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Despair

3.93 of 5 stars 3.93 · rating details · 2,986 ratings · 171 reviews

Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965--thirty years after its original publication--Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime--his own murder.

Paperback, 240 pages

Published May 14th 1989 by Vintage (first published 1934)

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Jan 26, 2012 Shan Jago rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Mr. Nabokov is not to be trusted. If you enjoy your sanity don't believe a single word he pens. He is the Great Deceiver, and he's pulling one over on you. Yes, he's that intriguing, eloquent stranger you meet at the pub who spills tales as tall and golden as the jug of frothy beer that rests on the table between you. His eyes glisten, a thin knowing smile on his face. You want to believe what he tells you, because damn he's jovial and he makes you laugh. In fact, you don't even blink when he ex...more

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Dec 11, 2007 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Only one author on earth can produce from me the following sentence: “Yeah, I’m reading this book called Despair about an insane murderer with no respect for human life, and it is HILARIOUS.” That author is Nabokov.

In this, one of his lesser-known works, the egotistical and foppish narrator confesses to murdering someone who looks exactly like him in an attempt to collect his own life insurance money (and, more subconsciously, to rid the world of his weird doppelganger). Of course, Vladdy isn’t...more Only one author on earth can produce from me the following sentence: “Yeah, I’m reading this book called Despair about an insane murderer with no respect for human life, and it is HILARIOUS.” That author is Nabokov.

In this, one of his lesser-known works, the egotistical and foppish narrator confesses to murdering someone who looks exactly like him in an attempt to collect his own life insurance money (and, more subconsciously, to rid the world of his weird doppelganger). Of course, Vladdy isn’t satisfied with a straight-up story, and slowly reveals that the first-person narrative we’ve been reading is really only just scrapping surface of what actually took place.

As always with Nabokov, the language is beautiful and you are sure to learn at least a few new and awesome vocabulary words. You are also sure to either 1) write a bunch of new fiction with a weak, pseudo-retarded version of Nabokov’s style or 2) become paralyzed completely.

Despair was one of his earlier novels, written in Russian in 1932 and then translated into English (by Nabokov himself, the goddamn genius) with extensive edits, in 1965. It’s absolutely fascinating to see a younger, less experienced Nabokov write - you can see all of the seeds of his future works. The themes that he returns to so often during the latter part of his career — mirroring, unreliable narrators, unlikable protagonists, mistaken identities, dark humor, botched violence - are here, too, a little more apparent and a little less smooth and adept.

As a writer, I was happy to see a lower-level Nabokov - unlike in say, Pale Fire, where it is hard to pinpoint how he is pulling off the literary tricks he pulls off, in Despair, it’s a little easier to look into Nabokov’s mind and see the blueprints he was working with. For example, while it is hard to tell how he so subtlety reveals that Pale Fire’s protagonist is delusional, in Despair, I could pick up on specific techniques he was using to create Hermann, the book’s unreliable narrator. It’s sort of like watching a magic trick before the magician has perfected it — you can maybe glimpse a trap door or a string and get a clue as to how to execute it yourself.

And while the exacting and masterful art of his later books is partially missing, his weird, twisted humor is on full display from the first page to the last. It might be the best kind of joke - 240 pages of non-stop dramatic irony which becomes more and more obvious with each page (all while the “author” is forced to continue complicating the story in order to continue deluding himself). And even while Nabokov can pull off a novel-length leg-pull, he also appreciates and condones the lowest forms of humor - puns and fart jokes. There truly was never a greater writer, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

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Jun 22, 2012 Adam Floridia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nabokov

Doubles. Doppelgangers. Duplicity. Distortion. A Demented disposition. Deviation. Deflections. Disguise. Disorder. Design. Deception. Deftness. Dynamic descriptions. And Art. That’s Despair.

That pretty much covers the novel proper. It starts as such a wonderful meta-fiction whose “author” is a real nutter with the absolute least sense of “self” ever (ironically, he, of course, feels that he is totally self-aware with a complete understanding of not only his identity, but of others’). Despite th...more Doubles. Doppelgangers. Duplicity. Distortion. A Demented disposition. Deviation. Deflections. Disguise. Disorder. Design. Deception. Deftness. Dynamic descriptions. And Art. That’s Despair.

That pretty much covers the novel proper. It starts as such a wonderful meta-fiction whose “author” is a real nutter with the absolute least sense of “self” ever (ironically, he, of course, feels that he is totally self-aware with a complete understanding of not only his identity, but of others’). Despite that, the veracity of his tale is opened to doubts right from the beginning: he admits that he “doubted the reality of what [he] saw, doubted [his] own sanity” (7).

