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The Original of Laura
When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions for his heirs to burn the 138 handwritten index cards that made up the rough draft of his final and unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. But Nabokov’s wife, Vera, could not bear to destroy her husband’s last work, and when she died, the fate of the manuscript fell to her son. Dmitri Nabokov, now seventy-five—the ...more
Hardcover, 304 pages
Published
November 17th 2009
by Knopf
(first published January 1st 2009)
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Almost done, so a review will come soon, but I felt compelled to say that I am in love — not with the book itself, but with the experience of reading it. I feel like I've been sitting at Nabokov's feet while he whispered a story into my ear, by which I mean there's a particular sense of intimacy that comes from reading facsimiles of his hand-written notes, from seeing words scribbled out, stricken, even misspelled. We'll never know what the novel could have become (although I'm seeing flashes of...more
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Reading this made me wish more than anything that Nabokov could've been able to complete this last novel. Just from all of his notes you could tell it would have been fantastic. You know how Nabokov's writing feels? It was like that from the very first line.
This book looks huge, but each page is just one handwritten index card, with his notes typed out at the bottom. It only took me about an hour to read through it, but I could tell the story would've been amazing. I can see ho...more
This book looks huge, but each page is just one handwritten index card, with his notes typed out at the bottom. It only took me about an hour to read through it, but I could tell the story would've been amazing. I can see ho...more
This review will be as fragmented as the novel in question. If you are looking for a coherent, well-reasoned review check out Misha's.
1. My in-law's annual Christmas gift exchange morphed into a facebook group this year. Usually I jot down "gift card" and three store names on the tiny piece of paper and toss it into the hat, but the more leisurely www format enticed me into listing a few book titles. Evidently my sister-in-law (who is not an avid reader) carried a hard copy...more
1. My in-law's annual Christmas gift exchange morphed into a facebook group this year. Usually I jot down "gift card" and three store names on the tiny piece of paper and toss it into the hat, but the more leisurely www format enticed me into listing a few book titles. Evidently my sister-in-law (who is not an avid reader) carried a hard copy...more
Let's first say what this book is: a series of fragments on index cards, ordered and selected by Nabokov's son Dmitri after the death of father Vladimir. And how it's been manufactured : a book that ought to hold five or six hundred pages, judging by it's dimensions, holds about 200 single-sided images of the index cards, as directly pencilled by Nabokov, on heavy-stock paper with actual perforations. So that the reader can indulge his own postmodernistic need to recontextualize the assembla...more
My published article: http://www.cpcc.edu/taltp/archives/sprin...
Willed to be incinerated, salvaged by his wife, finally published by his aged son, this last work by Nabokov makes quite a story simply by existing. Dmitri wonders whether he “should be damned or thanked” for defying his father’s will, and the answer is, unequivocally, thanked.
Always evident is the simple way Nabokov has fun with the language: “The potentate had been potent till the absurd age of eighty”; “A f...more
Willed to be incinerated, salvaged by his wife, finally published by his aged son, this last work by Nabokov makes quite a story simply by existing. Dmitri wonders whether he “should be damned or thanked” for defying his father’s will, and the answer is, unequivocally, thanked.
Always evident is the simple way Nabokov has fun with the language: “The potentate had been potent till the absurd age of eighty”; “A f...more
$35 seems a bit steep for 100+ index cards worth of text.
Card One
You couldn't get more original than Laura. Laura. Yes, she was an original, all right. One of a kind. Did they break her mold or what, pal? Or...or did it self-destruct? Still, Laura. The one and the only. Such a plain name for a unique cutie. But perhaps my acuity is not without its problems. I ruin everything: a stupid story to be tapped out on my tomb's stone. I ruined even Laura. And an ori...more
Card One
You couldn't get more original than Laura. Laura. Yes, she was an original, all right. One of a kind. Did they break her mold or what, pal? Or...or did it self-destruct? Still, Laura. The one and the only. Such a plain name for a unique cutie. But perhaps my acuity is not without its problems. I ruin everything: a stupid story to be tapped out on my tomb's stone. I ruined even Laura. And an ori...more
Normally, I LOVE Nabokov. His work is genius. He is both subtle and powerful. While reading "The Original of Laura" by Vladmir Nabokov I found myself getting angry. And not just any sort of anger - its the kind of rage tha simmers just below the surface for no descernable amount of time and picks at you, annoys you. This sort of anger leads to resentments and can cause one (me) to become so enraged that they cry when trying to explain the feeling verbally. Of coure this is where my gen...more
Manny
marked it as to-read
Short version: I feel dirty inside for even having glanced at this book. Or you can read the longer version below...
