Book Description
Albinus, a respectable, middle-aged man and aspiring filmmaker, abandons his wife for a lover half his age: Margot, who wants to become a movie star herself. When Albinus introduces her to Rex, an American movie producer, disaster ensues. What emerges is an elegantly sardonic and irresistibly ironic novel of desire, deceit, and deception, a curious romance set in the film world of Berlin in the 1930s. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (35)

Proto-Lolita
"Laughter in the Dark" is set in Berlin during the era of the Weimar Republic; it was first published in 1933, the year in which that Republic was replaced by the Nazi regime. (Nabokov himself lived in Germany between 1922 and 1937). Its original Russian title was "Camera Obscura"; this was retained for the first English translation, but then replaced by the present title.

The central character is Albert Albinus, a respected, well-to-do art critic. The plot can be summed up by the novel's opening sentence:-

"Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster."

Albinus becomes obsessed with Margot Peters, a teenage cinema usherette, and leaves his wife Elisabeth and daughter Irma for her. Margot has ambitions to become a film star, and believes that her wealthy lover, who has connections in the world of the arts, can help her. Her only acting venture, however, proves a disaster, and she betrays Albinus with her former lover, Axel Rex, whom she still loves. At first Albinus is unaware of his mistress's betrayal, but eventually realises the truth during a disastrous holiday in Switzerland. Interestingly, the three main characters had different names in the Russian version; Albinus was Bruno Kretzschmar, Margot was Magda, although she still had the surname Peters, and Rex was Robert Gorn or Horn. (The same Cyrillic transcription would be used for both names).

The best part of the book is the final section set in Switzerland. For most of the novel Albinus has been a lovesick fool, blinded (metaphorically) by his passion for Margot. It is only after he is literally blinded, losing his sight in an accident, that he realises the truth about her. As if to emphasise the enormity of Albinus's misfortune, Nabokov concentrates on the beauty of the mountain scenery in passages reminiscent of his previous novel, the superb "Glory", parts of which were also set in Switzerland.

In "Laughter in the Dark" Nabokov deals with a subject, the love of an older man for a young girl, which he was later to make notorious in "Lolita", written more than twenty years later. (He would also deal with this theme in the novella "The Enchanter"). There are, of course, major differences between the two works, the most important possibly being that, whereas Lolita was only twelve when she is first seduced by Humbert (or, possibly, when she first seduces him), her counterpart Margot is sixteen, making "Laughter in the Dark" a much less controversial work.

It is not only less controversial than "Lolita", it is also less complex and more conventional. The later novel is remarkable not only for its subject-matter but also for its complex prose style, a mixture of puns, word-games, literary allusions, recondite words and jokes. The first person narrative allows the author to paint Humbert in his own words. "Laughter in the Dark" is a more straightforward third-person narrative. Nabokov's prose is much less dense and allusive, although he does still allow himself the odd intellectual in-joke, such as when he describes an uncle pretending to be a burglar in order to fool his nieces and nephews as "the Hegelian syllogism of humour".

With the exception of Rex, more credible than the bizarre and enigmatic Quilty, the characters emerge as less interesting than their equivalents in "Lolita". Albinus is a less complex figure than Humbert, who reveals himself as a character both monstrous and pitiful whereas Albinus seems little more than a sex-obsessed dupe. The corrupt and mercenary Margot herself does not engage our sympathies in the way that Lolita does. The story as a whole is, in comparison with "Lolita", a fairly trite one.

Nabokov himself described "Laughter in the Dark" as one of his "worst novels". Although creative artists are not always the best judges of their own work (Tchaikovsky, for example, regularly undervalued what are today regarded as his greatest compositions), and the book undoubtedly has its point of interest, I would certainly agree with him that it is not his best.

"...he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster."
Just when one has reached the age of relative comfort and has accepted life's compromises with one's youthful and unearthly dreams and yearnings, along comes a great big delusion. In the case of Albinus, the struggle to resist this phantom called beauty didn't last long. He collapsed at its feet, as if it completed him and immortalized him. Utterly blind to its ruthless demands and sad, greedy realities, Albinus let beauty, embodied in the supple Margot Peters, bring down every bit of his integrity until he became, literally, a pathetic, helpless supplicant at her feet. This theme has recently been reprised in the award-winning movie, "American Beauty."

What I find interesting in this classically simple and beautifully executed novel is the underlying theme of our relationship to art and beauty. Does beauty make fools of us all, even the most intelligent among us who, one would think, should know better? Or are those people the most vulnerable of all, as they see all the way to the depths of beauty and art and lose themselves in their mystery?In contrast, hardened cynics and inherently nasty people, as epitomized in the character Axel Rex, take their due of life's sweets and laugh at the foolishness of those mere mortals who somehow try to capture and control them. They are nothing to be preserved, but are merely wild and fleeting, like a summer day or a rare butterfly fluttering through the dahlias. Yet it is all too human to quake and tremble and collapse when sensual delight finds its way into one's life. This is the story of such a disaster and the evil it releases.

Let's also leave "Lolita" on the shelf when reading this work. This one came first. It should be appreciated in its own right. Comparisons are for literature professors. Discrete enjoyment is for readers.

Very well written 3.5 stars
This is an extremely well written book, but not one of Nabokov's best -- a little too predictable, the main character unbelievably stupid about his mistress, as if Nabokov enjoys despising him.That can be amusing, but it detracts from the overall story -- hard to maintain that arch tone without boring the reader, even in a short book.Otherwise, somewhat dated and conventional, although told by a master.Pnin was more amusing, and Lolita more compelling.His collected stories is an excellent book.

Profit in considering tragedy.
"Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster."

Readers interested strictly in the bottom line might well stop there, with the synopsis of the entire story delivered in a single, short paragraph. Readers with the good sense to continue, however, will find themselves basking in the artistry of narration that is Laughter in the Dark . I think that this is among the best of Vladimir Nabokov's novels--which is high praise indeed, considering the oeuvre of this remarkable writer.

Albinus behaves badly, forsaking the wife and daughter who did love him for the gamine of eighteen who did not. Even so, Nabokov's narration makes it difficult not to pity the man in the face of Margot's manipulation and the dreadful treatment dished out by her lover Rex. Albinus understands only when it's too late.

Giving his carnal appetite higher priority than his responsibilities as a husband and father, Albinus supposes that as long as he provides financial support, all will be well (enough) and that he will still maintain his place in respectable society. His failure to see his actions through to their end leaves him vulnerable to disaster and his lust leaves him vulnerable to exploitation. What else but tragedy could follow?

Nabokov's genius is evident in his ability to draw the reader into a story after having given it away in the first paragraph. His prose is almost perfect, a harmonious balance of rhythm and economy: I didn't want to put the book down, though I did force myself to go slowly, to savor the text.

Not a happy story by any means, but one in whose reading there is profit.

Similar themes
As usual, very compelling writing, and glimmerings of his playfulness with language that would
become more developed in Lolita.Also, many similar themes as in Lolita:an older man takes a younger girl as a mistress, becomes obsessed with her, is jealous when a rival lover comes along.Also similar:long car trips and a pistol that ends the story.Overall, a hard book to put down, if just because of the writing style, but
the story itself does not seem new.A sort of dadaistic film-noire meets Henry Miller. ... Read more

Book Description
Glory is the wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a twnety-two-year-old Russian émigré of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him.  Convinced that his life is about to be wasted and hoping to impress his love, he embarks on a "perilous, daredevil project"--an illegal attempt to re-enter the Soviet Union, from which he and his mother had fled in 1919.  He succeeds--but at a terrible cost. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Glorious
Glory is the comic/tragic tale of a young man whose fantasies of heroism come to replace reality and eventually lead to his downfall.The theme is simple, but because the novel is set between WWI and WWII, Glory might be best described as a somewhat cynical allegory about the plight of the "Lost Generation"--those ex-patriots who retreated to Paris during the 20s and 30s. Martin, our protagonist, while not an American in Paris, most certainly is lost. Having been forced into exile during the Russian Revolution, Martin, who is a highly Europeanized hybrid, finds himself adrift in Europe, wandering from Switzerland, to England, to Germany in an aimless pursuit of what to do with himself. Eventually he falls in love with the sulky, dark-eyed temptress, Sonia. But that, of course, solves nothing. Martin does not know who he is, where he has come from, or where he is going. Falling in love merely heightens his anomie.