From here you’ve got a drawn out “William Wilson” for a while. (I think I compare anything with a doppelganger to Poe’s story because that’s where I first learned the word, so maybe this isn't really a drawn out "WW" because I don't remember much about that story actually.) Of course throw in the normal dash of Nabokov exploring the limits of self-hood and the various means of escaping that inexorable prison of consciousness: “I have grown much too used to an outside view of myself” (19). Then there’s the odd pacing of the story—the mundane parts are really dragged out, mounting action/suspense leads to digressions, and the truly action-packed parts are glossed over. Yet, for some reason this works. That reason is probably Nabokov’s mastery of prose, I mean I could read two hundred pages about paint drying if they’re written by VN.

I need to throw in something about the real author’s (VN’s) arrogance. I just love it. And this isn’t any type of attempt to read Hermann (arrogant narrator/pseudo-author) as a doppelganger for VN; it’s based on VN’s preface. As is standard with these reissues and self-translations, Nabokov tells his readers how to read the book and how not to (the book “has no social comment to make” and he scoffs at “the attractively shaped object or Weiner-schnitzel dream that the eager Freudian may think he distinguishes”). What a dick, right? And the dickish-ness of talking about how “Lucky” students of comparative literature should be for this gift, and how even the “plain readers” will welcome its “pleasing plot,” “many entertaining conversations,” and “great fun.” Why do I love this dick? I’m not sure, but Freudians please don’t read too much into it!

Want some zeugma? Here’s some zeugma for ya! :“her legs had started to clamp me, the ashtray toppled off the bed table, the universe followed”(27).

Quotation I couldn't fit elsewhere: “for the real author is not I, but my impatient memory…Thus the future shimmers through the past” (37).
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Jan 10, 2012 Brad rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: russian-lit, to-read-again, lost-reviews

This review was written in the late nineties (for my eyes only), and it was buried in amongst my things until recently when I uncovered the journal in which it was written. I have transcribed it verbatim from all those years ago (although square brackets may indicate some additional information for the sake of readability or some sort of commentary from now). This is one of my lost reviews.

A deconstructionist's dream text, Despair presents a classic play between signifier and sign -- Hermann and...more

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Oct 30, 2007 RJ rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Writers, Fans of Law and Order: Criminal Intent

The spoils of Nabokov's love of language are in fine form in "Despair," complete with the wordplay, metafictive elements, and literary devices -- all exaggerated to an impressive and hilarious extent -- that you'd expect from our literary genius/mad scientist.

"Despair" in a nutshell: at one point, the novel's author -- who never published the novel himself, but merely sent the manuscript to Mr. Nabokov -- weighs the benefits of this or that name for his novel. "Crime and Pun" is one of the titl...more

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Aug 27, 2012 Rob Sheppard rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is certainly not Nabokov at his best, but Nabokov at his best is literature itself at its best; Nabokov at his worst is still worthy of four stars and certainly worth reading. In his introduction, the author claims that resemblance between Hermann and Humbert Humbert is superficial. This is disingenuous, and most likely Nabokov expected us to see through this claim. As Hermann claims a false similarity with Felix, Nabokov claims a lack of resemblance between Hermann and Hum. In many ways De...more

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Mar 20, 2008 Disco Mo rated it 5 of 5 stars

Don't play with yourself.

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Jun 13, 2012 Brett rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Yet another classic example of an unreliable narrator, Nabokov's brilliant novel, Despair, revolves around a megalomanic who plots his own murder. The prose contained within are exceptional, unlike any I have ever read, with a styling so unique that Nabokov is able to lead his audience into the depths of the depraved mind with ease. Indeed, the content of and foreword to Despair make clear that Nabokov has a love and command of language that is unmatched. That the English version I read was tran...more

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Apr 04, 2013 Melody rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Melody by: Brian Johnson

Shelves: third-thursday-bookgroup

I should have liked this story better than I did: Witty writing and all that. I'm not sure why I didn't.

Hermann (the main character) is one like some running amok in these troubled financial times. He's living beyond his means, caught up in superficial things and quite full of himself. And then, bam!, his business crashes and suddenly he is not going to be able to tootle around in his little Icarus sports car (named for the god Icarus who tried to escape Crete by making some wax wings and flyin...more

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Feb 10, 2009 Raven rated it 5 of 5 stars

Readers of Camus will really enjoy this book. Short, engaging, witty and very funny. The characters are believable and the story flows well and swiftly. I only wish I read Russian so that I could read it in it's original language.

