Vladimir Nabokov Books

Four stars only by comparison with what would follow in Nabokov's novels in English. For all but a handful of other authors, this'd be five stars. An amazing work. Here's why.

Adam Krug's a philosopher who must kow-tow to the totalitarian regime of President Paduk, who has taken over the nation. Despised by Krug, who tormented the boy he called "Toad" when they were schoolboys, Paduk gradually tightens pressure for Krug to submit by arresting his friends and eventually, in a terrible series of satiric but chillingly evoked episodes, his little son. As the book begins, Krug has been at the deathbed of his wife, and he looks out the hospital window at a puddle. This sample shows the power of Nabokov's prose, exact, precise, yet with the slight tilt of one who has learned English better than we native speakers, so as to heighten its force and ornament its control:

"They have turned on the lights of the house I am in, and the view in the window has died. It is all inky black with a pale blue inky sky-- 'runs blue, writes black' as that ink bottle said, but it did not, nor does the sky, but the trees do with their trillions of twigs." (3 --1964 TimeLife Reader's Edition)

This next excerpt displays the off-kilter realism of Nabokov's prose. The omniscient voice wanders in and out of Krug's mind as the author sees fit, in Joycean homage that reveals Nabokov's deft use of indirect narration while, somehow, deepening its power by Nabokov's manipulation of his acquired language. Also, the book reads as if taking place in a Kafkaesque realm, yet one darkened even more by the shades of cruel political apparatuses that even Kafka had yet to witness. (As an aside, in its use of a phrase like "politically incorrect" and a send-up of a true press controlled by the people's participation, it eerily anticipates blogging, corporate domination of much of the Net, and even Big Brother's Newspeak, although Nabokov beat Orwell to print by a year-- in my edition's 1961 introduction he brands Orwell as clichéd but admired K.) "Bend Sinister"'s both dream-logical and mundane as the mood suits the plot, and there's an editorial slant that heightens the absurdity of much of the Ruritanian dialogue while somehow sharpening the everyday nature of brutality-- as if Bloom mingles his mind with Dedalus within the Paduk police state.

"'The state is your only true friend.'
'I see.'
Grey light from long windows. The dreary wail of a tugboat.
'A nice picture we make-- you as a kind of Erlkönig and myself as the male baby clinging to the matter-of-fact rider and peering into the magic mists. Pah!'
'All we want of you is the little part where the handle is.'" (130)

I looked up this German term: it's from a Goethe poem on a child assailed by a supernatural being who takes him away to death. I did not know this when I bookmarked this exchange, but it proves the resonance and multilayered texture of this story. The tale shifts, in the middle, into a digression on alternate readings of Hamlet, and while inventive this section appears more a chance for Nabokov to insert some pet theories in the guise of Ember, rather than a chapter that moves the admittedly challenging narrative forward. I know Nabokov's inverting what we expect in this novel, but this whole episode could have been better a feuilleton or a tale separate from Krug's story, for it is Krug who inspires us to pity and horror.

Anticipating "Lolita," this earlier novel (written 1945-6) in English sends up trashy teens, slutty vixens, sycophantic professors, and thuggish youths. These witless characters provide walk-on parts for comic, sexy, bumbling, if uneasy relief-- for many of these supporting roles only serve to tighten the net that Krug and David find themselves in as their assurances of stability disappear. As with Kafka, Shakespeare, or Beckett, these tragicomic interludes make the more ominous stretches of the story a bit less unbearable in their tension. The story becomes more manipulated by the narrator as it nears its climax, yet this conjuring trick only makes us watch more closely the dexterity of its tricks. We willingly surrender to the illusion. We see the strings, yet this only puts us more in the hands of the master, whose very fumblings (with English? with our expectations of how it's conventionally deployed so lifelessly around us?) deepen our hypnotic spell. We place our selves in the power of a maker who tells us of his own construction.

How Nabokov manages to create a book totally aware of its fictionality, while using our distance from its shadows to draw us closer into its nightmares, remains an amazing feat. This novel, while imperfect, shines more brightly than thousands of better crafted, yet far more superficial, statements about our purpose. Nabokov here may have written a novel "lesser" only by comparison with his later works in English.

Of course, this novel does not flounder in getting too exact an equivalence between any specific system of grinding down the individual in the name of the common good. Six decades later, it's still therefore fresh, for like Swift, what's attacked is not a particular cabal, but the tendency of many people to forgo thinking for themselves. An historian who's capitulated on Krug's fellow faculty tells his craven colleagues: "Oh yes, a parliament or a senate has been upset before, and it is not the first time that an obscure and unlovable but marvellously obstinate man has gnawed his way into the bowels of a country. But to those who watch these events and would like to ward them, the past offers on clues, no modus vivendi-- for the simple reason that it had none itself when toppling over the brink of the present into the vacuum it eventually filled." (40) So we repeat history farcically and inevitably.

The novel lurches about as our own minds do, between the Big Questions and the messiness of routine. Krug tries to take as an academic on the eternal mysteries; his wife's death plunges him into chaos, while all around him Krug's Ekwilist ideology (sort of a predecessor of the self-esteem fads of the later 20th century) enables the stupid to inherit this Slavified corner of a dismal world. Throughout, phrases from the "native," unnamed language are bracketed from a mingling of Russian, German, and other tongues either invented by the polymathic author or unknown at my lesser level of literacy. Again, while no explanation for these linguistic comments is given, they provide a layer I suppose of commentary for scholars and those more fluent in Slavic speech, and an estranging element for the rest of us.

Still, this novel humanizes Krug despite formidable obstacles placed by Nabokov's narrative structure and authorial tone. The relationship between departed Olga and child David deepens our connection to Krug even as we know that he's a puppet and the whole charade of Padukgrad itself plays out, supposedly as Nabokov instructs us, as another elaborate type of Potemkin village of archetypes, stock characters, and fictional ingenuity. In this too's mixed speculation on the role of the intellect.

"What is more important to solve: the 'outer' problem (space, time, matter, the unknown without) or the 'inner' one (life, thought, love, the unknown within) or again their point of contact (death)?" (154-55) While this talk may seem daunting, it unfolds as naturally (or artificially) as the surprisingly engrossing story, about which you are never sure how Krug's fate will transpire until the end (although Nabokov gives away his strategy in his introduction, if read closely).

Finally, in a manner that for its deceivingly random structure reveals much more verisimilitude than more realistically scripted depictions of organizational oppression and scholarly inspiration, Krug blurred into the narrator wonders about the ultimate purpose of any introspection, put on paper. What may have started for Nabokov as ridicule of a cult of the Leader becomes a memorable inquiry into the survival of the human within a capricious universe.

We panic over our fate, the narrator notes, but we cannot imagine "the infinite past, which extends on the minus side of the day of our birth." This happens since we've already gone through eternity, but from the opposite end. It holds no fear. We've already "non-existed once," so why worry? "What we are now trying (unsuccessfully) to do is to fill the abyss we have safely crossed with terrors borrowed from the abyss in front, which abyss is borrowed itself from the infinite past. Thus we live in a stocking which is in the process of being turned inside out, without our ever knowing for sure to what phase of the process our moment of consciousness corresponds." (172)

Such a book, which for admirers of not only Kafka and Joyce but Borges and Beckett (and even Orwell) must be essential reading, manages to integrate such meditation into a moving portrayal of loss, an often mordantly funny burlesque of institutional conformity, an expression of contempt for mass culture and glorification of Everyman, and a horrifyingly exaggerated yet somehow convincing depiction of the inner life of one man collapsing under the weight not only of the truncheon and the megaphone but of the weight of mortality.