If this sounds somewhat uninspiring as a plot, you are right! There is very little action of note, and even less character development (which, in any event, Nabokov disdained). The appeal of this book is the sheer force of Nabokov's gorgeous writing. His exquisite attention to detail, his amazing insights into states of mind set him above all other writers. Perhaps you think I am overstating, but who else can take you to a river in Cambridge, make you smell the air, see the sky, feel as Martin feels, so deftly, so economically and with such great sensitivity? Nabokov, a synthaesthete, has a chef's awareness of how to spice his novels.A dash of this, a hint of that - he knows which sensations to describe in order to create a harmonious whole. There are passages in this book which I read and re-read, astounded by the clarity, the precision, the sheer beauty of Nabokov's prose.


Glory is a literary delicacy, best savored slowly. Take your time consuming it, and you will be well-satisfied.

Exquisite
In spite of multinational references in the book, "Glory" is quintessentially American. Martin Edelweiss (22 years old) is as every bit American as Rabbit Angstrom or Benny Profane (22 and 23 respectively). The unremitting chiseling oneself out is more in character with Rocky Balboa than with Raskolnikov.

Martin is a bit of a Holden Caulfield, sensitive and highly original. But instead of defining himself as the negation of the surrounding world, Martin has an inner flame that carries him forth. Stepping off the train in the middle of nowhere in Provence, and settling there. Going back on the perilous cliff just to prove to himself that he could do it. Crossing a dangerous state frontier. Even washing himself daily from his ubiquitous collapsible bathtub. All these are emanations of Martin's spirit. And in the book he, the least purposeful one, is the only one possessing it. He is that miraculous lonely green branch sprouting out of a withered tree. The book, in fact, is no less radical than Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" in its assertion that only according to your peculiar self is it worth living. The theme is not new, but the variation on it is presented with remarkable elegance. Only the preface, narcissistic and supercilious, is regrettably dissonant with the rest of the book.

And, naturally, the language. What a beautiful serving, what a feast! It is a hillock of beaten egg whites, under the dappled sunlight of a linden tree alley, smiling at you with all the sun-ignited freckles of its icy crystals. Weightless and radiant, it is a young steed, now trotting, now galloping, but always having the air of freshness about it. As is typically with Nabokov's novels, the pace of the book seems maddeningly slow, until one surrenders to its flow and lets their senses resonate with its spell. Nabokov savors language like a wine connoisseur savors wine: lingering with it, swirling the words, slowly, slowly, until they reveal their intricate bouquet.

Nabokov's lightness of touch, akin to Pushkin's, makes reading his books irresistible, like reading the best books in childhood, the ones to which you had to run home after school just to indulge yourself more.

youthful illusion
This is a very good novel about the fantasies of youth, i.e. misplaced idealism, mixed with the dangers inherent in the revolutionary upheavals of the early 20C.It is a slice of history, which may interest or may not.As the novel is translated from the original Russian, it lacks the extraordinary narrative texture that the Nab's original English novels exhibit.

Recommended.

A Hero of His Time
This novel was first published in Russian in 1932 and was much later translated into English by the author and his son Dimitri. In his interesting introduction to the book, Nabokov states that his original working title was "Romanticheskiy Vek", or "Romantic Times"; this was later changed to "Podvig", which can be translated as "gallant feat" or "exploit".

The hero of the book is Martin Edelweiss, a young Russian of Swiss ancestry. Like Nabokov's own family, Martin and his mother are forced to leave Russia following the Communist revolution of 1917, and take refuge in Switzerland, where Martin's mother marries his Uncle Henry, a cousin of his late father. Martin is sent to be educated in Cambridge; after graduating, he refuses to find a profession for himself, but travels around Europe, taking casual employment in Berlin and the south of France. The book ends with Martin performing the "exploit" of the Russian title, a clandestine crossing of the Soviet border from Latvia, but the ultimate outcome of this deed is left obscure.

Nabokov's two Russian titles for the work are both significant. Martin is a man of artistic temperament but without artistic gifts. He is bored and restless, something he has in common with the "superfluous men" of earlier Russian literature, such as Eugene Onegin or Pechorin from Lermontov's "Hero of our Times" (a novel Nabokov translated). (There is also, possibly, an echo of their obsession with duelling and honour in the rather ridiculous boxing match between Martin and his Cambridge friend Darwin). There are, however, important differences between Martin and these earlier anti-heroes. Their restlessness and boredom lead them into cynical, callous nihilism; Martin's lead him into a search for sense of purpose, something he remains optimistic about finding. As another reviewer has put it, he sees life as a "series of romantic possibilities." Whereas their sense of purposelessness is internal, arising from something in their characters, Martin's is external, deriving from his situation as an involuntary exile, cut off from his country by political events. It is notable that when he goes to Cambridge he chooses to study Russian literature and culture, rejecting Henry's advice that he should follow a vocational course. Memories of his childhood take on great importance for him; he chooses, for example, to live and work for a time in a particular French town because of the (mistaken) belief that it was the town whose lights he once briefly glimpsed during a night-time train ride as a boy.

Although the story is told in the third person, it is similar to a first-person narrative in that the whole of the action (except the last few pages after he has disappeared) is told as it appears to the central character. One of the most striking features of the work is the vividness of its descriptions of the physical world. Whether the scene is set in the Crimea, Greece, Switzerland, Cambridge, Berlin or Provence, there are plentiful references (at times in almost every sentence) to not only the sights of the locality but also to its sounds, smells, tastes and sensations. Martin is highly sensitive to the beauty of the world around him (something else, incidentally, that he shares with Pechorin)- lights seem from a train, the moon shining on the sea, a jay flying through blue sky above a snow-covered forest, or the scents of a Crimean summer.

Because Martin is so much at the centre of the book, the other characters are less prominent, although there are one or two sharp portraits- Uncle Henry, whose cautious pragmatism contrasts with Martin's romanticism, Martin's first love, the married Decadent poetess Alla Chernosvitova, Sonia Zilanova, the fickle, flirtatious daughter of another émigré family with whom he later conducts an on-off romance, and Darwin. (Darwin, incidentally, is not a fop, as some have called him. "Fop" seems an odd word to use about a winner of the Victoria Cross, and he often seems more practical and down to earth than Martin himself).

The motivation for Martin's "gallant feat" is left as obscure as its outcome. Was it some secret mission on behalf of his fellow émigrés? A desire for adventure? An attempt to impress Sonia? Nostalgia for his native land? Simple bravado? Nabokov provides no definitive answer to this question. Unlike some other reviewers, however, I did not find that the book was spoilt for me by the deliberately vague ending. In literature, as in life, mystery and ambiguity can be as interesting as precision and hard fact. Certainly, "Glory" is not a novel of the traditional sort, with a well-rounded plot with a beginning, a middle and an end, and should not be read as such. The fun of "Glory" lies elsewhere (to quote its author in a different context). The sensuous prose and the memorable portrait of a romantic young man in an age when romanticism was perhaps not in fashion make this a superb novel.

Death is inevitable
"Russia is our Motherland. Death is inevitable". - Epigraph to "The Gift", another Nabokov's novel.

Why did Martin Edelweiss march off towards his glory?