A well-to-do man meets a man who looks very much like him, a vagabond and immediately comes up with a brilliant plan (which I won't spoil for you). He inadvertently involves his complacent and slow witted wife. You often wonder if the first-person dialog is meant to be...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Miles rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Compared to the intricacy of Pale Fire and Lolita, this is little more than a dress rehearsal for later triumphs (although, in a twist typical of Nabokov, it is actually both an early and late work: see N's preface). The narrative tricks for manipulating the reader are a bit more obvious than in those great novels, and the narrator, one of N's great solipsists, lacks the charm that makes it so easy to forget what vampires Humbert and Kinbote are. But judged as a work of genre fiction, as a novel...more

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Dec 18, 2012 Robert rated it 2 of 5 stars

Fortunately Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, Despair, is short. This has two advantages. First, it doesn’t take long to get to the end. Second, it doesn’t take long to get to the middle, which is when the novel comes together and becomes fun.
This is a book about doubles, the chief double being one man another man encounters who looks, to the second man, exactly like him. Again, around the middle of the book, we begin to get the idea: Man two will kill man one and use man one’s corpse as a means of sw...more Fortunately Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, Despair, is short. This has two advantages. First, it doesn’t take long to get to the end. Second, it doesn’t take long to get to the middle, which is when the novel comes together and becomes fun.
This is a book about doubles, the chief double being one man another man encounters who looks, to the second man, exactly like him. Again, around the middle of the book, we begin to get the idea: Man two will kill man one and use man one’s corpse as a means of swindling an insurance company.
The problem is, as we begin hurtling forward in the second part of the book, that man one really doesn’t look much like man two. So the police come upon the corpse of man one dressed in man two’s clothes, see that he isn’t man two, and put out an alert to arrest man two.
Now this is probably too much action for a Nabokovian fiction, but Despair was one of Nabokov’s first novels, and he apparently still felt he had to kick his predecessors in the shin, mocking Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, The Double) in particular with lots of spinning, frenzied plot.
But Nabokov never excelled with plot. His great gift always was, and it shows up here, a comic gift for sensual description and characterization. This required the inventive use of alluring words like “pale,” “puce,” “plum,” and “puff.” Said words were then attached to characters’ faces, lips, waistcoats, and manners of speech, as in, “The pale fellow hooked his thumbs in the slit pockets of his puce waistcoat and puffed out his lips despairingly, wishing he’d eaten that plum when he’d had a chance on the afternoon train.”
I made that sentence up, of course, and have deliberately overwritten it to make a point. In Nabokov we have the arch-artist who takes the position that words are everything in literature and literature is nothing but words. As William Gass wrote, there is nothing about a character’s face in a story except his exclamatory eyebrows and bristly nostrils if that is all the author has given us to consider. The character has no mouth, no ears, no hair, no double chin...nothing but the details proffered by the author. This, he suggests, and Nabokov concurs, is the point and purpose of literature: to find and fix on an essence and milk it for aesthetic pleasure, not mistake it for “the real thing.”
What Nabokov does allow with respect to “reality,” and this shows up in the ramblings of our self-deluded unreliable narrator in Despair, is the permanence and inescapability of memory. One is always a double, in a sense, because one is only what one remembers of a former self...the self of yesterday or ten years ago. Literature, fortunately, allows us to excavate that self, or imitate it, or echo it with words, descriptions, interactions...stories. These are not “true” things, but they’re all we’ve got: we are what we are able to claim, persuasively, to remember. That’s us doubling ourselves, generating in the process, laughter as well as despair.
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May 12, 2013 Bill rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary

Wink, Wink; Nudge, Nudge

Nabokov, Vladimir (1989) Despair. New York: Vintage.

The narrator and main character, Hermann, is a middle-aged Russian immigrant in Berlin. He is arch, unreliable, probably waxes his moustache, and indulges in plenty of postmodern metanarrative games, such as “Oh wait a minute, I can’t tell you that detail because I can’t find the receipt. Just a minute. Okay, I’m back. It had fallen to the floor.” Today that sort of trick has the sound of college freshman writing.

But it...more Wink, Wink; Nudge, Nudge

Nabokov, Vladimir (1989) Despair. New York: Vintage.