Of the five books I've read by Nabokov, this is my favorite. I'll spare mentioning that being one of his first America-written, English books, he masters the English language. (Oops. I mentioned it.) As often as people credit him for his inventiveness in his stylistic methods (which is at full experimentation here) you just don't hear enough about his amazing imagination.

This book is set in a fictional European country, which is what initially fascinated me. It's quick, funny, sad, nostalgic, and haunting. People always use that word: `hautning'. But what does that really mean? In the case of this book, from beginning to end, we're introduced to a dream. I've read plenty of book descriptions in which people say a book is `haunting' or `dreamlike' in order to convey its surrealism, but this book is a perfect example. The end of the book, without giving too much away, is terrible (in the sense that it's sad/horrifying/abrupt) but in a good way. The book is short, and honestly feels as though it IS trying to convey the feel of an epic dream that goes on all night, only to go from slightly dreary to overwhelmingly awful, and in such a short book, this nightmare manages to progress wonderfully. By the time I finished the last page, I honestly felt like I had awaken from a terrible nightmare.

This book is good on many levels. Not only do you have an interesting storyline, but Nabokov never hesitates to free himself with only the best prose experiments and shifts in narrative that I've ever read. While other authors tagged as `post-modern' barrage us with stream-of-consciousness or switching narrators, falling short of even telling a story right, Nabokov uses methods that not only delight us with their originality, but help the story move along better. A good deal of the story is told in third person, but we have occasional lapses...one chapter is told in first person as a memory piece, speaking TO his dead wife. Absolutely beautiful. Another chapter is told in a strange, present tense walk through of events with bits of philosophical dissection thrown in the midst, as though the main character is splicing the narrative up with one of his essays. Even the third-person portions are just pure poetry. It's like a poem disguised as a novel.

Read this book now. The only CON I have is that the author is dead.

What happens when the country us taken over by the average man who is unsophisticated, uneducated and cares only for beastial appetites? A nightmare that would cause Kafka to lose sleep. Yet, these average and inept party officials running the show and trying to manipulate the life of the nations mosr prestigious and brilliant mind, are mearly a reflection of the baseness of that very mind as it muses upon the cruelty he inflicted in his childhood. With Nabokov, you never know what is real or imagined until the end and then you may ot be sure. This is a must read.

This, as you would expect from Nabokov, is a brillantly written book full of wit and beauty.

It is, however, a bit unfocused. Nabokov can often blend sad, humorous, scary and satirical parts together perfectly, but here the blending is a little rough. But I still give it 5 stars. I rarely laugh out loud when reading fiction, but Nabokov got me severl times (especially when Krug visits the Toad the first time).

What can you say? It's Nabokov: It's brillant.
I wouldn't start here (maybe Lolita, Invitation to a Beheading or Pale Fire) but pick this up after those...

...by any means, but definitely not great, and perhaps not even good. What bothered me most about this book was that Nabokov seemed clearly uncomfortable using English. This may be his second book written in the language, but its prose is often awkward and stiff. Because of this, the poetic and playful nature of his best work is DOA, even if he tries hard to insert it in here and there. Reading this book, it's amazing to consider that his next was "Lolita," where his use of language makes me cry with envy. Also, the plot doesn't seem as well thought out or executed here, and seems more didactic than what I expect in a Nabokov book.

None of this is to completely damn the book, it was often quite enjoyable and far from bad, but it is not nearly as good as he was capable of making it, and glaringly so.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This novel by Vladimir Nabokov is beautifully done and reminds me more of Tolstoy than anything else. Certainly it doesn't have that scope; the resemblance is in the construction of characters and their thought. I enjoyed it very much.

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.

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.

Edelweiss? Noble White, the shy alpine flower that so quickly vanishes after spring. Are we readers to look for meaning in Nabokov's choice of the name Martin Edelweiss for his focal character? A good deal is said about the name early in the book, and we're reminded of it at crucial moments throughout. Just a few pages of Nabokov's so-carefully-crafted prose inclines this reader to suppose that nothing in "Glory" is merely incidental, that every detail is laden with pertinence. Whatever else one says about this novel, the first fact is that it's gloriously written. Every sentence snaps the reader's mind into focus. Every description is a poem in itself. Every characterization is a full dramatic portrait of individual flesh and blood.

Martin Edelweiss is a frivolous young man embedded among Russian emigres utterly trivialized by the Bolshevik Revolution, about which we hear only frivolous rumors and reports in ephemeral newsprint. The only position Martin's querulous society seems to take toward the momentous events in their homeland is to wish they hadn't happened, but make no mistake, this a novel about the Revolution, seen through a lens of irrelevance. This is also a novel about the meaning of being Russian, though Nabokov conveys his meaning through the subtlest indirection. There's no ambiguity whatsoever about the ending of the novel. The meaning is as clear as plasma and as ominous as a drum-roll to a prisoner awaiting execution, but I do not choose to pre-empt anyone's reading excitement by declaring the obvious.

At the same time, "Glory" is a coming-of-age novel, similar to other such novels about young men going off to college. Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise" and E.M. Forster's "The Longest Journey" might offer interesting comparisons. In all three, a sensitive young man confronts the tawdriness of the intellectual life, slips into depression over his own mediocrity, falls hopelessly in love with a disdainful beauty while at the same time exploring lust with more accessible lasses, and wrestles with the identity of a seemingly more well-prepared friend. Martin, however, isn't a titan waiting to be awakened to his own worth at the end of the novel. Nabokov takes pain to show us that Martin is NOT a poet, not a budding genius of any sort, just a modestly intelligent everyman of no particular bent. In fact, Martin's only talent seems to be at tennis. Like a young George Orwell, Martin stumbles into a brief romance with the simple life of honest toil, dwelling incognito for a 'chapter' in a wine-growing village in southern France. But, like most of Martin's experiences, this pastoral interlude sinks quickly into the chasm of memory. Above all, this is a novel about memory. It begins with Martin's memories of childhood. Martin's perceptions are all foreshadowed, and his actions are all predetermined, by his memories. Even the passing moment is no more than a memory.

Martin doesn't tell his story in the first person. Nabokov clings to Martin's shoulder like a personal daemon, or to be blunt, like a 19th C omniscient narrator. When suddenly, in the last chapter, the novelist shifts his perch to another shoulder, it's both a brilliant literary trick and a lucid statement of Martin's fate.

"Glory" is a translation from Russian of an early novel by a writer who went on to create far more famous books in English. Perhaps that explains why it's less widely read than the Forster or Fitzgerald novels mentioned above. It's the best book of the three by far, and proves beyond a doubt that Nabokov could write traditional narrative as brilliantly as the more idiosyncratic interior surrealism for which he is famous.

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.

Jeremy Irons is the perfect choice to read this Audiobook of the "infamous" Lolita. Iron's reading is a perfect pairing with Nabokov's writing, the richness of the language comes through even though you are not settled into your easy chair by a crackling fire with a decent vintage opened at your side.

It is pairings such as this that gives one hope that more Audio books will be prepared with equal care, unabridged, and enriching the listener's experience.

"LOLITA---LIGHT OF MY LIFE- FIRE OF MY LOINS---MY SIN, MY SOUL.
LOOO---LEEE---TAAA.
The tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps.
LOOO--LEEE--TAAA" -Hubert Hubert-

Humbert Humbert is an intellectual, a teacher, fluidly articulate, a lover of books, a poet, and good looking. One could say he has it all. But there's one little problem, Hubert Hubert happens to be a pedaphile.

Nabokov is so brilliant, the reader will empathize with Hubert Hubert in some strange way, because he
will make them...justifying why Hubert Hubert does the things he does. And the reader will try to justify his perversion, too.