The complete population of Nabokov's novel - Martin's mother, his uncle, his best friend, his lady acquaintance (Sonya is not really his girlfriend, is she?), her relatives, the adventurous Gruzinov, unafraid to boldly go into blood-soaked Soviet Russia through secret passageways - all of them cannot find an answer to this question.

But let's rephrase it. Could Martin *not* march off towards his glory?

Strictly speaking, yes. Should Sonya agree to come to Provence and lead a peaceful rustic life with him, among snakes, heat and garlic. But she had refused, and Martin ran out of options.

He couldn't really spend his life working as a tennis coach in Berlin, throwing balls to elderly pupils - the balls he so deftly held in his hand, five at once.

Nabokov gave to Martin the precious droplets of his own experience, something that was called the happiest childhood of Russian literature. He gave him the anglophile tradition, the old Cambridge ramparts, the glow of Riviera sand, the hot afternoon hours of Southern France, the smell of petrol in Berlin. He allowed him to lose his virginity easily and happily - before that, all Russian classical writers had bashfully neglected this crucial moment - probably none of them happened to be so lucky as Martin. Who else in Russian literature dared sleep with a prostitute with a feeling of such freshness and vigour, and no remorse at all? There is no overlapping in Martin's sexual and romantic life; tough luck, sure; but in contrast to a multitude of other Russian fictional characters, he does not turn it into a tragedy, or renounce both in a fit of despair.

Having endowed his hero with nobleness, health, intellect, sense of humour, Nabokov did not give him any vocation. Martin never wrote anything longer than a postcard. Butterflies flip-flap their wings around him from time to time, but not a single one is given a name in the novel. He plays tennis well enough, but still he's only an amateur; he doesn't seem to play chess at all. In Cambridge, at first, he wants to do everything, but then he chooses the easy way and goes into Slavic studies, losing an excellent tutor on the way because of the latter's sexual preferences (squeamish, isn't he). Nabokov consistently denies his creation all of his own great passions. Even Martin's university studies are only mentioned fleetingly; they are not of real interest to anyone, to Martin himself in particular.

Martin with a gift - that is the character of Nabokov's later novel, "The Gift", the writer Godunov-Tscherdyntsev. His future fiancée would have dog-eared the book of his poetry before even meeting him. But what is left to Martin, who does not write any poetry? "Without a profession, he'll go nuts", says uncle Heinrich.

So he did. ... Read more

Book Description
Newly translated works by Nabokov on the twin passions of his life, literature and lepidoptera.A rich array of never-before-seen Nabokovia: novels, stories, poems, autobiography, interviews, diaries, and more, plus scientific and fanciful drawings by Nabokov and photographs of him in the field.The text--the richest and most varied assemblage of Nabokov's writing's available--is arranged chronologically and introduced by Brian Boyd and Robert Michael Pyle ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

An Orgy of Nabokoviana
The prize is an unfinished short story, "The Admirable Anglewing", at an immediate stage of note-taking on index cards.It's an intriguing dead end, identifiably a two-strata Nabokov, but with a strikingly scientific directness not elsewhere seen.

The bonus is an unpublished continuation of The Gift (tr. Dmitri Nabokov), which formulates a general expression of evolutionary theory in a clear and useful way, as it relates to a larger understanding of problems in taxonomy, probably omitted for the same reason "The Admirable Anglewing" was dropped.

Notes for The Butterflies Of Europe, much of Nabokov's lepidopterological work (Russia obviously lost a lepidopterist of genius), "butterfly" excerpts from the fiction, and of course much, much more...

It Always Came Down To Butterflies
"From the age of seven, everything I felt in connection with a rectangle of framed sunlight was dominated by a single passion," wrote Valdimir Nabokov."If my first glance of the morning was for the sun, my first thought was for the butterflies it would engender."This was certainly an unusual way in which to view the world and one that not many readers, even those who adore Nabokov, have shared.

In fact, the ferocity of Nabokov's obsession with butterflies has only just begun to become clear with the publication of this gorgeous new book, a volume of heretofore unpublished and uncorrected writings on the subject of butterflies, edited by Nabokov's biographer Brian Boyd, together with Michael Pyle, an expert on butterflies.All translations were done by Nabokov's son, Dmitri, who has lavished his time and talent on his father's work for several decades.

Even those of us who cannot get enough of Nabokov and cannot praise him highly enough may find more than 700 densely-printed pages on the subject of butterflies a little much.As much as we love Nabokov, do we really want to read page after page of his highly technical descriptions of the various species of butterfly?Are these writings really important, from a scientific viewpoint?Is there any connection between Nabokov's passion for butterflies and his extraordinary fiction?

Although most people would probably answer "no" to the first two questions, the answer to the third is a surprisingly enthusiastic, "yes."

In his wonderful introduction, Boyd begins to elucidate the connections between Nabokov the writer and Nabokov the lepidopterist.We come to understand the novelist more completely and precisely by coming to understand that science that gave this unique author "a sense of reality that should not be confused with modern (or postmodern) epistemological nihilism."

It was while dissecting and deciphering his butterflies that Nabokov came to the conclusion that the more we inquire, the more we can discover, yet the more we discover, the more we find we do not know.The world, Nabokov says, is infinitely detailed, complex and deceptive.

Nabokov's important writings on butterflies are reproduced in this volume, but thankfully, in reduced form.And other kinds of writing by Nabokov have been blended over the scientific prose, beginning with the luminous meditation on butterflies from Chapter Six of Speak, Memory.

The poems, memoirs, letters, diary entries, criticism and fiction that make up this beautiful volume cover a period from 1941 to 1947, when Nabokov was at his most obsessive...as far as butterflies are concerned.This obsessiveness, however, is gorgeous to behold, as in a letter from Nabokov to Edmund Wilson about a lecture trip he made to Sweet Briar College."The weather...was perfectly dreadful and except for a few Everes comyntas there was nothing on the wing."It always came down to butterflies.

Nabokov's interest in butterflies went far beyond sorting out and naming them.He was much more than a mere tabulator or categorizer.There is something exquisitely metaphysical, even mystical, about his approach to butterflies, something that also tells us of his quest to plumb the depths of nature's complexity.In his obsession, Nabokov sought to understand the sense of design that underlies the the physical world, and he also took enormous delight in the mysteries God chose to hide from human beings, leaving to them to seek them out or not.

As Boyd notes, Nabokov "preferred the small type to the main text, the obscure to the obvious, the thrill of finding for himself what was not common knowledge."His scientific writings overflow with minutiae, with obscure details, lovingly searched out, sorted, underlined, displayed.This preference for the complexity of life also underscores his writings, most notably his massive commentary on Pushkin's Onegin, the gorgeous and imaginative Pale Fire and Ada, a late masterpiece in which Nabokov's penchant for complexity reached spellbinding heights.

While only a small percentage of readers may want to study the scientific articles in this book, their very presence operates in the most subtle of ways to remind us that Nabokov, who referred to himself as VN, was also a student "of that other VN, Visible Nature."In his magnificent fiction, Nabokov offered the world a complete view of the complexity and richness of the human spirit.He might not have been so meticulous and so thorough were it not for his passion for the intricate world of butterflies, so beautifully on view in this book.

Nabakov's butterflies
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Dessert, and More
Yes, this book is the perfect companion to Nabokov's Blues and the stories of Lepidoptera spun in Nabokov's own Speak, Memory and Strong Opinions.You won't get the narrative read of Nabokov's scientific career as so aptlywritten by Johnson and Coates last year, but this is different fare-- thehard stuff-- letters, excerpts, drawings, complete works, interviews,speeches and expert commentary.Also, the book goes into all the aspectsof Nabokov's work on butterflies, including the projects he did notcomplete.With this book and the other books of the centennial there willno further doubt about Nabokov's important contribution to science and thefact that, even minus literature, he could have made quite a name forhimself in that field alone.

