What was one of the most eagerly anticipated literary releases of the year, if not the decade, has been one of the most generally disappointing. The posthumous release of The Original of Laura, the novel Nabokov was working on around the time of his death in 1977, does not live up to or add to the great man's legacy. Look at the Harlequins may not be Nabokov's greatest work, but as an endgame to an outstanding literary life it is a more accomplished closing statement than this work.
The story, or what amounts to one, involves a love triangle between the Phillp Ward, an obese intellectual attempting to obliterate himself through sheer will, his young wife Flora and her lover, who penned a novel My Laura, which in true Nabokovian fashion flirts with the relationship between reality and literary creation. As does The Original of Laura itself. Former characters seem to reappear in different guises, (Humbert H. Humbert reimagined as Flora's step-father Hubert H. Hubert), former stories are referenced and even Nabokov makes a brief supposed appearance as the “forlorn looking” professor of Russian literature.
Before delving into the books problems, I'd like to consider some of its charms. Charms is more apt than strengths because the book as an object did get me at a physical level. It is simply a beautiful thing to behold and hold. While extravagant in these environmentally aware times, the arrangement of the index cards at one per page gives the cards room for contemplation. In a sense, it is the manuscript not the text which is subject, and it is a pleasure that we are afforded time to study them.
The other charm is seeing the facsimiles of the cards themselves. Not long after I started reading Nabokov, my history professor claimed he also used index cards to compose papers and urged us to do likewise, claiming it would better allow us to arrange our thoughts. I don't think my professor would consider himself a Nabokovian and Nabokov was no realist, and yet there was this parallel approach to work. When my professor told us this, I went back and thought more about Nabokov's creative approach, which now, illuminated by both hindsight and criticism, is more like an aesthetic thought experiment than simple expression. Nabokov and my professor had different ends, one artistic the other empirical, yet they treated the text as something plastic, mutable, an approach born out in the cards.
Apart from this insight, the cards don't tell us much more about Nabokov's creative process. There are the spelling mistakes, which Martin Amis in his review calls 'fragile', and which might interest studies in the bilingualism, especially the heightened bilingualism Nabokov achieved. These glitches like 'bycycle' or 'poring' could be dismissed if Nabokov had learned English later in life. Yet, by his own admission, Nabokov mastered reading in English before mastering it in his mother-tongue, a fact which upset even his Anglophilic/phonic father. Age could have been a factor. Or perhaps, the master had always been a poor speller.
Even if there is material for study, orthographic considerations are inconsequential compared with questions of literary creation. The former amounts to academic housekeeping which overlooks the house, the whole design and the structure. At this point, The Original of Laura begins to frustrate and even sadden. There is simply not enough in the notes to give us any real appreciation of what Nabokov could've been thinking. They amount to incomplete sketches. Some are quite interesting sketches, particularly the main male protagonist Philip Wild's attempt to will himself from existence. This project leads to meditations on death and religion not typical in Nabokov's work and these passages are the most compelling of the notes. Yet there is not enough to conclusively state what Nabokov meant or if this would've even been in the final version. Even the sections which are more complete, like the notes for the first chapter, don't resonate like other works. Sure, there are masterful images 'the pair of morocco slippers could be located foetally folded in their zippered pouch?', but there are lines which seem forced: 'so flat to belie the notion of “belly” '.
I could go on, but the real problem with the work is unquotable. Not that is obscene, rather the passages are not there. This is what saddens most about the release. Nabokov made no pretense concerning the artifice of literature. Yet, artifice to him also meant work, the projection of the imagination on language, on experience, into those little dim lamp-hooded worlds of his. These cards merely show him floundering, grasping. The overwhelming feeling after reading most sections is that something is missing.
His son Dmitri justifies the release of the manuscript on the grounds that he is a 'nice' guy. I understand a desire to preserve the manuscript against his father's wishes as a momento but I'm not convinced at the magnanimity of publishing it. Not that I wish to accuse Dmitri Nabokov of some ulterior motive. However, I do think he made a bad call. He hasn't tarnished his father's reputation, but he has done something aesthetically unnecessary, something I doubt his father would have done.
those perforated cue cards are awesome.
I was thinking of re-reading lolita soon.