Hubert Hubert is a child molester, a monster, a pervert, a stalker, evil, and sick. And he is appalled, even by himself. This is the reason Nabokov has named him Hubert Hubert (One is good-one is evil).

"IF ONLY SHE SAW THE MONSTERS BEHIND THE EYES,
I AM THE DEVIL'S PLAY THING" Hubert Hubert

Hubert Hubert is obsessed with young girls (Nymphets) as he so elequently calls them. He is sexually attracted to Lolita most of all, and married her mother to get close to her. (Naughty boy).

His thoughts are written so beautifully and deliciously the way he feels for Lolita, that the reader neglects, at times, to see his perversion and sins. Hubert Hubert describes Lolita's knees, her legs, her skin, her hair, how it
drapes over her apple fresh cheeks. How lovely. How pretty. How wicked.

Hubert Hubert descibes Lolita's mother (his wife)like this: "Being with her was like thrashing inside a decaying forest"

Shame on you, Hubert. She's only 35 years old! You dirty, dirty old man.

Hubert Hubert speaks in third person through several parts of the book...because Hubert Hubert cannot even bear himself--for he is a demoralizing, warped, sick individual. And the reader will still fill empathy for him

"I am the Devil's Plaything. I am a Monster."

Hubert Hubert trys desperately to become the doting step-father, giving Lolita what she wants, getting involved in school activites, protecting her from the big bad world.

But he forgets one thing....

Hubert Hubert does not protect her from Hubert Hubert.

Vladimir Nabokov is a genius, and Lolita has so many levels of beauty, metaphor, and lushness, one cannot find any inmperfection within it.

Lolita will horrify the reader and delight the reader at the same time. How the heck to Nabokov do that?

Nobody could have read this book as Irons did--the sexuality rolls of his tongue like a kind of poison.

***Not too many books can compare to this Lolita. A true, unbelievable classic.

the scariest thing about this book is that you don't see it coming. you pick up the book thinking you're going to be repulsed by the whole thing. it's pedophilia! but instead you find yourself nodding along, agreeing, sympathizing with humbert's totally horrible viewpoints. you find yourself wanting to be more like lolita so someone will love you like that. you find yourself laughing when the narrator wants you to laugh, feeling sorry for him when dolores finally escapes. it's utterly convincing to anyone who's ever been obsessed with anything... like diving into another world.



it's incredibly well written, but i don't think i would recommend this book to anyone. i think instead that it's the first book i've read that should carry a warning label. "listening to this book will seduce you."

Nabokov's story of HH and his obsession with little Lolita is one of the most amazing books of all time. The audio version read by Jeremy Irons is absolutely the best audio book I've ever heard. Jeremy Irons played the role of HH in one of the movie adaptations of the book, and he reads this first-person narrative fully in character. I cannot think of another actor who could have captured the essence of this book the way Irons did. I purchased the audio version to listen to on my iPod on a trip, and I kept listening to him read the story even when I was taking breaks from the road. Just as it is hard to put the book down, it is hard to stop listening to this audio book. Once you get past the introduction to the book (I didn't catch the name of who read that; it was a different voice, unless Irons was just doing a character), you won't be able to stop.

I had read Lolita many years ago in my college student garret and was entertained, a bit appalled, thought I was able to "get" HH, but mainly I was amazed by the language. I can remember rereading sentences just to feel the commas. BUT, hearing it read by Jeremy Irons is a whole different thing. He is an absolutely amazing actor. It is CREEPY and the incredible language becomes his own completely, rather than feeling in any way, like Nabokov's intellectual exercise. Just describing Iron's speech, his sibillant esses, makes me shudder. I had to stop around CD 5 (near Salina, Kansas, as I drove from SF to the East Coast with Tyler the dog) because the person and the story were now so sordid and disturbing.
Then, staying with my cousin in Bethesda, I was in a room with the usual suspect college student books (Camus, Pynchon, Vonnegut, a used copy of Introduction to the Principles of Earwax) and sure enough, there was Lolita. It was ~benign and fascinating once again, until I pushed myself to imagine Iron's voice. Then I put it back on the shelf and washed my hands.

I am aware there is a difference between an author and his characters. I am aware that art does not need to plead for morality. I acknowledge Nabokov's skill as a stylist of english prose.

I hated the book after it left planet earth about half way through and orbited somewhere in Nabokov's childish brain while treating a deeply troubling theme. Lolita never became real as a character - a fatal literary, rather than psychological or moral, flaw.

I could not read it without being acutely aware that: why does L. appear not to ever grieve her mother's death? WHy does she not miss her friends? Why is she not cutting up her arms with a piece of broken glass? Why does she have so little to say? After driving around the country in a small car for a year cooped up with the H why has she long ago not throttled him and left his carcass for the vultures to feed on (road tip rage - we've all felt it)?

Where are the authorities, the police?

If HH is so gah gah over her why can he not seem to remember anything specific about her - her interests or conversations? We know plenty about what she smells like, by contrast.

Why does she not act or talk like a 14 year old but instead exactly like HH himself? WHy is she so shadowy, 2 dimensional? At one point I started to wonder if maybe L was HH's deranged hallucination or phantom - which made me slightly warm up to the book - but that doesnt seem to be Nabokov's intent at all.

All of these questions - and many more which I would have to return to the novel to remember (and I have no intention of doing that) - spoiled my 'enjoyment' of the work and interjected a draft of cold wet reality into the fun so that I lost interest.

Nabokov's stylistic brilliance was used only to serve up HH's non-stop sardonic and caustic observations on American middle class life, and they became ennervating over the long long haul. And pleading Nabokov's psychological insights doesnt help much. Is this a comedy, tragedy, psychological portrait? It fails on all those counts because it is tiresome, shallow and obtuse. But I guess I DID learn a lot about motels in middle america in the 50s.

And all the little literary games and such, and the self-serving, classless forwards and afterwards only made it worse.

Psychological Journey through a man's broken mind, yes you do start to feel empathy for Humbert, however as he's an adult & educated and should know better. The book takes you into his reasoning and fight within himself. This is probably one of the most controversial books I've read and owned, I even find myself placing this book at the bottom of my bookshelf due to the fact that many people know the title and kind of what the book is about but not why it is good literature.

Lolita is the greatest American novel i have ever read, and it was written by a guy for whom English was a third language. Nabokov masterfully seduces the reader with the florrid tongue of the monstrous Humbert Humbert. The prose is simply remarkable. The author, in his meticulously concieved English Professor persona, lays out one intricate metaphor after another, brilliant wordplay in every line. His choice of wordage is so utterly perfect that i found myself constantly thinking that i had never before heard the English language used in this way. He uses phrases so witty that i would continuously pause my reading to dissect and appreciate the craftsmanship. Perhaps, for Nabokov, imbibing the language at a mature age allowed the adoption of such exquisitely strange writing. Reading Lolita is like hearing Debussy for the first time, or viewing a painting by Picasso after being accustomed only to classical art.
Humbert Humbert is potentially the greatest literary creation of the 20th Century. He is the snake in the garden of good and evil; a vain and enigmatic character with whom you will sympathise, through no choice of your own. The book, written from his first-person perspective, will shock you, not with its own content, but with your own reaction. You will find yourself condoning, even agreeing with, Humbert's hideous actions. He is one of the most repugnant persons in literature, but you will grow to like him. That, perhaps, is the greatest genius of Nabokov's novel: it forces us to look at ourselves, and see just how much of Humbert is within.

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta . . . standing four feet ten in one sock."

From the very first sentence in the book, Nabokov showed amazing perception of the mind of the child erotist. Nabokov wrote these words in 1947, but it was not until 1990 that Segal & Stermac announced that pedophiles tend to idealize children.