Yes! Yes! Yes!
Pick up this book, open it to any page and begin reading. You won't be able to put it down. From "Laughter," a poem as lovely and delicate as the azure it honors, to the detailed drawings, artisticrenderings, and delightful writings, it soon becomes obvious that Nabokovsaw a universe in a butterfly's wing. How fortunate we are that he leftthis magnificent record of his thought and activity. Begin reading anywhereand soon you will be drawn into his world, a world always colored by thebutterflies and moths that were his passion. Now I have to reread hisfiction with a new eye. Nabokov's passionate life and work is aninspiration to the least of us. ... Read more

Book Description
Pnin is a professor of Russian at an American college who takes the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he cannot master. Pnin is a tireless lover who writes to his treacherous Liza: "A genius needs to keep so much in store, and thus cannot offer you the whole of himself as I do." Pnin is the focal point of subtle academic conspiracies he cannot begin to comprehend, yet he stages a faculty party to end all faculty parties forever. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (43)

A Perfect Small Novel
Nabokov achieves perfect balance as he tells the story of Timofey Pnin, a bumbling Russian émigré and permanent associate professor. Here, Professor Pnin is oddly lovable and out-of-place in America. But he is also easy prey--exploited cruelly by his ex-wife and mocked mercilessly by his colleagues, who make Pnin impressions and stories a staple at campus cocktail parties. With this balance, PNIN, the novel, is both sweetly engaging and cruel. At moments, the Nab seems like he's torturing a puppy. Here's Pnin playing croquet:

"As soon as the pegs were driven in and the game started, the man was transfigured. From his habitual, slow, ponderous, rather rigid self, he changed into a terrifically mobile, scampering, mute, sly-visaged hunchback. It seemed to be always his turn to play. Holding his mallet very low and daintily swinging it between his parted spindly legs (he had created a minor sensation by changing into Bermuda shorts expressly for the game), Pnin foreshadowed every stroke with nimble aim-taking oscillations of the mallet head, then gave the ball an accurate tap, and forthwith, still hunched, and with the ball still rolling, walked rapidly to the spot where he had planned for it to stop....

PNIN is a small novel with a narrow focus on its hero, mostly as he lives near and works at second-rate Waindell College. Even so, Nabokov connects Pnin to great events, such as the Russian Revolution and World War II, as well as to important human questions, such as friendship, loyalty, identity, and excellence. Reviewed from these perspectives, this comically cruel story of a small man has great depth and significance. This helps make PNIN the perfect small novel.

Highly recommended!

Short ButA Great Read - But Not Like Nabokov's Other Novels
Nabokov is famous both for his non-fiction analysis of literature and for his fictional works, especially on topics such as obsession and compulsive behaviour. The book is less intense that Lolita or Laughter in the Dark.

I started to read all of his works and eventually made my way to Pnin. I had not read any comments or reviews on the book prior to reading the story.

This is a compelling read. It is well written; and, in many ways it is a powerful novel. I found it hard to put down once underway. Technically - just as a short novel - it is almost faultless as are many of Nobokov's other works. He is a master story teller and he is very skilled in the construction of a literary novel.

Some might not like the subject, and the story of the bumbling professor is slightly depressing. The story - we can assume - must be based in part on Nabokov's own experiences and academic acquaintance in upstate New York where he was a professor. Many people in the academic world have come across Pnin characters in their own careers: an aging assistant professor not protected by tenure doing marginal research.

Pnin is a man with seemingly little self confidence and caught in a mediocre academic career. He had been a bit of a dashing figure in his youth in Europe, but has floundered as an academic in America. I short, he is a bumbling and naive fool unaware of his own limitations.

The story contains much subtle humour and pathos. We follow his tenuous marriage, his false teeth, reunions with other Russian émigrés, and his career as the bumbling professor.He is a misfit and is depicted here as always doing things incorrectly or with no style. Pnin is not a symathetic character, although their is a degree of pity for the man generated by Nabokov.

It has a surprise ending which should be left as a surprise.

A Russian In America
This book is truly a masterful work by Nabokov.In a brief summary, the book is like Kafka with a great sense of humor.Yet Kafka never really has a sense of humor, so it is unique to Nabokov.The story depicts a Russian immigrant to the US.He never really integrates the manner and pronunciation of English in the American manner.Much of his commentary is funny.Many of the events that besiege him are hilarious.Often one can do nothing but outright laugh at Nabakov's description and depiction.

Yet after the first two thirds of the book, things take a turn.Prof. Pnin, a caricature of Russians in America, is besieged by some bad luck.He takes all this news in stride, but is nonetheless devastated by some of the pronouncements his good friend and protector announces to him.

In the end, there is no humor, just a vast emptiness.The amusement that the author gives the reader disappears in the last third of the book.The story of abject failure on the part of Prof. Pnin is the subject of the end of the book.And like so many other disadvantaged people in American, once the die is caste, there is no turning away from American Xenophobia and prejudice.These are the societal elements that Nabokov relies on as he puts together this brilliant narrative.

The book is recommended for all Nabokov readers, and well as those looking to understand the treatment of foreigners in American Society.It is a pleasure to read and would be also recommended for all highly interesting contemporary style.

A Gentle, Merry, Sad and Clever Book
PNIN must surely be one of the most gentle, merry, sad, and clever books in the English language today.All of these marvelous characteristics rely, of course, on the ability of its creator to weave visual tapestries from his word-hoard, and a superb weaver he is indeed.Vladimir Nabokov is an artist who paints fascinating images for us, with words as his paint and a pen as his brush.That English is a second language for the Russian-born Nabokov merely increases our incredulity at his skill in manipulating it so adroitly with such apparent ease.

In this one slim volume, readers will, on occasion, find a wry, sardonic grin spread across their faces at the description of the ubiquitous college campus, its students, its not-too-illustrious faculty and their pretensions, its too-efficient librarian, and the machinations of campus politics.They will smile with compassion at Timofey Pnin's efforts, never quite successful, to master the peculiarities of English, one chapter, for example, being devoted to his hosting a "house-heating" party.They will feel their protectiveness rise for this essentially good man who continually suffers the slings and arrows of cruel fortune.

Analyses of PNIN speak of the instances of bathos in the book, but that word, to me, suggests an exaggeration of pathos so great that the reader is repulsed by its artificiality.I do not find Nabokov's writing to be that crude or "over the top."Rather, the pathos is almost understated. For instance, when he learns that his ex-wife's son, fathered by her second husband, is to visit him on college vacation, Pnin buys him a fine leather football (which we Americans would call a soccer ball), and we are treated to a bit of humor at the linguistic confusion in the store while still understanding that, in Pnin's eyes, this is a delightful gift for any young athletic man on campus. He is so proud of the gift that he removes the rumpled brown wrapping paper so that Victor's first sight of the ball will be of its excellent leather cover.In hopeful conversation between the station and Pnin's rented room, Pnin excitedly brings up the topic of football only to discover that Victor has no interest in the sport whatsoever.Finally at the rooming house, while Victor is yet engaged in pleasantries with the landlord, Pnin slips upstairs and opens the window.The magnificent leather soccer ball is consigned to the storm.

Such sad conflicts are part and parcel of Pnin's life.The pleasure of meeting Victor is counterbalanced, at least in the reader's mind, by the disappointment of the failed gift. The pleasure of Pnin's marriage to Liza is offset by her obvious lack of commitment, to which Pnin seems oblivious, and her abandonment of him for Dr. Wind.The pleasure of having given a wonderful "house heating" party is supplanted by the despair of learning that he is to lose his job at the college. And so it goes from event to event-happiness is always offset by disappointment.

Pnin is an innocent, truly and thoroughly naive, who is thrust into life's ambushes without the benefit of any useful weapon at all. Yet, Nabokov does not permit him to be destroyed.He appears always accepting and even at times oblivious to the ambushes and, at the end, when he has lost his job at the college, he drives off "up the shining road, . . . narrowing to a thread of gold in the soft mist where hill after hill made beauty of distance, and where there was simply no saying what miracle might happen."