The narrator and main character, Hermann, is a middle-aged Russian immigrant in Berlin. He is arch, unreliable, probably waxes his moustache, and indulges in plenty of postmodern metanarrative games, such as “Oh wait a minute, I can’t tell you that detail because I can’t find the receipt. Just a minute. Okay, I’m back. It had fallen to the floor.” Today that sort of trick has the sound of college freshman writing.

But it is Nabokov, and the language is elevated and sophisticated, and there are clever cultural references. However, since any plausible context is lacking, the clever language amounts to drivel. That’s what makes the first part of the book a slog.

While on a country walk, Hermann, the narrator/diarist/novelist, encounters a tramp who he believes looks just like him, his literal doppelganger. We grant the author this conceit, but soon it becomes doubtful if the two men really are alike, and we slowly come to realize they aren't. This inference of Hermann’s frailty parallels his ludicrously naïve and self-centered novelistic efforts. We understand that Hermann is highly eccentric, egocentric and abnormal. It took 70 pages of almost intolerable triviality to arrive at this theme.

Hermann forms a plan to kill the double, have his wife collect the insurance on his own life, then retire. It turns out, the plot is just as unreliable as Hermann himself, for it emerges that the murder scheme is really a metaphor for the perfect novel Hermann believes he is writing. The novel will be a "killer," as it were. But since it is plain that Hermann's writing is terrible, the murder plan is likewise flawed. The investigative police then stand for literary critics, the flaw in the plan is the flaw in the book, the criminal/writer denies culpability, claims to have been misunderstood, flees the criticism, but finally must confess to artistic failure.

The whole novel should be read a second time after one is aware of its metanarrative intent. However, I rarely read a novel a second time. Life is too short. I “got” the message, the joke, the point, but I was underwhelmed. The characters were mere placeholders and the narrator’s voice is deliberately annoying. The analogies between Hermann’s narcissism and every writer’s self-delusion is clever and witty, but not particularly insightful or fun to read. As an example of how to execute an unreliable first- person narrator however, this novel is a case study.(less)

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Aug 11, 2012 Marty Seaney rated it 5 of 5 stars

The main character of "Despair" stumbles upon a perfect double, a literary tramp of sorts, and draws him into his murder plot- one that leaves many corpses in its wake.

Nabokov/Herman kills off the main character, the double, and the real source of his despair, Dostoyevsky. His parody of the very genre that he despised is turned into the very device for his revenge upon it and its greatest Russian author. The result is brilliant.

His weapon is the pun. At one point when Herman describes his search...more

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Dec 18, 2009 Abe Something rated it 4 of 5 stars

A shining example of post-modern literature. Commendably self-aware! A confessional tale told by a man who has found his double and murdered him in an effort to collect his own insurance money. Nabokov's obsession with mirrors and doubles here reflects beautifully on the spirit of writing post-modern fiction itself. The narrator tells a tale as does Nabokov, one kills a man, the other hacks to pieces the experience of reading - both are murderers. Nabokov draws attention to each literary device,...more

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Jan 10, 2011 Jasmine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: russian

So I don't really know about this book. I mean I've read books where the plot is secondary, but in this book it feels a bit more like the plot is not only irrelevant but fighting to be included. You know that slime you play with as a kid that when you hit it it's hard as a rock, but when you go slow you kind of ooze through it. Well the plot of this book is exactly like that. It is trying really really hard to get through the sort of weird rambling, I think I am the best thing since well anythin...more So I don't really know about this book. I mean I've read books where the plot is secondary, but in this book it feels a bit more like the plot is not only irrelevant but fighting to be included. You know that slime you play with as a kid that when you hit it it's hard as a rock, but when you go slow you kind of ooze through it. Well the plot of this book is exactly like that. It is trying really really hard to get through the sort of weird rambling, I think I am the best thing since well anything talk from the author.

I do think that the entire voice of the book comes together really well at the end. I'm not really sure that I should explain how this happens cause it feels a bit like a spoiler to me. But if you are annoyed by the authorial voice I recommend finishing it, because I think that it resolves at least enough to be a reasonable voice.

(rambling paragraph of questionable relevance)
I guess on one level I don't know that I know enough about mr. Nabokov to make any judgments on this book, or that I ever will. It is hard to tell which parts of the narration are affected and which are simply the way that he writes. I went to the strand today because I was going to pick up another book by him (I left with kaddish for a child not born, the informers, thomas the imposter, the silent prophet, and the ladies of grace adieu) but I find that he and I have a more general problem that I am not interested in reading about any of the things he is interested in writing about. although, at strand they only had 4 books, and they were on the top top shelf and I had to use a ladder and it was scary. But basically my point being I am not going to be positive about this review until I find a second Nabokov I don't mind reading.