Nabokov's hero sought a "princedom by the sea," an "enchanted island," or an "enchanted island of time." It was not until 1976 that R. Gordon, in "The normal and abnormal love of children," recognized the pedophile search for an earthly paradise.
Nabokov also beat the beat the professional writers when it came to the pedophile's most common rationalizations. Humbert checked into the hotel room and told the reader, "And she was mine, she was mine, the key was in my fist, my fist was in my pocket, she was mine." Decades later, in 1982, de Young commented on what we might call the "possession rationalization."

Humbert then tells his youthful heroine, "Look here, Lo. Lets settle this once for all. For all practical purposes I am your father . . . Two people sharing one room, inevitably enter into a kind, how shall I say, a kind . . ."Lolita interrupts, "The word is incest."

Humbert thereby committed the "love rationalization," which received its first professional comment from MacFarlane in 1978.

Humbert reads these words aloud from a book:

"The normal girl is usually extremely anxious to please her father. She feels in him the forerunner of the desired elusive male . . . The wise mother (and your poor mother would have been wise, had she lived) will encourage a companionship between father and daughter, realizing . . . that the girl forms her ideals of romance and of men from her association with her father."

In 1947, the same year that Nabokov wrote the novel, Hirning wrote on what can be called the "sex education rationalization."

Lastly, Humbert tells the reader:

"I am going to tell you something strange: it was she who seduced me . . . Suffice it to say that not a trace of modesty did I perceive in this beautiful hardly formed young girl whom modern co-education, juvenile mores, the campfire racket and so forth had utterly and hopelessly depraved."

This "seduction rationalization" received its first professional mention from Gebhard et al. in 1968.

Did Nabokov himself suffer from this mental discomfort? Or was Nabokov insightful into the minds of others? In 1992, Centerwall published an article arguing that Nabokov himself suffered from the malady. But we may never know for sure.

In the field of erotic literature, this novel has probably touched the awareness of the public more than any other, to such an extent that the once innocuous name of Lolita has become another name for youthful feminine charm and sexuality, to put it mildly.

Those are the historical facts, but what of the novel's merits? What is most definitely is not is pornographic: it doesn't contain a word of even mildly bad language, nor is it a trashy series of sex scenes featuring a girl of that name. In fact - surprise, surprise if you've never read it - Lolita doesn't even contain a girl called Lolita.

Writing in the first person, Nabakov does not directly tell the story of his famous heroine, but that of Humbert Humbert, a man obsessed with the memory of his dead childhood girlfriend, Annabel, to such an extent that his life is dominated by her loss. As his teens pass, and then his twenties, he fails to mature beyond his loss. When he meets a girl of twelve, Dolores Haze, who resembles his lost love, he attempts to posses her, body and soul, and in his obsessed mind he re-names her "Lolita." The final result is that both he and Dolores are destroyed, along with several other characters.

Is it a sad story of an unfortunately obsessed man, who should perhaps be pitied as much as condemned? No, for there is more to it than that. Is it a simple story? No, for Nabakov is not a simple writer, telling a plain story of black versus white. If he were, then Dolores would be a naïve and innocent girl, and Humbert an absolute villain.

But Nabokov is not a limited moraliser, wagging a solemn preacher's finger at a wrong-doer seeking his evil way in a world of innocence. Instead he examines the complexities of both love and lust, for Humbert finds that his hidden, furtive desire has met its mate, as he discovers that Dolores has an open, natural tendency to depravity to match his. Moreover, most of the characters that the two are in contact with are flawed, and some are so self-deceiving and tacky that the reader may be drawn into preferring Humbert's admitted lechery, and the reader, not allowed to deal easily with absolutes in a simple situation of right and wrong, is made to journey in an intriguing world of comparisons.

Whereas Dolores's nature is a mixture of easily given love and defensive cynicism - she rapidly falls in love with the handsome, exotic Frenchman - Humbert is cowardly, conceited and stupid, with a talent for bungling everything he attempts, from emotional relationships to violent crime, a failing that he does not notice.

Failing also to see that Dolores is attempting to seduce him, he seeks to trick here into a physical intimacy that she would have awarded him willingly. As his stupidity becomes more apparent, so does his indifference to the well being of others, as he accepts marries a woman he detests to gain control of Dolores, and later contemplates murdering her.
But all his desperate, bungling manoeuvres fail, until to his surprise - Dolores casually offers herself to him, after revealing that she has already had a lover.

Technically this is the climax of the novel, and here Nabokov ends the first of the two books into which it is divided. Some critics say that the latter half is too long, and I agree with them, remarking however that it may merely seem to long, due to being the record of a highly unpleasant relationship.

At about this time, the death of her mother gives Humbert total control of Dolores. He has achieved his great ambition, but he proves utterly incapable of living with his success. Dolores, sullen at the wandering life that they adopt, but entirely dependent on Humbert, strives not to regain her freedom, but for the two to lead some kind of stable life. But Humbert, living in a world of his own, composed of ecstasy and fear - he has gained Dolores, but is terrified of discovery - fails to listen to her, or realise that the actuality that he has gained is living Dolores, not imaginary Lolita.

Trapped in his conceited self-image - he is a pedantic scholar, who has produced no work of his own, but imagines himself a sophisticated artist - he fails to communicate with Dolores, or lower himself from his pretensions to her simpler, healthier attitude to life - "speak English!" as she says at one point - and he destroys what remains of her love for him.

As Dolores grows older she is able to gain more control over her affairs, and she tortures him as he has tortured her, and eventually escapes him. After several years of agonised search Humbert finds her again. Dolores, prematurely aged by hardship, is no longer the cute nymphet that he lusted for, but Humbert still loves her. He has finally achieved a maturity of sorts. He gives her a needed gift of cash, and the two part forever. Later both are destroyed by exterior forces.

However, Nabokov is not such a sentimentalist as to make Humbert's redemption complete, and it is by a further lunatic act that he causes his own end.

Having suffered a head injury with a period of memory loss I understand the angony and mystery in trying to fill in the gaps of bits of images. I can only imagine the sense of loss and displacement that the main character, a military officer who we learn suffered a major head injury during the war. Engrossed in the novel, we then are left wondering what was real or imagined. Unable to fill in the blanks in his life, the protagonist takes bits of the present and past and creates a world of memories in an attempt to find himself. What distinguishes this great work from later works of popular science fiction or mystery, is that the cahraters live in a place and time where they are unable to return to their homeland, recover and heal fro the war, revolution and displacement that affected countless people. Add to that a totalitarian Russia that attempted to erase and rewite the past and you have a human mirror to an injury now imposed upon an entire society. Joseph Roth explored the displacement of people from the Austrian Empire between the great wars and here Nabokov adds to Roth's accomplishments. Memory, individual and corporate, is pivotal to understanding ourselves and orienting our lives. Nabokov, brilliantly creates a ship floating without such ballast. The amazing thing is that what these authors wrote about was real. Read this book.

In this book, Nabokov indicates that this was one of his very first books. It was published and copyrighted posthumously. The manuscript appears to be developmental for Nabokov. The signposts of Nabokov are clearly illustrated in his use of irony and surrealism.

Interestingly, while many characters appear in the story, the text conceptually is primarily an exposition of the inner thoughts of the protagonist Ganin. The story involves the life during an interim period of Ganin's life; who is really at this time, a transient in Berlin. If he is sure where he will end up, Nabokov does not let the reader know. Rather, Ganin seems more to be drifting toward his ordained life, in some other place than in Mother Russia.

As usual, Nabokov does make a bit of a negative commentary about homosexuality, although it is somewhat more veiled than his later outright homophobic perspective. Nabokov understands the homosexuality, yet disdains it here, as he does in other novels.