In addition to painting a verbal portrait of a guileless émigré, thoroughly lovable despite, or perhaps because of, his amusing malapropisms with his new language, Nabokov also treats the reader to an exhilarating romp with that language. One of the author's linguistic jokes actually sent me on a search for its meaning!In Chapter 3, Nabokov shares with us that, during the academic year, Pnin "existed mainly on a motuweth frisas basis."Motuweth frisas?What in the world?Latin?No.Russian?No.Purely English.Look at the first two letters of each weekday (except for Sunday from which you must take only one letter).What fun!

PNIN is a truly beautiful book, both for its pathetic, naive professor whom we quickly come to love and for the author's admirable use of our language in evoking that response in us.If your literature courses, like mine, inexplicably bypassed the works of Vladimir Nabokov, PNIN is a fine example of his art with which to rectify that omission!

Short but sweet
While not the most extraordinary work Nabokov has written, I think the story was nice.There was a normalcy about Pnin that I liked.He wasn't an amazing hero, but he was a regular, quirky person.It is nice to read about someone like that, especially when the author is Nabokov. ... Read more

Book Description
Vladimir Nabokov saw rich colors in letters and sounds and noted the deficiency of color in literature, praising Gogol as the first Russian writer to truly appreciate yellow and violet. He saw q as browner than k, and s as not the light blue of c, but a curious mixture of azure and mother-of-pearl.For anyone who has ever wondered how the colors Nabokov heard might manifest themselves visually, Alphabet in Color is a remarkable journey of discovery. Jean Holabird's interpretation of the colored alphabets of one of the twentieth century's literary greats is a revelation. The book masterfully brings to life the charming and vibrant synesthetic colored letters that until now existed only in Nabokov's mind. In Alphabet in Color Jean Holabird's grasp of form and space blends perfectly with Nabokov's idea that a subtle interaction exists between sound and shape.In his playful foreword, Brian Boyd, "the prince of Nabokovians", points out that an important part of "Nabokov's passion for precision was his passion for color." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

commercial with private press appeal
This commercially produced and priced book has the appearance of a private press book.
recommended not only for Nabokov admirers

No student of Nabokov's literary work should pass up the opportunity to peruse this unique and original study
Renowned twentieth-century literary author Vladimir Nabokov maintained that he could "hear" color. Enhanced with the memorable and interpretative illustrations of Jean Holabird, Alphabet In Color showcases what Nabokov heard with respect to colors would manifest visually to the rest of us with charming, vibrant, synesthetic colored letters. No student of Nabokov's literary work (which included "Lolita", "The Gift", "Pale Fire", "The Defense", "Invitation to a Beheading", Pnin", "Ada", and so much more) should pass up the opportunity to peruse this unique and original study of Nabokov's appreciation of color and its role in western literature.
... Read more

Product Description
Originally reprinted as"Spring in Fialta". ... Read more

Book Description
"How should we read Lolita? The beginning of an answer is that we shouldread it the way all great works deserve to be read: with attention andintelligence. But what sort of attention should we pay and what sort ofintelligence should we apply to a work of art that recounts so much love,so much loss, so much thoughtlessness--and across which flashes somethingwe might be tempted to call evil? To begin with, we should read with theattention and intelligence we call empathy. A point on which all readerscan agree is that great literature offers us a lesson in empathy: itencourages us to feel with the strange and the familiar, the strong and theweak, the vulgar and the cultivated, the young and the old, the lover andthe beloved. It urges us to see our own fates as connected to those ofothers, to link the starry sky we see above us with whatever moral laws wemight sense within."--from Style is Matter

"Some of my characters are, no doubt, pretty beastly, but I really don'tcare, they are outside my inner self like the mournful monsters of acathedral façade--demons placed there merely to show that they have beenbooted out."--Vladimir Nabokov, Strong Opinions

With this quote Leland de la Durantaye launches his elegant and incisiveexploration of the ethics of art in the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov.Focusing on Lolita but also addressing other major works (especially Speak,Memory and Pale Fire), the author asks whether the work of this writer whommany find cruel contains a moral message and, if so, why that message is soartfully concealed. Style is Matter places Nabokov's work once and for allinto dialogue with some of the most basic issues concerning the ethics ofwriting and of reading itself.

De la Durantaye argues that Humbert's narrative confession artfully seducesthe reader into complicity with his dark fantasies and even darker actsuntil the very end, where he expresses his bitter regret for what he hasdone. In this sense, Lolita becomes a study in the danger of art, theartist's responsibility to the real world, and the perils and pitfalls ofreading itself. In addition to Nabokov's fictions, de la Durantaye alsodraws on his nonfiction writings to explore Nabokov's belief that allgenuine art is deceptive--as is nature itself. Through de la Durantaye'sdeft and compelling writing, we see that Nabokov learned valuable lessonsin mimicry and camouflage from the intricate patterns of the butterflies headored. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Criticism worth the time
I seldom read literary criticism, just because I'm lazy, and like the fiction itself more, but this book is that rare thing, a piece of criticism that enlightens rather than obscures.Although De La Durantaye is occasionally self-indulgent--spending a half-page too much on the title of Pale Fire, for example--most of the book is admirably direct and on-topic.Side issues, like Nabokov's extreme dislike of Freudianism, are delightful extras.For readers who like Lolita, but feel uncomfortable about liking it; or for any devoted lover of V. Nabokov's works, because De La Durantaye's comments illuminate them all. ... Read more

Book Description
Nabokov's fourth novel, The Eye is as much a farcical detective story as it is a profoundly refractive tale about the vicissitudes of identities and appearances. Nabokov's protagonist, Smurov, is a lovelorn, excruciatingly self-conscious Russian émigré living in prewar Berlin, who commits suicide after being humiliated by a jealous husband, only to suffer even greater indignities in the afterlife. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Absolutely exquisite
This is Nabokov's shortest novel, and I think one of the most exquisitely structured books ever. Each word and sentence is carefully crafted, polished and placed into position to create a superb portrait of fractured, then reunited identity. A miniature masterpiece.

The Eye, The Spy
In this short but exquisite novel, Nabokov returns to a familiar subject; that of a Russian spy in Berlin.The book explains that there are Russian spies all over and that they act as the best of friends and neighbors, until they take you under arrest or worse.

The story depicts the interactions of one spy named Smurov, whom the reader is not informed is also the narrator until almost the very end.Nabokov takes us through a significant time period, when Smurov sees himself through the eyes of others, not through his own existence.As a spy, he does not really exist.He is there to observe others and to keep his own identity a secret.

Nabokov takes us through a bit of surrealistic writing as he indicates that what Smurov sees is all a dream.Yet the reality for Smurov of life is this hiding in society, this spying and because of it, such a person can really only understand himself, through the reflections of him by others.This all culminates with the admission of Smurov that he is happy, when he is observing, happy when he sees himself through that mirror of others, happy when he is invisible and yet observant.This existence is what Nabokov transmits to the reader.

The book is recommended to all lovers of Nabokov's truly modern fictional approach.The book will entertain and delight and all in a mere 104 pages.It is well worth the read.

Just Get It

This book is quite short.In fact, it is so short that you have absolutely no excuse for not buying it to find out, for yourself, if it really is worth 5 stars.

This is the work that turned me on to Nobokov.After reading this I was awestricken.The storyline, the mysteries, surprises, and most of all the descriptive power in this book are phenomenal.

By the way, it is.

