I read Vladimir Nabokov's The Original of Laura quite a few weeks ago, but I'm finally getting around to writing about it now.
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There was quite a bit of controversy surrounding this book's publishing. It was published very recently, in November of 2009, 32 years after Nabokov's death in 1977. Nabokov was working on this novel at the time of his death, but never finished, and he requested that the index cards that comprised his work be destroyed if he died before finishing it. For over 30 years his son Dmitri held onto his father's work, not sure what to do. The only people to view the index cards during this time were Nabokov's wife and son, and a few scholars. Ultimately, Dmitri decided to publish the unfinished work.
The way the book has been put together is interesting in itself. Each page has a photograph of the index card on the top half, and below is a typed version of the text on the index card. The index cards are perforated so that the reader may rearrange the cards as he or she sees fit, but I think this is rather unnecessary and a bit silly. I wouldn't go ripping my book apart, and I wouldn't presume to know how Nabokov wanted his book arranged. Then again, Dmitri and the publishers involved made just such a presumption, but they did so based on Nabokov's numbering of the index cards, and I'm content to read them in the order presented.
Anyway, on to the content itself. The Original of Laura has got Nabokov written all over it. There's so much classic Nabokov in this, even in this very early draft. The language is, of course, brilliant. One thing I noticed was that, as usual, Nabokov plays with names a lot here - there's a minor character named Hubert Hubert, who is very much like Humbert Humbert in both name and characterization, and there's also quite a bit of playing with like-sounding names such as Flora, Laura, and Aurora. There's also a novel within the novel, and this fictional novel apparently describes (or perhaps foretells) the death of The Original of Laura's protagonist. The overall plot is a bit difficult to summarize, as it's quite scattered and is clearly missing a good amount content that Nabokov never got to.
For a fairly short, and not nearly finished work, Nabokov's brilliance is apparent. The Original of Laura is complex and extremely interesting, especially when examined in tandem with older works like Lolita and Pale Fire (because a few major themes from these older works crop up here as well). The Original of Laura may be a jigsaw puzzle missing too many pieces, but I enjoy piecing together the fragments nonetheless.
OK, I'm really glad you reviewed this. From what I'd read this about The Original Laura, it sounded so fragmented that there really was no sense to it. To tell you the truth, I don't think I'd ever read it ... though I love Nabokov. It seems unfair to read something that he never finished. I don't know. It raises a lot of interesting questions about art and author's intention, that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I know I didn't really address the ethics issue very much in my review, mostly because I didn't want it to get ridiculously long, to be honest. But I agree, it's definitely something to consider, and I do admit that I felt sort of guilty reading this. Honestly though, I really couldn't resist reading it; it's like a little backstage peek at Nabokov's thought processes.
ReplyDeleteAnd to address the question of its storyline, I don't think it's too fragmented to be worth reading. You can definitely puzzle out several large pieces of a plot, but in the end I was left wishing Nabokov had finished it, because there isn't very much connection between these fragments, or much resolution to the plot. Despite this I really enjoyed it, and the little bits of plot that one can piece together are really interesting.