The book is especially of interest to Nabokov readers who are trying to see the developmental phases of the author's long and illustrious writing career. It is recommended to all who are interested in ironic, existential and surreal views of real life.

This does bear hallmarks of apprentice work - the characters, as Nabokov himself confessed, are fairly stereotypical portrayals of actual emigres. It Nabokov's most autobiographical novel, incorporating beautiful delineations of his childhood estate in Russia, adapted as the scene of the protagonist, Ganin's love affair with the eponymous Mary, who never appears throughout the novel. There are not as many exquisite points of style as in his later novels; those familiar with Nabokov's early stories might sense this short novel took the form of one of these stories and stretched it into novel length. But the novel does introduce a character who is patrician, romantic, and somewhat deranged. Ganin is a simpler version of many Nabokovian heroes (and anti heroes to come).

First published in Berlin in 1926, Mary is Vladimir Nabokov's first novel. As with all first novels, this book is much more autobiographical than the author's later works.

Lev Glebovich, also known as Ganin, lives in a Berlin boarding house along with other Russian emigres. He has a mysterious past which comes to light when Aleksey Alfyorov, a fellow boarder, shows him a picture of his young wife that will be arriving in Berlin in a week. Much to Ganin's shock, he recognizes the picture as his long lost love, Mary. He had lost touch with her during World War I and hasn't spoken to her in 5 years. Jobless and lacking a driving passion, Ganin begins to live in his memories of the past as he makes plans to run away with Mary when she arrives.

This story was unconventional in the sense that Mary never really arrives. Nabokov shows her through memories and names the book after her, but its really about Ganin and his conflict over whether Mary actually exists anymore or is she a memory that can never be regained. In this sense, Mary exploits themes explored more fully by Proust. For such a short book, the author succeeds very admirably at bringing the characters of the boarding house alive and in creating prose that feels like a dream. This is a masterful debut.

If ever discussing Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, the conversation might inevitably turn towards Nobakov. One of the holy trinity of Russian writers, Nabokov, in "Mary", encompasses a whole array of human emotions. I don't want to give away the ending, but the impact is compounded in the final pages. Masterfully written, it keeps you turning pages to see what happens. It didn't turn out like I imagined, but I was not disappointed. Conversely, instead of being let down, my life went through a paradigm shift. Not a lot of books have done that to me, but this book is a rarity indeed.

I read that book and was a bit baffled.

After reading the book, it was clear to me that one would need some help in trying to sort out exactly what the book means. Many other people such as John Updike have been baffled by the book. According to professional analysis found elsewhere, Transparent Things was first published in December 1971 in Esquire. And, from what Nabokov said, he finished the slim novella on April fool's day, of that same year. Is that the first tip? Is this book a bit of a sophisticated joke?

Most people have a hard time understanding what it means, and it takes at least two reads to get any sort of an understanding. Nabokov himself was amused by the critics and probably would continue to be amused today if he was still alive, and he said: "Amongst the reviewers several careful readers have published some beautiful stuff about it. Yet neither they nor, of course, the common criticule discerned the structural knot of the story."

And his biographer is quoted:

Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd's analysis attempts to untie that "knot" with a more specific elucidation: "Within the small compass of Transparent Things and the bleak life of Hugh Person, Nabokov ruptures the relationship of reader, character, and author more radically than he has ever done, in order to explore some of his oldest themes: the nature of time; the mystery and privacy of the human soul, and its simultaneous need to breach its solitude; the scope of consciousness beyond death; the possibility of design in the universe."

So where does that leave us average reader? What are we to make of it all? What is Nabokov's "knot." Without giving away the story, I can only guess but it is a "dream like" narrative of a man who is delusional and later near the end he is in a schizophrenic state? But as noted by others, it is not the protagonist himself who narrates the tale in a wild fashion, but a third party who is (presumably) lucid.

Correct me if I am wrong, and I am happy to discuss the book with anyone; but, was Person not in some sort of delusional state at the end? And, how does his described actions show us a window on our soul, or even blur the boundary between life and death? Or is there a whimsical element here? Or is to make us think, or again is it just literary art?

Many call the book a masterpiece. I think it is a very imaginative and hard to fathom piece of literature. It is literature as art, or art-for-art's sake. Nabokov has removed all the boundaries on his writing, mixing time and events. So, understand it or not, it is an interesting read.

Nothing that Nabokov writes is "transparent." He always is referencing at least two things if not a whole plethora of images and metaphors at once with each line. In this novel, a late one, Nabokov has developed his inimical and sublime writing style. His sentences are virtual perfection. His illustrations are so real and yet so imaginary.

In addition, the story line is very complex. The protagonist is traveling through Europe in a repetition of a trip long gone by. Many things do not come about as he would want them. Each time, for Nabokov's own particular reasons. Sexuality and the lack there of is tantamount to the story. Yet what makes the telling so particularly `Nabokov' is the manner in which he switches from temporal event to temporal event without necessarily giving any indication to the reader that we have come "unstuck in time."

While the book is a rather short 104 pages, the complexity that is built into the story will hold all serious readers of literature in rapt attention. The story moves quickly and it is necessary for the reader to slow down the pace of the reading to make sure that the implications are properly conveyed and absorbed. It truly is a highly recommended example of Nabokov's true literary genius.

THERE is little point in attempting a review of these 80 pages of ephemera. A study of one man's inability to fit into his own skin. To put it mildly, a depressing excursion into the one character, Hugh Person's, life. The author says that had Hugh not had his transparent side there would be no point to the book. But I found the transparent side just as infected with this fetish for trivia.

However, the author gives some great advice if the reader could sort it out: Don't "explain the inexplicable." Live with the "supposition that 'reality' may be only a 'dream'." "The very awareness of being aware" may be just "a built-in hallucination." And don't forget this quote: "There is no lake without a closed circle of reliable land." This reader is still searching to find these transparent things.

Some writers--early Ian McEwan comes to mind--seem to be less interested in plot and character than they are in the power of their prose to capture a scene, a moment, or an experience. In TRANSPARENT THINGS, Nabokov performs his variation on such magic, creating a story that, in summary, is very dark and tragic but that is also secondary to its playful and droll tone. Undeniably, Nabokov's protagonist, Hugh Person, is both the agent and victim of tragedy. But the Nab's writing is so precise and masterfully amused that this novella's sad story seems almost incidental. For this reader, TRANSPARENT THINGS was primarily a wry comedy as Nabokov leads the goofy Hugh from scene to scene. Then, inexplicable anger, and perhaps madness, erupts.

Nabokov's writing in this novella is superb, especially near the end. Here's just one example, which only he could write:

"Earth and sky were drained of all color. It was either raining or pretending to rain or not raining at all, yet still appearing to rain in a sense that only certain old Northern dialects can either express verbally or not express, but versionize, as it were, through the ghost of a sound produced by drizzle in a haze of grateful rose shrubs. 'Raining in Wittenberg, but not in Wittgenstein.' An obscure joke..."

Highly recommended.

This is typical brilliant Nabokov, with plenty of detail and mysterious threads laid down throughout that the imaginative can choose to follow or ignore. Because it was written in English rather than translated, Nabokov's prose is at its most powerful and organic - by far. The stories in this are extremely haunting, at least for me, musing on the nature of life after death, among many other themes. It is true genius and you can read it in a single sitting. Get it. You won't be disappointed.

