Excerpts from Pnin, by Vladimir Nabokov

The accumulation of consecutive rooms in his memory now resembled those displays of grouped elbow chairs on show, and beds, and lamps, and inglenooks which, ignoring all space-time distinctions, commingle in the soft light of a furniture store beyond which it snows, and the dusk deepens, and nobody really loves anybody.

There had been, at the start of his life here, that studio in the thoughtfully furnished College Home for Single Instructors, a very nice place despite certain gregarious drawbacks (“Ping-pong, Pnin?” “I don’t any more play at games of infants”), until workmen came and started to drill holes in the street and patch them up again, and this went on and on, in fits of shivering black zigzags and stunned pauses, for weeks, and it did not seem likely they would ever find again the precious tool they had entombed by mistake.

There had been (to pick out here and there only special offenders) that room in the eminently hermetic-looking Duke’s Lodge, Waindellville: a delightful kabinet, above which, however, every evening, among crashing bathroom cascades and banging doors, two monstrous statues on primitive legs of stone would grimly tramp – shapes hard to reconcile with the slender build of his actual upstairs neighbors, who turned out to be the Starrs, of the Fine Arts Department (“I am Christopher, and this is Louise”), an angelically gentle couple keenly interested in Dostoevski and Shostakovich.

The Low Humbles, of Tacoma, Washington, feature Andrew Sandoval (vocals and guitar), Hunter Lea (bass and keyboards), Rick King (percussion), Jeff Noyes (drums), Kevin Poleski (harmonies), and Shayne Weeks (harmonies). “Love Is in the Air,” from the album A New Design for You, was written by Andrew Sandoval and Hunter Lea.

You can stream and download songs by The Low Humbles, and other projects by Hunter Lea, on Hunter’s Bandcamp page and on Soundcloud. And be sure to visit Hunter’s webpage and Facebook page, and follow him on Twitter.