Essential Nabokov
THough hardly his best novel, The Eye is an essential read for any amateur Nabokovian. Originally titled in Russian "The Spy", The Eye is the story of a young man hell bent on destroying his own life, the only p roblem is, that may have already happened. With elements of Gogol's "Lost Souls" and the beginnings of Nabokov's characteristic style, "The Eye" is an intriguing two or three hour read. I finished it in an afternoon, but that was two years ago, and I'm still pondering this novel. For the key to the mystery, see Stacy Schiff's "Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)", also an intriguing read.

fair to middling
This is not a great novella in my reading, but it has some of the Nab's typical themes:deception, living in the imagination that merges disturbingly with reality, and the simple bizarre.Sometimes I get tired of how many pathetic characters there are in Nabokov's novels and that was the case with this one; it is set among the emigre set perpetually mourning the loss of tzarist Russia, which is of limited interest.Moreover, for sticklers (and lovers) of Nabokov's inimitable style, this is a translated work and as with virtually all of the others, something is lost - I found it very flat, almost two dimensional.

Recommended tepidly, but true Nabokov devotees will probably like it. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Terrific Read
Most of the enjoyment with this book is the discovery of Nabokov's creation. Frankly, I suggest that you skip the reviews here, close your eyes for the moment and simply read the book - the same recommendation that I make for most of his books. Read the comments later. By the way, the novel has nothing to do with Harlequin romance novels - or maybe it does indirectly.

Vladimir Nabokov (1899 to 1977) is a Russian born writer who went to Cambridge, then lived in western Europe, the US, and finally retired in Switzerland. He has a medium sized body of work with numerous novels, short works, and well known non-fiction. Most know him for his 1955 creation of Lolita, which he wrote and re-wrote for over twenty years before the final product. It was based on a real life French story, but set in America. He has 20 novels.

Eleven of Nabokov's novels come from his early European period when he could write in many languages but he wrote his first 11 novels all in Russian. The present work is from his Swiss period, that is from his retirement years, written in English and one of his last novels. It was published in 1974.

Without revealing too much about the plot, it is a story of a fictional Vadim Vadimovich who lived at the same time as the author and who has a life similar to the author including a love off butterflies, writing, and living in similar cities and towns. However, we must assume it is a work of fiction and leave if for the reader to discover the details.

It is a very humorous and entertaining a book. I have read about half of his novels and thought it was excellent but a touch short of his best. It is a matter of taste, but I liked "King, Queen, Knave" and "Laughter in the Dark" as his best works, notwithstanding "Pale Fire" and "Lolita."

It is an entertaining read but not his best work. Saying that, readers will be far from disappointed and there are many funny sections.

A pleasant stroll through an alternate reality
LATH will not go down as Nabokov's most memorable or widely-read work.In fact, if it weren't for the novels that preceded it, it would probably be forgotten.And it's not a work I would recommend to anyone who hasn't already read most of N's other fiction.But to a diehard Nabokovian, LATH offers enough pleasures to make the read (and the wait) worthwhile.

Yes, it appears to be a "fictionalized" autobiography of Nabokov, with some key changes (Nabokov professed to be most content with life, while the same could not be said for LATH's protagonist-cum-"author", Vadim Vadimovich).Thus, one will not get much out of the book unless one has read N's other work and knows a bit about his life.

What make this novel truly enjoyable are (a) N's trademark wordplay (not as great as in "Lolita" and "Ada", but still magnificent); (b) small moments of genuine joy (as in the coy but cute resolution of Vadim's psychological conundrum); and (c) some excellent Nabokovian narrative tricks:Vadim feels he is living someone else's life and at one point appears to be on the verge of realizing that he is, in fact, Vladimir Nabokov (try wrapping your mind around that!)--only to have the epiphany slip away.

LATH should (as another reviewer recommended) be saved for last.Those who do get around to reading it, though, will almost surely enjoy it.I get a kick just thinking of the old guy--pushing 75, but still as vibrant and full of tricks as ever.That he never won a Nobel Prize is an terrible shame.

Commendable for its entertaining use of the word "dilatory"
The only thing Nabokov accomplished here was to induce me to yawn at the head harlequin. HARLEQUINS is an exercise in (no--better make that "an excretion of") self-congratulatory lit-chat. It's a roman-a-clef that makes all the obligatory allusions to Nabokov's self-overrated oeuvre. It is a suffocating borefest. I got the distinct sensation of being hermetically sealed far up the netherlands of Nabokov's preening patoot. Although I did enjoy the following passage:

"Would I like to know something? (Dilatory sip and lip lick.) Well, at all my five public readings since the first on September 3, 1928, in the Salle Planiol, she had been present, she had applauded till her palms (showing palms) ached, and had made up her mind that next time she'd be smart and plucky enough to push her way through the crowd (yes, crowd--no need to smile ironically) with the firm intention of clasping my hand and pouring out her soul in a single word, which, however, she could never find--and that's why, inexorably, she would always be left standing and beaming like a fool in the middle of the vacated hall."

Metafictional Madness
Beginning with a list of the author's "other" books, which don't exist outside the distorted mirror world of what Nabakov calls "LATH" (as he acronymically pegs Look At The Harlequins! within that book's own text) is a wildly inventive metafiction in the bilingually verbose hyper-alliterative Nabokovian mold. We get splendid sentences here on the jeweled gift of selfhood giving reason to resist suicide from whatever facet, cranky meditations on the author's pederastic proclivities and ego, and, most brilliantly, strange slips down the semiotic slope into madness.In two or three places in this book we find ourselves in a meticulously rendered literary reality and then, through a process of what one might call overdescription as exquisite as it is subtle, we find that our narrator has lost contact with the very rich world he has created for us; there is also a (to me) fascinating motif of the author's self-analysis of a strange spatial or geographical malady: he cannot mentally reverse himself and return after picturing a scene in his mind's eye.(This perhaps is meant as a sly parallel to time's one-way flow: time, which via the magic of the book, as opposed to the temporal incarceration of life, can be reversed--a hint of a kind of "law of nature" that might apply to a "real" metafictional character.) And despite the hefty overlap of the life of the protagonist with that of Nabokov (e.g., he has English tutors, Russian aristocratic blood, contempt for psychoanalysts, and the like), this book is clearly metafiction. The protagonist here, as with the protagonists in Transparent Things and Lolita, is fascinated by butterflies but not an entomologist of Nabokov's caliber. What makes LATH different from the work of other authors of metafiction's alluringly magical, "self"-indulgent mode, depends on the previous richness Nabokov has built up in his fictions which, from the Russian-drafted Gift to Humbert Humbert in Lolita,*already* deal with a protagonist much like the author.Thus the slippage here is not dual, between the author and his protagonist, but "trial" (as one might say), between the author, his protagonist, and the lives of his other protagonists, memorably Humbert Humbert of Lolita. Nabokov is having sly taunts: not only atAmerica's image of him as author of Lolita, but at himself for being too quick to disidentify from that potent catcher of words and nymphs,
and finally perhas, at the ontological conceit of a fixed self that could be wholly either one or another.The protagonist here is a dialectical monster flitting between Nabokov and Humbert Humbert, a monster Nabokov himself capture's like a moth between LATH's pages. The last, and in some ways perhaps richest novel from a modern master.