I adore Pushkin's poetry and have admired it since my college days long ago. He has a tenderness, elegance of metaphor, eye for beauty and connection to the Russian landscape, which truly set him apart. I consider him the Wordsworth of Russia, although Pushkin admired Byron, whom he quotes in Chapter 8. Eugene Onegin had much in common with Childe Harold. That is, Onegin is a man who is overwhelmed by the simple beauty of the Russian countryside in which Pushkin loved to dwell. Yet somehow he is a misfit and outcast within a rather anti-heroic context or, as Lermontov called it, as an unwilling driver of "the axe of fate." Onegin definitely has a deeply romantic aspect to his soul, as did Pushkin. In the dual with Lenski we see Pushkin foreshadowing his own demise in much the same way that Pechorin's experience in a Hero of Our Time was prescient of the demise of Lermontov. I am intrigued by Pushkin's attempt to structure his novel with the framework of poetry. The net effect is a mini-epic or short lyrical poem, which brings to mind the style of verse of, say, Virgil or Homer but with a more contemporary structure. I bought this translation by Nabokov who is as full of himself as ever in this rendition in which he seeks to translate with a vernacular style of which I would find it hard to believe that Pushkin would approve. It's hard to imagine that Pushkin would have described the friendship of Onegin and Lenski as "pals." Nabokov becomes an intrusive figure in this rendition instead of a silent, creative partner quietly and humbly adding value to the work. In the translation we depend upon the creative gifts of the translator and my experience with Pushkin in the past leads me to wonder if Nabokov does justice to Pushkin in this version of Eugene Onegin. If so, then clearly Pushkin is a far better poet than he is a novelist. However, Pushkin does bring to the novel elegant descriptive beauty and romantic sensibility, which inform Eugene Onegin. For my money, Lermontov's Hero of Our Time is a vastly superior novel to Eugene Onegin. If you want to read a truly great Russian novel, try Lermontov, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Turgenev or Bulghakov. If you want the finest poetry ever written by a Russian, then read Pushkin's poetry. If you seek to gain insight into the fusion of poetry and fiction into a single genre, then you may be intrigued, as I was, by Eugene Onegin.

At the end of his writing career, Vladimir Nabokov predicted he'd be remembered for two things: Lolita and his translation of Alexander Pushkin's Russian classic Eugene Onegin. He was half right. Critics took Nabokov's literal translation to task, almost a half-century ago. Edmund Wilson (a friend of Nabokov's) drove the hardest, instigating a famous literary feud.

Wilson maintained that Nabokov's translation was an unreadable mixture of obscure words and sloppy writing that betrayed Pushkin's poetry, and he squabbled over Nabokov's Russian-to-English equivalents. For his part, Nabokov--usually one to ignore critical appraisals of his work, good or bad--defended his translation's difficulty by claiming that, percentage-wise, most of the words he used were easy to understand. He added, more seriously, that a measure of obscurity was necessary. To the English reader, Pushkin would essentially be a new poet. Why then should a translation of such a poet be entirely relaxed and familiar? So what if the reader has to open a dictionary? And Nabokov assured Wilson, who was then only learning to speak Russian, that his Russian-to-English equivalents were correct. (Nabokov, who prided himself on being able to pack everything he owned in a single afternoon, just in case he had to change countries, was trilingual from childhood, and he composed novels, poems and plays in both Russian and English.)

In Nabokov's opinion, Pushkin was Russia's Shakespeare, and Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's Hamlet. He had to introduce the English-speaking world to the poem--the right way. Since Nabokov took exception to all the English translations of Eugene Onegin, and since he had already translated pieces of it in his free time, his wife Vera suggested that he just go ahead and do the whole thing right and publish. But he was uneasy. Translating for sport was one thing, publishing another. To him, translating poetry meant perverting ingenuity. He was afraid that Pushkin's original Russian would be worn thin by the changing of hands, especially if the poem's rhyme scheme and meter were attempted. So he devised a compromise that he thought fair. He would create a translation that focused on the mot juste. He went for what can be called cognitive accuracy. That is to say, he scrapped the poem's rhymes, meter, and music for a mountainous and sometimes overbearing Webster's Dictionary. If his best English equivalents ruined the poetics, even the grammar of the line, so be it. There were worse offenses, in his opinion. He couldn't stomach the inventions of translators--a rhyme, a turn of phrase, any sentiment forced into the true poet's mouth. So when he was finished, Nabokov had what many will consider a raw and sometimes clumsy Eugene Onegin.

Robert Frost once quipped that poetry is what doesn't come across in translation. That said, the translator of poetry (against all odds) has two general approaches. One, like Nabokov, find and use the most appropriate equivalents possible, and in so doing, leave the poetry out; or two, create new poetry in the translation's language by using inexact equivalents to fit the rhyme and meter. It's up to you as a reader to decide what you're looking for. What do you consider the essence of poetry? Pick Nabokov for word equivalent accuracy--the best that's available, the best we're likely to get. Pick someone else for poetry. But, in a way, you can have both...

With that in mind, I suggest you read both Nabokov and James E. Falen's translations. Being a contemporary, conscientious writer, Falen's work benefits from the range of previous translations, especially Nabokov's. But Falen retains Pushkin's poetic stuff--the rhyme scheme, the metrics--and his translation is a pleasure, especially to recite. For extra fun, read Nabokov's awkward rendering aloud, right after. Shock your friends.

Still, if he lived to read it, Nabokov would have likely called Falen's translation "piped-in background music" like he did all the others. Would he be right? Well, Falen couldn't avoid betraying Pushkin's Russian; it would be, as Nabokov phrased it, mathematically impossible not to. And, to be sure, Falen's voice is noticeable in places--his translation reads beautifully for a reason. However, Nabokov does Pushkin just as big a disservice. How is it that Nabokov could harp on about inauthentic and "piped in" music when the music he pipes in under the name of Pushkin is so hard on the ear? Just because Nabokov ignores Pushkin's music doesn't mean his translation makes no sound. Who, then, is right?

No matter how hard and ably they try, translators are always wrong. Two different languages are just too different. It is necessary, then, that English readers without Russian make a leap of faith. They're hands are tied, so they must ultimately place their trust in the translator's method. Or reputation. By reputation, of course, English readers can't do better than the writer of Lolita. His writing expertise aside, if you're familiar with Nabokov's "Lectures on Literature", you know how painstaking and intelligent a reader he was. Most comforting of all, Nabokov spent more time researching and translating Eugene Onegin than writing any three of his fictions combined. And this research was added to an already lifelong love of Pushkin, whom he first translated as a boy (his aristocratic family kept a library). His commentary to the poem--sold in a separate edition--is witty, massive, and laughably too informative for the common reader. But the writing's vivid. Where the translation is purposefully short on poetry, the commentary picks up the slack. If you venture to read it all, you'll know what Pushkin was up to, at all times. It's Nabokov's penance, really, for making messes of the original Russian.

The whole of the work convinces me that Nabokov's translation methods are correct, or at least noble, if for no other reason than its baffling modesty. Ironically, the most elegant prose stylist of the Twentieth-Century sought to make his translation clunkier with every revision. But as ugly as it is, it's possible to actually enjoy Nabokov's "humble pony" on its own artistic merit. It owns a certain haggard beauty, a kind of bare-bones poetry. Besides, in an age that considers a word-spiral on a page or a flip-book at the end of a novel poetic, why can't room be made for Nabokov's translation as poetry? You could tell your guests, when they sample it from your bookshelf and then gasp at the lines, that it is poetically fastidious.