There is a weird tonal thing in this book that it feels like a book that an author translated but wasn't good enough at the second language to translate correctly, but I think it was on purpose, there were a lot of "this sounds better in..." type sentences.

Also it is a bit like reading heidegger or the economic and philosophical manuscripts the first 20 or so pages take hours but once you adjust to the style it reads only slightly slower than a regular book.

that is all until I read him again. (less)

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Feb 20, 2009 T rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, prose

Nabokov is officially one of my favorite writers. This book doesn't really have the best plot of all time, the cover said one of his most challenging books, which I took to mean I wasn't going to understand what was happening. With this in mind I was thinking it was going to take some crazy twist, but no, the back of the book really does give it away pretty much.

This however means nothing to me, the way he writes is beautiful. The way he breaks the fourth wall and always (in my experience) has...more

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Jan 06, 2010 Madhuri rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: russia

Nabokov, in most of his fiction, has used many devices. Be it use of doubles, dubious narrators, word games, playful use of language, etc. And his favorite themes, often, are dark humor and obsession with an idea.
In the compact volume called Despair, he introduces us to all these devices which will later become his signature. Strangely, all the devices appear in a rather awkward manner, as if straight out of a class of Literary writing, and still come together to make a great read.

The story is...more Nabokov, in most of his fiction, has used many devices. Be it use of doubles, dubious narrators, word games, playful use of language, etc. And his favorite themes, often, are dark humor and obsession with an idea.
In the compact volume called Despair, he introduces us to all these devices which will later become his signature. Strangely, all the devices appear in a rather awkward manner, as if straight out of a class of Literary writing, and still come together to make a great read.

The story is narrated by the protagonist - a fellow you will immediately identify as a slob, even as he begins his narrative. His observation of life is most superficial, as he remains dissociated from most things, including his wife. He seems to regard himself as many things - a thinker, an artist, a great writer, a connoisseur of literature. His text is interspersed with the names of Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Arthur Conan Doyle, to whose works he keeps making references, drawing parallels with his own life and plans. The references, coming from this near mad and very desperate man, are most likely intended as a mockery of these authors and their established stature - something which Nabokov always liked to challenge.

This man somewhere meets his double, by accident, and hatches a plan to gainfully use this lucky coincidence. We follow him through his thought process, or through the way his memory recalls the thought process. The memory often seems to be going astray, and the narrator describes at great length his exasperation with the unruly flow of his reminisces. While he lives in these brilliant day dreams, he sleepwalks through the decline of his business, and through his wife sleeping with her cousin (Ardalion - whom Nabokov playfully calls Ardor-lion once - perhaps as an allusion to Ada or Ardor, another story of an incestuous relationship).
What is interesting in the book, more than Hermann's story, is the multitude of digressions he takes. He humorously invents stories relating to doubles, trying several variations on his plot - all of them sloppy - it is the ridiculousness of his efforts that draw a chuckle. He discourses on God, on socialism - in the most preposterous manner, again perhaps to allude sarcastically to the ideology and theology packed in Dostoevsky's books.
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May 28, 2011 Perry Whitford rated it 5 of 5 stars

I know that this is hardly the weightiest, nor the cleverest of Nabokov's novels, but its one of my favourites none the less.
The (highly) unreliable first person narrator Hermann Karlovich must surely be one of the most despicable toe rags in the history of literature! The dramatic irony to be enjoyed in the narrative as he talks us through his risible insurance scam is almost too juicy to ingest, and the depths of his delusion and emptiness are chilling.

This is indeed a despairing book, but s...more

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Nov 12, 2007 Matthew rated it 3 of 5 stars

I love the narrative voice in this novella. It has really influenced my own writing.

The narrator is insane…enough said. Right!?

But, anyway, I admire the more seductive elements of Nabokov’s prose. The work is very subtle. And only as the story unfolds does the depth of the narrator’s insanity become apparent.

-- L. Fine

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Jun 11, 2013 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: russian

When Hermann, eye-shocked, found his Double:
He kill'd him and brought his life trouble!
Thought his crime was quite flawless
But all murders are lawless!
And their unlikeness, quite-right, burst his bubble!

