up into the bushes. I went back and played tennis. It was gone when we had finished.

I pay close attention to the syntax and vocabulary of Trump’s tweets. People have been writing about his bizarre use of quotation marks, making the plausible suggestion that he uses them so as to hedge his prose, about which he feels insecure. This sounds right to me: he is clearly uncomfortable with the written word, as his speech indicates. He is semi-literate and he knows it. This may account for his popularity as well as his shaky ego. His relationship to language is distant and tenuous, like his relationship to people.