There is an old, politically-incorrect adage regarding the translation of a literary work from one language to another. A translation is like a woman: if it's beautiful, it's not faithul; if it's faithful, it's not beautiful. This saw kept buzzing through my brain while I was reading Vladimir Nabokov's 1964 English translation of Alexander Pushkin's novel-in-verse "Eugene Onegin". The poem has a unique place in Russian literature, required reading in schools -- required memorization, from what I understand. It seems an odd choice for school rooms, being an ironic love story with a sardonic edge; but then American students are required to read "Silas Marner", George Eliot's tale of greed and redemption. Nabokov, the author of the dazzling "Pale Fire", was born in Old Russia in 1899 and became a master of his native language as well as English. His version of Pushkin's masterpiece doesn't attempt to maintain the meter or rhyming scheme of the original, thereby leading to the danger of "piped-in background music", but presents a literal translation of "humble fidelity". There have been several English translations, and Nabokov sternly appraises them all. (Tchaikovsky's opera is dismissed as "slapdash".) He even goes so far as to compare his work with that of other translators. Thus, Onegin's flirtation with a serf in Book Four is translated by Nabokov as: "sometimes a white-skinned, dark-eyed girl's young and fresh kiss". In his notes Nabokov is amused by an earlier translator's "And, if a black-eyed girl permitted, sometimes a kiss as fresh as she" and is positively aghast at this rendering: "A kiss at times from some fair maiden, dark-eyed, with bright and youthful looks". Now, to an English-only reader, these don't really sound that ridiculous; but Nabokov, in his bilingual security, can be a caustic critic. (As evidently are some of his admirers: I've noticed in Amazon.com that "Eugene Onegin" causes some emotional responses.) By the way, the notes alone are worth the price of admission. Ferociously erudite, Nabokov can also be extremely witty, as when he is discussing Byronic heroes: "Judged by a number of early-nineteenth-century English and French novels that I have perused, the four main outlets or cures for ennui found by the characters suffering from it were: (1) making a nuisance of oneself; (2) committing suicide; (3) joining some well-organized religious group; and (4) quietly submitting to the situation." So, you've been alerted. Get out your dictionary (you'll need it), dust off your French (there's lots of it), and settle down to what might be called Nabokov's labor of tough love.

Ignorant Heersink ignobly writes, besides other trite nonsense, "But Nabokov's Pushkin is too literal to be any good. James Falen's trans. is far superior, ... Falen, while also literal, also is metered and rhymes. Nabokov's thuds."

In reply, I quote Nabokov from his Foreword, "Literal: rendering, as closely as the associative and syntactical capacities of another language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original. Only this is true translation."

Later, Nabokov asks: "can a rhymed poem Like Eugene Onegin Be truly translated with the retention of its rhymes? The answer, of course, is no. To reproduce the rhymes and yet translate the entire poem literally is mathematically impossible. But in losing its rhyme the poem loses its bloom, which neither marginal description nor the alchemy of a scholium can replace. Should one then content oneself with an exact rendering of the subject matter and forget all about form? Or should one still excuse an imitation of the poem's structure to which only twisted bits of sense stick here and there, by convincing oneself and one's public that in mutilating its meaning for the sake of a pleasure-measure rhyme one has the opportunity of prettifying or skipping the dry and difficult passages? I have been always amused by the stereotyped compliment that a reviewer pays the author of a "new translation." He says: "It reads smoothly." In other words, the hack who has never read the original, and does not know its language, praises an imitation as readable because easy platitudes have replaced in it the intricacies of which he is unaware. "Readable," indeed! A schoolboy's boner mocks the ancient masterpiece less than does its commercial poetization, and it is when the translator sets out to render the "spirit," and not the mere sense of the text, that he begins to traduce his author."

If you, like me, agree only with Heersink's sentiment that "it's worth while to read the very best Pushkin", I wholeheartedly endorse Nabokov's sublime Eugene Onegin, but on condition you find the original 4 volume set (vol. 1 Introduction Translation, vol. 2 Commentary One to Five, vol. 3 Commentary Six to End, vol. 4 1837 Russian Text). Nabokov's Commentaries are like the blood to the heart that is his translation, it "thuds" for a reason!

EO is the counterpoint: completing a simplified stylistic publishing triptych of Nabokov the writer, the lepidopterist, the scholar.

* Nabokov writes "Russians have, or had, a special name for smug philistinism -poshlust." From Essay 'Philistines and Philistinism'.

I completely agree with D.S. Heersink's assessment of Nabokov's Onegin translation. While undoubtedly accurate to the nth degree, it is tedious to read, to say the least. If you are studying Russian, perhaps the Nabokov translation might be appropriate; however, if you expect to derive pleasure from reading Eugene Onegin, by all means go with Falen.

Someone else commented on the fact that poetry cannot be translated. That is pure nonsense, though reading Nabokov's English version of Eugene Onegin, one would indeed come to the conclusion that a translation of the work from the Russian is impossible. To quickly correct that erroneous impression, pick up the James Falen translation.

Those interested in translation issues of all kinds should not miss Douglas Hofstadter's "Le ton beau de Marot" (which, incidentally, has much to say about Nabokov in general and his Eugene Onegin in particular). Come to think of it, you might want to read Hofstadter's own translation of Eugene Onegin. It's a little more playful and jazzy than Falen's. Which of the two is better is a matter of personal preference.

Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to read it without rhyme or meter. A student of Russian might glean some insight from Nabokov's literal translation, but lovers of poetry and beauty in language will not get much from it.

It really depends on what you are after. Nabokov gives you a detailed recipe, Falen a delicious dessert. If you want to know what it FEELS like to read Pushkin yourself, pick up a copy of Falen's (or Hofstadter's) translation. If you want to ANALYZE in painstaking detail what exactly every word means, go with Nabokov, but in that case be aware that you won't be reading verse. You'll know exactly what's in it, but it won't "taste" good.

Here in an elegant paperback of modest proportions is a revised edition of the correspondence of two of America's greatest writers, containing a few newly located letters. Edmund Wilson was already an established writer when Nabokov immigrated to this country around 1940, and Wilson's role in introducing Nabokov around and getting him writing assignments and teaching positions in America was crucial to Nabokov at a critical time. The two men write in fascinating manner about literature, life, writing gigs, and life. The correspondence is sad, too, because the two men seem almost willfully to misunderstand each other on such seemingly innnocuous issues as the nature of Russian and English prosody. Also Wilson as an erstwhile Communist was fascinated with Russia, attempted to learn the language, but thought he knew it better than he did, even trying to correct Nabokov who of course was a native speaker, not to mention a great writer, in Russian. Toward the end of their friendship, Wilson published a memoir that revealed his jealousy of Nabokov, and there was a break, only healed when Wilson was near death. Simon Karlinsky has written a wonderful introduction to the correspondence, that may be worth the price of the book in itself. Nabokov thought highly of Karlinsky, and Karlinsky explains the Russian background of early life behind some of the stances of Nabokov that we Americans find it hardest to understand. For example, why did Nabokov refuse any social role to the artist? For writers, for Nabokov or Wilson lovers, and I count myself both, this is an essential and irreplacable book

Louis Menand's recent judicious and exact appraisal in _The New Yorker_ of Edmund Wilson's work prompted me to read _Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya._ Wilson (Bunny) and Nabokov (Volodya) seem as though they ought to be soul mates. Both were Americans (one native, one transplanted) who loved European culture. Wilson was an early champion of Nabokov's work and wrote, often in Russian to the Russian-born Nabokov until the two men fell out over Nabokov's edition in 1965 of Pushkin's _Eugene Onegin._ These letters trace the arc of their relationship.

What struck me was that they often disagreed from the beginning, even as Wilson was arranging for Nabokov to be published by New York book publishers and by _The New Yorker._ Their arguments on prosody are reiterated time and again for decades. How could they stand it? Then a seven year gap occurred, after their dispute of _Onegin._ They never really patched it up-probably couldn't.