________________________________________
Ooh, it's been a good week so far! On Tuesday, I read a wonderful kiss-and-tell exposé in The Star about Katie Price's steamy love triangle. The picture of her boyfriend Alex Reid dressed in women's underwear was particularly good. Then, on Wednesday, I watched the TV mini-series on the Queen, and was able ...more
This is not really a novel in fragments, as so many reviewers have said, as a few notecards that he was planning to use in a book eventually. So I felt kind of dirty reading it, as it seems kind of wrong... and because his son is basically a nobody who, many cynics speculate, may have run out of money. What better way to make a fortune?
All that cynicism aside, it is really wonderful to read this and see what it is like to be a great writer who has lived through everything tragic int...more
All that cynicism aside, it is really wonderful to read this and see what it is like to be a great writer who has lived through everything tragic int...more
The narrative of this book is the commentaries of one cuckolded husband on one memoir written by his wife's lover. The book starts off as a refutation of his dismal portrayal in the memoir, and tender-ish recollections of the wife, but then the husband begins writing obsessively about the process of auto-dissolution, in which the mind convinces the body it has died--the mind ANNIHILATES the body. The book starts of fairly coherent, but enacts dismantling toward the end--ostensibly, Dmitri Naboko...more
First, the rather startlingly expensive hardcover edition is incredibly nice. It contains great, big, thick satisfying pages. These removable index cards are a nice idea, though I fear I am unlikely to ever follow up and remove them out of a crippling anxiety that one will end up misplaced if I do.
The book self-advertises as a 'novel in fragments', but this tends to imply that there exists a full novel between the book's covers, an impression which is quickly proved to be quite false...more
The book self-advertises as a 'novel in fragments', but this tends to imply that there exists a full novel between the book's covers, an impression which is quickly proved to be quite false...more
As an admirer of Nabokov, I wish I could give this a higher rating. Unfortunately, it’s not a book but rather a fragment of one.
We have an obese man blissfully oblivious to being cuckolded by his wife until the fact is driven home by a novel penned by another lover and he decides to obliterate himself by meditating on the process. None of the characters is fully realized and it’s apparent Nabokov was a long way from completing the story.
Am I among those who wish it never ...more
We have an obese man blissfully oblivious to being cuckolded by his wife until the fact is driven home by a novel penned by another lover and he decides to obliterate himself by meditating on the process. None of the characters is fully realized and it’s apparent Nabokov was a long way from completing the story.
Am I among those who wish it never ...more
Barry
rated it
Recommends it for:
fans of Preminger and/or Cobain's Journals and/or Aja
Shelves:
nabokov
12/28
well, it hardly even constitutes all that much of a story - it's very fragmentary w/ two or three main storylines/characters that are vaguely related (and/or being developed to intersect), but it's hardly like Mount Analogue or what I've read of Last Tycoon where there's definite existent chapters which progress and were to be added to, any chapters here are more just scenes and character notes
the real fun of this is reading it in his handwriting on the cards, with the stu...more
well, it hardly even constitutes all that much of a story - it's very fragmentary w/ two or three main storylines/characters that are vaguely related (and/or being developed to intersect), but it's hardly like Mount Analogue or what I've read of Last Tycoon where there's definite existent chapters which progress and were to be added to, any chapters here are more just scenes and character notes
the real fun of this is reading it in his handwriting on the cards, with the stu...more
A "Novel In Fragments" is it's subtitle but it is not a novel at all and might have been better billed as "Fragments of a Novel" or simply "Fragments." T.O.O.L. reminded me, in it's "construction," more of Fernando Pessoa than it did of Vladimir Nabokov (though there is nothing wrong with that.) It is certainly not going to satisfy anyone who reads for story's sake as the plot line is threadbare at best. But for the language, even some of the clumsier* pas...more
" * Always, always obey your father. In this case, Dimitri did not respect his father will.
* Never, never read something from Playboy. And in this case parts of the novel were published over there.
* It is hard to say, but it is true. Aging, ailing man are seldom in fine form. But Vladimor and his son are in fine form.
* Writing on index cards or hyperlinks: constructing a text is determined by the reader.