Metafictional Madness
Beginning with a list of the author's "other" books, which don't exist outside the distorted mirror world of what Nabakov calls "LATH" (as he acronymically pegs Look At The Harlequins! within that book's own text) is a wildly inventive metafiction in the bilingually verbose hyper-alliterative Nabokovian mold. We get splendid sentences here on the jeweled gift of selfhood giving reason to resist suicide from whatever facet, cranky meditations on the author's pederastic proclivities and ego, and, most brilliantly, strange slips down the semiotic slope into madness.In two or three places in this book we find ourselves in a meticulously rendered literary reality and then, through a process of what one might call overdescription as exquisite as it is subtle, we find that our narrator has lost contact with the very rich world he has created for us; there is also a (to me) fascinating motif of the author's self-analysis of a strange spatial or geographical malady: he cannot mentally reverse himself and return after picturing a scene in his mind's eye.(This perhaps is meant as a sly parallel to time's one-way flow: time, which via the magic of the book, as opposed to the temporal incarceration of life, can be reversed--a hint of a kind of "law of nature" that might apply to a "real" metafictional character.) And despite the hefty overlap of the life of the protagonist with that of Nabokov (e.g., he has English tutors, Russian aristocratic blood, contempt for psychoanalysts, and the like), this book is clearly metafiction. The protagonist here, as with the protagonists in Transparent Things and Lolita, is fascinated by butterflies but not an entomologist of Nabokov's caliber. What makes LATH different from the work of other authors of metafiction's alluringly magical, "self"-indulgent mode, depends on the previous richness Nabokov has built up in his fictions which, from the Russian-drafted Gift to Humbert Humbert in Lolita,*already* deal with a protagonist much like the author.Thus the slippage here is not dual, between the author and his protagonist, but "trial" (as one might say), between the author, his protagonist, and the lives of his other protagonists, memorably Humbert Humbert of Lolita. Nabokov is having sly taunts: not only atAmerica's image of him as author of Lolita, but at himself for being too quick to disidentify from that potent catcher of words and nymphs,
and finally perhas, at the ontological conceit of a fixed self that could be wholly either one or another.The protagonist here is a dialectical monster flitting between Nabokov and Humbert Humbert, a monster Nabokov himself capture's like a moth between LATH's pages. The last, and in some ways perhaps richest novel from a modern master. ... Read more

Book Description
The Enchanter is the Ur-Lolita, the precursor to Nabokov's classic novel. At once hilarious and chilling, it tells the story of an outwardly respectable man and his fatal obsession with certain pubescent girls, whose coltish grace and subconscious coquetry reveal, to his mind, a special bud on the verge of bloom. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Poetically Precious Pedophilia
"The Enchanter" is an incredible example of what Nabokov can do in less than 100 pages.The book is a portrait of a pedophile, in his own words.Despite the fact that it is a translation, the genius of the original text is carefully preserved by his son, Dmitri's rendition into English.The prose is practically verse.The use of language is pure genius.And the device of using the deviant mind as the story teller is again, just another example of Nabokov's incredible creative ability.

As noted in the afterword by Dmitri, the title of the book most usually translates to "The Magician" but apparently, Nabokov indicated that his intended English translation should be "The Enchanter."Perhaps this is because the pedophile is enchanted with the concept of having a prepubescent girl to bring along through all the various sexualities that ran within his warped persona.

Additionally, the story rolls along as an incredible pace.The last 10 pages being probably the most `enchanting' of all, as the story comes to a crashing crescendo of an ending.Like most of the writings of Nabokov, the book is an example of a brilliant novelist at his very best.Do not fail to read the afterword by Dmitri Nabokov, the translator and son of the author, especially where he disavows any direct relationship to "Lolita."It is recommended to those with a wide vocabulary and a not overly judgmental mind.

A soft portrait of what would become Lolita
After nearly completing my first year in Law School, I decided that I needed a break from case reading.Thankfully, Nabokov was there to provide a welcome respite from the tedium of my case books.
The Enchanter is a short book, almost not worthy of publication independently, nevertheless it provided me with a brief repose of a perfect magnitude.In this short novella the protagonist is a proto-Humbert who is embryonic in almost every respect.We do not know his name, his history, profession, origin or the raison d'etre for his fatal obsession.For this reason the reader will find it harder to humanize the attrocious acts that he engages in.Similarly, the object of the unnamed protagonist's desire is no Lolita; rather then present us with the beguiling temptress, or the iconic nymphet of Nabokov's latter novel, we are left with a somewhat fungible, inchoate and forgettable young girl.The story follows a somewhat predictable path towards the eventual destruction (is it what he was seeking?) of the protagonist.
There are a few reasons why this novella is worth four stars.First, the brief size of the novella allows the busy or casual reader a little taste of Nabokoviana without the conmesurate investment in time by the reader.Secondly, all of our favorate Nabokov traits are present to some extent in the text.The word play, the beautiful imagery, and the defectless prose-poem quality of his writing are given expression in the pages.Finally, the climax and denoument of the novella executed prefectly.Each scene inevitably leads to the next and appears to offer only one conclusion.The end of our anti-hero is satisfiyingly conveighed.
In conclusion, the serious reader can (almost) never go wrong with Nabokov and The Enchanter does not disappoint.If you have a spare hour and desire some beautiful writing pick up this short volume.

"The story resides in the introspection..."
That insight, about introspection itself constituting the story, is made by Dmitri Nabokov in an essay appended to The Enchanter. As many have noted in so many words,"The Enchanter" lacks Humbert Humbert's appeal. Still, Nabokov permits us to see in the enchanter, perhaps more succintly than in Lolita, the introspective anxiety of an outwardly ordinary man driven mad by his single-minded obsession with an eternally adolescent female, at least eternal younth "was the carnal postulate." He can neither ignore her as as an object of his desire, nor bring himself to rationalize adequately her hold on him.Indeed, he can empathize withher disgust as he envisions himself through her eyes, a "monstrosity, some ghastly disease." The book's opening sentence, a question, signals the ordeal that is about to unfold, "How can I come to terms with myself?" And, the answer is that he cannot; he cannot gain the distance he needs from his moral framework.He is both sinner and judge; without control,insane and yet damned as a morally responsible soul.

Rough sketch
In a sense, "The Enchanter" was not meant to be published. Author Vladimir Nabokov unearthed the extremely brief novel in his papers, 20 years after he dashed it off (and thought it was gone forever). It's "Lolita" before there was "Lolita"... but not quite as interesting.

The main character is a middle-aged, respectable, well-off man, living alone and lonely. He also has a distinct "liking" for teenage girls who are just hitting adolescence, but doesn't dare to try anything. One in particular catches his notice, a coltish girl on roller skates who talks to him at times and gains his affection and lust.

He proposes to the girl's widowed mother, who is terminally ill and pretty crabby; he has no interest in his "monstrous bride" but it's the only way he can get to the girl. The wife's condition gets worse over the following months, and she dies. And the man choreographs his own downfall as he plots to seduce his new stepdaughter...

The mind of a pedophile is a disgusting thing, and Nabokov makes no excuses for it. "The Enchanter" is a pretty straightforward story in comparison, without a lot of twists or surprises. It's far from a bad book, but it's not a terribly good one either. It's fairly ordinary, especially when compared to modern classic "Lolita."

The high point of "The Enchanter" is the rambling thoughts of the lead character as the book opens. Then it dips down and proceeds more or less steadily.Nabokov's lush language and complex symbolism aren't really very present here. His writing is blander and more straightforward, with a lack of polish.

The characters are given no names -- they're just the man, the girl, the wife. And the only characters we really get insight into are the lead character and the teenage girl. He's a lech, a creepy pedophile, with nothing good about him. Though he's the center of the novel it's impossible to feel any understanding for him, only a sort of disgusted pity. And Nabokov evoked that with a flair. And the girl is a sort of vibrant athlete that can be seen at any school.

"The Enchanter" is a sort of pale shadow of "Lolita," a straightforward story about a pedophile and how his obsessions bring him down. Worth checking out, but far from the best.