Through it all, it seems to me that Nabokov gets the better of the arguments. However, perhaps that is the case because his two (in my judgment) world masterpieces, _Lolita_ (1955) and _Pale Fire_ (1958) outdistance anything Wilson ever achieved. Nabokov's was the larger spirit, full of tenderness and wonder, with accents of the magic beyond the Wellfleet scholar, for all of his thoroughness and studiousness. How ironic that Nabokov should have been the academic, teaching for years at Wellesley and Cornell.

The special Nabokov touches are not in sufficient display in these letters. Partly it's that much of the correspondence is about business matters, and partly it's that Wilson, astonishingly for all he did for Nabokov, may not have been the right audience. About _Pale Fire_ Wilson says not a word. _Lolita_ he "like[s] . . . less than anything of yours I have read." How much of this was professional jealousy-Wilson was the author of fiction as well as reportage and criticism-it is impossible to say. One wonders what Wilson's wife Elena made of Nabokov's other fiction, since she clearly saw the merits of Lolita. Would there were more substantive letters from her.

All in all this is a limited, very sad book. Much cheerier to go back to Wilson's analyses of writing and writers, which, as Menand says, illuminate "as though a thousand watt bulb" were shone upon the work. Or to reread _Pnin, Laughter in the Dark, Speak, Memory,_ or the other enchantments that Nabokov could pull off.

I came to this endlessly fascinating collection of private letters between Nabokov and Wilson because of my Nabfandom.
Bunny Wilson, the influential literary critic, had helped Volodya, i.e. Vladimir Nabokov, the Russian refugee, with his settlement in the US in the 40s, with landing teaching jobs and publishing contacts. Nab is for sure the far more important of the two, he was a creative writer of supreme status in two languages, Russian and English. He had written a dozen important novels and many short stories, not to mention poems and plays, under the name Sirin, before immigrating to the US.
I do not know any comparable writer who was as bilingual as Nab, maybe Beckett as single exception. But then Beckett is not as inportant to me as Nab. (Conrad wrote in his second language, but produced nothing in his first.)
There were reasons for friendship, but also a vast potential for conflict. Nab was a solid anti-communist, to the point of being an outright reactionary in his late years, while Bunny was a leftist, at least for some time. He was what has been called a 'fellow traveller', but apparently did not embarrass himself overmuch with his pro-Soviet sympathy, before he could withdraw it in view of obvious misdevelopments.
One interest that they shared and which eventually led to the end of their friendship, was Russian literature. Wilson considered himself an expert, and was apparently quite proficient in the language. They fell out over two subjects, which came out during the fifties: main stone of contention was Nab's translation of Pushkin's Onegin. Nab's concept was loyalty to contents at the expense of poetic considerations, hence he produced a prose translation, and accompanied it with a massive volume of annotations. Wilson hated the approach and accused Nab of killing the poetry. They even started arguing about language details.
Second issue was Lolita, the book that brought Nab's breakthrough in English and made him rich, though partly for the wrong reasons, as can be seen from the two idiotic movies that were made after the novel. For one of the movies, Nab even received a script Oscar, though Kubrick had largely ignored Nab's original script and had produced a film of outstanding stupidity, which was only surpassed recently by an even worse remake with Jeremy Irons. Wilson disliked Lolita and made negative comments, which Nab was unwilling to forgive.
So the friendship came to an end, some late attempts at restoration did not lead very far into the core of the problem. I think that the end of the friendship was more honest than the continuation would have been.

When two opinionated men with such different tastes as Nabokov and Wilson write letters over a twenty year period, the result is going to be exciting. Their arguing about Faulkner and Norman Douglas or the gender of French nouns gives the friendship a bite. And we also see that each got more than friendship out of the relationship--Wilson got lessons in Russian and Nabokov got a boost into the American literary world. A fascinating read.

Never before have I read a published collection of previously private letters between two people, nor would it have occurred to me to do so now were it not for the fact that I enjoyed Nabokov's novel PNIN immensely, after which my wife gave me this collection as a Valentines Day gift. I am delighted that she did so.

My immediate reaction to this book is that I am swimming in a hodgepodge of impressions and vaguely related thoughts: What manner of ego leads a person, or in this instance two people, to save years of personal correspondence? On the other hand, how fortunate we are that computer technology and its e-mail capability did not exist for Wilson or Nabokov. Had their correspondence been in the form of e-mails and considering the eventual failure of every hard drive and floppy disk, these letters would most likely have never survived to be discovered by a later editor and publisher.

Since they were retained, since they did survive, and since they have been published, what do we actually receive from these collected letters? We do find wonderful insights into the personalities of both Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov. We see some of the very human delights, worries, triumphs and defeats of these two literary men. We get a peek into some of their desires and projects that never came to fruition. We see occasional frustrations. In brief, we see beyond the beauties of their published works and come to understand something of the minds that produced those works.

I was particularly struck by their elaborations, analyses and arguments over English and Russian poetry, especially its scansion, an aspect of poetic analysis that, I admit, has never attracted my interest, but to witness Wilson and Nabokov disputing it is quite entertaining. Their arguments over the quality of other, widely read authors are also enlightening, Nabokov dismissing Faulkner, Henry James, George Eliot (and many others) while Wilson thought well of them. Nabokov thought Stendhal "worthless" and described D. H. Lawrence as an artistic mediocrity. Amusingly, when confronted by a critical review of his own work, Nabokov noted that it was prompted by the fact that he himself had earlier "demolished" a novel written by the reviewer's wife! The point of all this? Perhaps it is that we should take anything a reviewer or critic writes about another author with a large grain of salt.

Some interesting history is also to be gleaned from these letters. Having read history books in school that overlooked this fact, I was fascinated to learn that Lenin was once much admired by American intelligentsia, who were quite convinced that his Bolsheviks had indeed created a utopian society, although it was subsequently kidnaped and degraded by Stalin, conveniently ignoring both the liberal movement under the czars and the terrors actually inflicted by Lenin and his followers. Equally fascinating was the fact that as recently as 1957 the British government requested the French government to join it in prohibiting the printing of books in English that might embarrass the moral sensibilities of English readers, and that the French government, for a short while at least, actually did so. Obviously, this hindered the publication of books such as Nabokov's LOLITA.

Beyond such marvelous revelations in the letters themselves, a twenty-one page introduction by Simon Karlinsky, professor emeritus of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of California, Berkeley, provides the reader a "mini course" in the social, cultural and intellectual backgrounds of both Wilson and Nabokov. It is exceedingly well done and provides a wealth of information that goes far in helping the reader understand some of the factors that formed the personalities of the two men whose letters he is about to read.

For whom is this collection of value (other than those who are pursuing formal studies of Wilson or Nabokov, of course)? I would suggest that any reader who has enjoyed the literary creations of either man and who is curious about the writer behind those creations will appreciate DEAR BUNNY, DEAR VOLODYE. Be warned, though, that those who have read the works of only one of these men and who become introduced to both through these letters will surely want to add the works of the other to their "must read" lists. After all, having shared their personal correspondence, we are now intimates of both authors, and their other works do beckon!

Vladimir Nabokov had synesthesia, a "mixing of the senses" that in his case manifested itself as "audition coloree" or the "involuntary attribution of colors to the sound of letters."

In this thin volume, Jean Holabird seeks to interpret Nabokov's "delightful account of his own vivid version of the condition" through visual renderings of portions of the text of Nabokov's autobiography Speak, Memory where he described how he saw every letter of the alphabet in color, e.g. "The long a of the English alphabet has for me the tint of weathered wood" and "Noodle-limp l" (the lowercase l written in script like spaghetti twisted to form a loop).

After "reading" the book, my husband said he would not mind having synesthesia himself - proof positive that Holabird made the condition appear appealing through her interpretation of it where Nabokov was concerned, at least.

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.

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