* Typically Dutch: the Bezige Bij editions of Naboko...more
* Never, never read something from Playboy. And in this case parts of the novel were published over there.
* It is hard to say, but it is true. Aging, ailing man are seldom in fine form. But Vladimor and his son are in fine form.
* Writing on index cards or hyperlinks: constructing a text is determined by the reader.
* Typically Dutch: the Bezige Bij editions of Naboko...more
I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this unpublished fragment as a giant glossy Penguin hardback in Waterstone's, Dorking. Now having read it I am ... what ..? Disappointed? Yes, and no. In a way it is no more and no less than what one would expect. I'm an ardent Nabokovian. Not a Perfect Nabokovian - I confess to finding 'Ada' problematic, and don't know the play, poems or problems at all. The controversial question of whether it should have been published at all becomes not an ethical questi...more
I should warn that I'm a Nabokov fan, and if you are not even moderately interested in old Vlad, The Original of Laura is not for you. Barely even a rough draft, The Original of Laura was posthumously published despite Vlad's dying wish that it be destroyed, something that caused a twitter of discussion in the literary world.
Reading Laura reminded me of reading the fragments of Sappho, where the brittle pieces make no coherent whole, but where random, alienated phrases hint at the p...more
Reading Laura reminded me of reading the fragments of Sappho, where the brittle pieces make no coherent whole, but where random, alienated phrases hint at the p...more
I agree with others who reviewed this book and said that it wasn't really "a novel in fragments." It was more like "fragments of a novel." I also do feel that the introduction was somewhat misleading. There is a particular line: "Nabokov did not desire to burn The Original of Laura willy-nilly, but to live on for the last few card lengths needed to finish at least a complete draft." Perhaps Dmitri Nabokov and I differ on the meaning of "a few" and "...more
This novel was supposed to be destroyed, at the request of the author, on his deathbed. He told his wife to destroy the manuscript if he died before he finished writing it. But she procrastinated, and never did the deed, passing the task onto her son, who, as you see, published the work.
The interesting part of this book was getting to read an author's draft of a novel before it was completed. On the last page, Vladimir Nabokov writes these words in list form, giving the reader some id...more
The interesting part of this book was getting to read an author's draft of a novel before it was completed. On the last page, Vladimir Nabokov writes these words in list form, giving the reader some id...more
The two stars for this go directly to Chip Kidd. At least he was able to take this hopeless thing and turn it into something beautiful, visually.
When I heard that Dmitri Nabokov would be releasing this draft (it's not even complete enough to call a draft—these are sometimes incomprehensible notes and snippets) against Nobokov's explicit wishes to his family that it be burned if died before finishing it, I was skeptical. But I wanted to give Nabokov's son the benefit of the doubt. ...more
When I heard that Dmitri Nabokov would be releasing this draft (it's not even complete enough to call a draft—these are sometimes incomprehensible notes and snippets) against Nobokov's explicit wishes to his family that it be burned if died before finishing it, I was skeptical. But I wanted to give Nabokov's son the benefit of the doubt. ...more
"A glorious mess," is how the New York Magazine critic described Nabokov's unfinished manuscript, which languished in a Swiss vault for three decades. It is a sentiment shared by the majority of reviewers, who acknowledged that while glimpses of the author's skill shine through in this rough draft, there is simply not enough material to review. Most questioned whether this book should have been published at all and were disturbed that Nabokov's specific wishes were disregarded. Overall...more
(review forthcoming)
[cards out of order: Wild's notes for his book should come first. would have been the first thing VN wrote, like the biography of Chernychevski in The Gift or John Shade's poem in Pale Fire.]
[the original, basic notion of this easy dissolution/suicide comes up in Invitation to a Beheading, which VN wrote in an uncharacteristic fortnight while working on The Gift. He expands on the idea in Wild's book within a book:]
[Wild's book/suicide plan...more
[cards out of order: Wild's notes for his book should come first. would have been the first thing VN wrote, like the biography of Chernychevski in The Gift or John Shade's poem in Pale Fire.]