Dethroned by Lolita
Nabokov's Lolita spawns from this short book, and it is fascinating to see the thought process behind the masterpiece. The book is translated to English from Russian, so some of the story may be lost. The Enchanter is a bit disappointing after finishing Lolita. Lolita is full of word play, imagery, allusion, and poetic prose, so finding the Enchanter to be merely a story with not much artistry in the language is almost sad! The storyline consists of little complexity, and the work is void of the characterization that draws the reader into Lolita. The narrator has none of the charisma that the brilliant Humbert Humbert possesses, and comes across simply as a villain. Nabokov's concept of the nymphet that left the term "Lolita" forever in the English vocabulary does not appear either. The young girl's character isn't developed at all; instead the reader gets nothing more than physical descriptions. Nabokov didn't intend the Enchanter for publication at all, it is merely a sketch of an idea he later developed for everyone's eyes. This book is worth reading, but without any expectations that Lolita may cause the reader to have. Perhaps it is better to read the Enchanter before reading Lolita. ... Read more

Amazon.com
She was wearing a black satin mask when they first met in 1923, and in a sense she wore a mask--that of the dutiful wife and helpmeet--throughout their 52-year marriage. Especially after the American publication of Lolita made her husband notorious in 1958, Véra Nabokov's presence at her husband's side was crucial, writes her biographer Stacy Schiff: "[It] kept the fiction in its place, reassured readers ... that Nabokov's perversities were of a different kind." But Véra Slonim (1902-91) was essential to Vladimir Nabokov's literary career from the beginning. She had a gift for handling practical matters that her spouse proudly lacked; she screened him from his publishers and his admirers with equal firmness, and in doing so she liberated him to fulfill the artistic genius they both believed he possessed. Praised for a previous biography of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Schiff here cements her reputation as a literary biographer of striking subtlety and perceptiveness. She establishes a strong base in chapter 1 with her excellent analysis of Véra Slonim's youth in a privileged Russian Jewish family in St. Petersburg. She then pursues her subject's elusive personality through hints in Nabokov's work and the comments of friends and colleagues. Schiff's elegant prose and eye for nuance nearly match Nabokov himself in this lucid, unsentimental portrait of a marriage. --Wendy Smith Book Description

Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for biography and hailed by critics as both "monumental" (The Boston Globe) and "utterly romantic" (New York magazine), Stacy Schiff's Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) brings to shimmering life one of the greatest literary love stories of our time. Vladimir Nabokov--the émigré author of Lolita; Pale Fire; and Speak, Memory--wrote his books first for himself, second for his wife, Véra, and third for no one at all.

"Without my wife," he once noted, "I wouldn't have written a single novel." Set in prewar Europe and postwar America, spanning much of the century, the story of the Nabokovs' fifty-two-year marriage reads as vividly as a novel. Véra, both beautiful and brilliant, is its outsized heroine--a woman who loves as deeply and intelligently as did the great romantic heroines of Austen and Tolstoy. Stacy Schiff's Véra is a triumph of the biographical form. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (24)

Fabulous!
This account of the relationship between the Nabokov's was a superb treasuer.No wonder it won the Pullitzer.The depth of the relationship between these two intellectuals was refreshing.Both people were very complex and loved each other deeply.Vera was everything to him and she was completely devoted to him and was always there for him through good and bad times.They were true soul mates.

Surprising and rich...
Other writers have elaborated at length on the quality of the contents of VERA, so I'll refrain from that.I will note - and base my own recommendation on two qualities well-investigated by Schiff, and which I loved:this is a remarkable love story, between two of the 20th century's great intellectuals, and the glimpse into not one but two creative minds at work is priceless.

And Schiff does great justice to the everyday details of this collaborative relationship, with day-to-day qualities other writers would take for granted made compelling.

Perhaps a book for Nabokov's fans, but a great one for sure.

-David Alston

Vera (Mrs.Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff
Since you are inviting me to submit a review of the book that you have not yet shipped to me, I hope this note will help you to revise -- and improve -- your business procedures.My rating, therefore, applies to the latter, not the book itself; I would've let the rating field empty had the system let me do so.
Yours,
BGV

The story of a special marriage well told
Vera Nabakov was totally devoted to her husband, to his life and to his work. Stacy Schiff's excellent biography tells their story in considerable detail. Vera Slonim the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family in marrying Nabakov made her religion his life and his art. She took upon herself many of the practical tasks that Nabakov disdained. They developed between themselves a private language in which they shared their own unique synashaetic way of feeling the world. She typed and read his manuscripts, found quotations for him helped him create one of the twentieth century's great literary oeuvres.

yes, but....
it was a very good biography, but if you read the Boyd bio of her husband first you may be left wondering if he had already snatched up all the good quotes. ... Read more

Amazon.com
If Vladimir Nabokov's fiction merits any criticism, it is for its iciness. The master himself declared in a 1977 BBC interview, "My characters cringe as I come near them with my whip. I have seen a whole avenue of imagined trees losing their leaves at the threat of my passage." Nabokov's correspondence, however, reveals a far warmer individual, though one ever-ready with a verbal shiv. This volume begins with a 1923 letter to his mother, written while he was a farmhand in the French Alps, and ends with a 1977 letter sent to his wife, Vera, for Mother's Day: "My dearest, your roses, your fragrant rubies, glow red against a background of spring rain..."

Nabokov's son, Dmitri, and Matthew Bruccoli have created the fullest, and by far the most amusing, portrait of the serious artist as trickster. There's the famous letter to Burma-Vita, in which Nabokov offers the company an advertising jingle (alas, they turned him down). There's the best, and most amusing, account of "l'affaire Lolita." Here is his response to his New Yorker editor, Katharine White: "Let me thank you very warmly for your frank and charming letter about LOLITA. But after all how many are the memorable literary characters whom we would like our teen-age daughters to meet? Would you like our Patricia to go on a date with Othello? Would we like our Mary to read the New Testament temple against temple with Raskolnikov? Would we like our sons to marry Emma Rouault, Becky Sharp or La belle dame sans merci?"

In another letter, however, he takes care to thank White for a "chubby check." (One wishes this phrase had gained greater circulation.) Nabokov again and again comes off as a difficult author, challenging his publishers left, right, and center over issues large (and there were many) and as well as those that were niggling. Calling the British paperback cover of Laughter in the Dark "atrocious, disgusting, and badly drawn besides having nothing to do whatever with the contents of the book," he tells his U.K. publisher, "I would appreciate if you would use your influence and have them substitute a pretty dark-haired girl, or a palmtree, or a winding road, or anything else for this tasteless abomination." Still, one is most often convinced that he's right, even when he makes the large claim that the French film Les Nymphettes infringes on his rights, "since this term was invented by me for the main character in my novel Lolita."

Not only is this volume endlessly quotable, it also reads like a great epistolary novel--fraught with high thought, high drama, and the delightfully unexpected. Who would have guessed that Nabokov would ask Hugh Hefner, "Have you ever noticed how the head and ears of your Bunny resemble a butterfly in shape, with an eyespot on one hindwing?" Book Description

Customer Reviews (2)

Amazing writer gives modernism a good name

Picture Vladimir Nabokov. In the hall of mirrors that is popular culture, he is the dirty man who wrote the dirty book "Lolita,"about a 12-year-old "nymphet" -- he invented the term, by the way-- and her affair with an older man.

Angle the mirror another way, andhe is one of the founders of the modernist novel, which to some people --myself included -- that's a damning phrase. "Modernist" and"post-modernist" literature seems a) self-referencing to thepoint of egotism; b) dedicated to the advancement of decedent themes, andto score big points as a writer, pile it on, brother; and c) obsessed withthe discovery that the "arts" -- whether books, pictures ormovies -- are artificial, and that we use them to create, well, books,pictures and movies.

Unless you think I am making it up, here's anexample drawn from real life: a few years back, a Charlotte museum mountedan exhibition of a painter's work, one of which was a canvas whose frontside was turned toward the wall, exposing a paint-stained frame. Anewspaper reviewer breathlessly informed the reading public that the artistdid this "to inform the viewer that most paintings arerecetangular."

Now, a reasonably intelligent person could probablyreach that conclusion without much effort, but discoveries like these seemto drive those who tread into the "modern" era of art.

SoVlaidmir Nabokov's reputation is caught between two very opposing poles. Heeither panders to the worst tastes of man, or the worst tastes of art.

Fortunately, he is neither, and the Library of America agrees. Thenon-profit publisher throws its reputation behind Nabokov as a writer worthreading by publishing all of his English-language novels in three volumes.The first volume covers his work