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Mar 29, 2013 Sarah Brody rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have never seen the movie—
so I don't know whether the adaptation is a good one. When I lived at the shores of Lake Geneva and attended Art Center (Europe) I was given Nabokov as a subject to read and write about in literature class. I did not want to read anything, because I was ignorant and the Lolita stereotype filled my mind. Little did I know that Nabokov is one of the finest bilingual writers I have found. I even ended up befriending his (late) son Dmitri, who lived a few houses up from m...more

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Jun 01, 2011 Elisabeth Jansen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Reading Nabokov is like a good, hard work out--while I don't always enjoy the process, I always feel good about myself after...though I don't always feel so good about humanity as a whole. With literary links to Dostoyevsky, Gogol, and pretty much anyone else who has dabbled in the doppleganger/evil twin/spiral into insanity issue, Nabokov explores and blurs the lines between lucidity and insanity, good and evil, and all of those other topics of which he so expertly blurs the lines. While I'm no...more

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Sep 20, 2012 Seamus Mcduff rated it 5 of 5 stars

Loved it -- pure genius. In fact I would call Nabokov the evil genius of the literary world. Love his egotistical and self-deceving characters - Herman Herman (any relation to Humbert Humbert?) seems to miscontrue every event in his life. Like Dostoyesky's Raskolnikov, Herman sees himself as part of a higher order of men who are above morality and the law, whose supposed higher intelligence gives them the right to misuse those around them to their own twisted ends.
Nabokov's writing is not about...more

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Oct 23, 2007 Bryan Douglas rated it 5 of 5 stars

Excellent story. The film based on this book is worth watching for the difference. Would have loved to see a Luis Bunuel adaptation... oh well.

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Feb 06, 2011 Invidia rated it 5 of 5 stars

I hate Nabokov. He's a bleedin' megalomaniac interested in nothing other than proclaiming the invention of paper and ink as an exclusive gift to himself.

I take deep breaths of exasperation reading every fourth sentence this guy writes. What, can he just go on playing with my feelings? As if he's never gonna call back? He's not, is he?

Despair was just such a declaration. Fool tries to fool people, and you say, "Ah! This is his first book. It'll show his immaturity and I'll not have to gasp in pai...more

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Nov 19, 2009 Kit rated it 4 of 5 stars

It has been many years, okay, decades, since I read this book but it has stayed with me mightily since then - the delusion of the narrator that he has found his exact double is both funny and profound. Seeing Despair listed on another reader's site makes me want to reread it. For some reason, perhaps because I was a less critical reader then, this book seems to me more genuine in some ways and less precious than Palefire, which I also liked. Nabokov's depiction of narcissism in both books makes...more

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Dec 10, 2012 Chris rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: just-weird, russian-stuff, thought-provoking, wtf, emigre

I've been told that with Nabokov, you have to read it a few times before it makes sense. In comparison with Lolita, which I have not yet read, this is obviously one of his lesser known works; so I think I'm gonna take some time and come back to this one later.

SPOILER*** I've been told one of the big differences is that the second time you read this, you notice all the little things about the stick where you don't really notice it until the end the first time. Haven't read enough to make up my mi...more

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Oct 01, 2012 Darwin8u rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

While this isn't my favorite Nabokov novel and I have to leave room and stars for its better, it is stil bold and amazing. Nabokov is one of those writers I will never tire of. He is imaginative, funny, tight and always just a little naughty. Despair is a false double novel that at once mocks, parodies and honors Crime & Punishment. It was like Nabokov set out to write a fanciful doppelgänger novel of Crime and Punishment, but felt like he would prefer to dress Raskolnikov up a bit; bend the...more

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Mar 12, 2012 John Pappas rated it 5 of 5 stars

Nobody writes like Nabokov. Nobody can ape his style, or fake his psychological acuity, both of which are on pyrotechnic display here. Taking us on a winding journey through self-aggrandizing memories and fantasies, Nabokov's pompous and foppish narrator carefully and gradually, but also gleefully and proudly, reveals his plot to fake his own death by killing his double. Though ostensibly the motive is to gain the insurance money, Hermann, the narrator, has deeper and more chilling motives. An a...more

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About Vladimir Nabokov

Russian: Владимир Владимирович Набоков

Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist. He also made significant contributions to lepidoptery and had an interest in chess problems.

Nabokov's Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as his most important novel, and is at any rate his most widely known one, exhibiting the love of intrica...more

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Quotes from Despair

“I liked, as I like still, to make words look self-conscious and foolish, to bind them by mock marriage of a pun, to turn them inside out, to come upon them unawares. What is this jest in majesty? This ass in passion? How do god and devil combine to form a live dog?” — 8 people liked it

“All the information I have about myself is from forged documents.” — 7 people liked it

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