[the original, basic notion of this easy dissolution/suicide comes up in Invitation to a Beheading, which VN wrote in an uncharacteristic fortnight while working on The Gift. He expands on the idea in Wild's book within a book:]
[Wild's book/suicide plan...more
the is proving difficult to read, as knopf has included both original note cards (perforated for removal - why? for ritualistic hero worship?) and transcribed text. one page for each spread of 2 facing pages, which makes for lots of page turning - very distracting. why not simply include cards in nabokov's hand - 4 for each spread - or simply the transcribed text? having both muddles their intentions in publishing the book as a tribute to nabokov and an exploration of his writing process (the or...more
It's hard to properly review "The Original of Laura"--- it's not a book, but rather a collection of VVN's notecards with notes towards a novel. Nonetheless--- the notecards (faithfully reproduced here, with perforations so that the reader can re-assemble a plot outline) are fascinating and intriguing. You can see VVN laying the foundation for a wickedly funny tale. And some of the scenes in the cards--- a euphemistic and hilarious bedside chess game between a trademark nymphet and her ...more
Ok. Right. Breathe. No, really: breathe. Yes, in and out.
She's here at last in all her coyly shrink-wrapped glory. Despite her undernourished adolescence she has appeared disconcertingly decked out in widow's weeds. Perhaps self-consciously aware of her literary frailty her demurely downcast gaze refuses to meet my own acquisitive leer.
Dare I violate her glossy virgin seals? Outside my window the agitated magpie that lives precariously nested in the overhead gutter-pipe i...more
She's here at last in all her coyly shrink-wrapped glory. Despite her undernourished adolescence she has appeared disconcertingly decked out in widow's weeds. Perhaps self-consciously aware of her literary frailty her demurely downcast gaze refuses to meet my own acquisitive leer.
Dare I violate her glossy virgin seals? Outside my window the agitated magpie that lives precariously nested in the overhead gutter-pipe i...more
I read this a couple of weeks ago and already I don't remember most of it. From the introduction, Nabokov's son talked about how his dad wrote this near the near of his life and how he (the son) felt the story was somewhat there, but I never got the feeling that this book was anywhere near complete, but the only thing I remember from was I think there were some sexual fantasies (or maybe was that from another book I was reading at the same time) and some sections on an ingrown toenail and the w...more
While I could not give Mr. Nabakov's final opus a 5-star rating, I really did enjoy this book. God bless his son, Dimitri, for rescuing his father's work from the incinerator.
Like most of Nabakov's work, they require a second read to fully grasp the characters and their roles. But this book wasn't too bad due to the short nature of paragraphs and pages.
The hardcover edition of "The Original of Laura" is a sheer delight if only for the layout, page design, and a...more
Like most of Nabakov's work, they require a second read to fully grasp the characters and their roles. But this book wasn't too bad due to the short nature of paragraphs and pages.
The hardcover edition of "The Original of Laura" is a sheer delight if only for the layout, page design, and a...more
This books consists of Nabakov's notes for his last, unfinished novel. He had instructed his wife and son to destroy the notes after his death, but they couldn't bear to do so and, after agonizing over it for years, his son finally decided to publish them. The book is wonderful as an object: lovely clear font, heavy white paper, sewn binding, perforations around the cards so that you can punch them out arrange them an different orders as Nabokov surely would have if he had lived long enough to...more
As a general (if not hard) rule, I don't read books published posthumously. I feel that if an author didn't authorize the final product, it's not for us to read. I picked up this book when I found out that it was Nabokov's actual notes, not something "fleshed out" or "finished" by some other writer. Then I read the inside flap, which says that Nabokov left explicit directions in his will that his son and heir was to destroy the notes. With such a demand, I don't feel righ...more
This was pretty incoherent but a fascinating window still into a dying artist's mind. There are echoes of Lolita here, what with a lustful Humbert H. Humbert aging male, Flora/Laura nymphets experiencing sexual awakening and that reference to Anabel Lee and young, innocent love. Nabokov seems preoccupied with the loss of sexuality, bodily decay, with even Buddhist-like meditations on being snuffed out. At least he left us this, hand-written, crossed-out note cards and all. Though he preferred no...more
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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 intricate wordplay and descriptiv...more
More about Vladimir Nabokov...
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 intricate wordplay and descriptiv...more
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“You couldn't get more original than Laura. Laura. Yes, she was an original, all right. One of a kind. Did they break her mold or what, pal? Or...or did it self-destruct? Still, Laura. The one and the only. Such a plain name for a unique cutie. But perhaps my acuity is not without its problems. I ruin everything: a stupid story to be tapped out on my tomb's stone. I ruined even Laura. And an original ruin is rare. Just ask the archaeologist, "Egypt, again?" Just ask me, "Laura, again?" and we'll both respond: "Yes, again and again. And again.”
—
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