"Thus life has been an endless
line of land
receding endlessly… And so that’s that,
you say under your
breath, and wave your hand,
and then your handkerchief, and then your
hat."
Razumnaya writes that "The Original
of Laura”..."is Vladimir Nabokov’s latest previously unpublished prose work
to descend upon the market. One is wary of saying “last” rather than “latest,”
as Nabokov’s “Butterflies,” ...was similarly trumped up to be “the last
important unpublished fiction by Nabokov.” Dmitri Nabokov, the writer’s son,
translated the Russian texts for Nabokov’s “Butterflies.” He now figures
as the editor of his father’s unfinished and deeply incomplete final
novel...Dmitri Nabokov’s introduction...in a tone that one has to understand,
for lack of other plausible interpretation, as triumphant...His mannered
description of Nabokov’s death—“My mother and I sat near him as, choking on the
food I was urging him to consume, he succumbed, in three convulsive gasps, to
congestive bronchitis,”—astonishes not only with its affectation but also with
the parricidal relish of the moment...Dmitri Nabokov’s judgment to preserve and
publish “The Original of Laura” as a popular edition lends itself but to trivial
gains....The unfinished novel, whose prose, prurient and unpruned, makes the sum
of Nabokov’s output less, not more, impressive. Laura is no “maddening
masterpiece” ...“Laura,” an unfinished work of indisputable scholarly interest,
is ill-suited for being published as a lavish gift edition. Likewise, it seems
strange of its publisher to proffer it coyly as a kind of literary a game for
grown-ups, since “Laura” is a book about dying—not in the manner of Lolita, as
in Martin Amis’s clear-sighted synopsis: "…once the book
begins, Humbert’s childhood love Annabel dies, at thirteen (typhus), and his
first wife Valeria dies (also in childbirth), and his second wife Charlotte dies
(‘a bad accident’—though of course this death is structural), and Charlotte’s
friend Jean Farlow dies at thirty-three (cancer), and Lolita’s young seducer
Charlie Holmes dies (Korea), and her old seducer Quilty dies (murder: another
structural exit). And then Humbert dies (coronary thrombosis). And then Lolita
dies. And her daughter dies..."The striking feature of Dmitri
Nabokov’s edition of “Laura” is the wresting of authorial control, by a son,
from a father whose deep obsession with control was manifest throughout his
literary career, including this final unfinished
novel..."
JM: Considering the present
discussion on "Nabokov and Cruelty" I must ask: who has been cruel to
whom? Must reviewers follow "neosincerity" ( I loved the falsehood in
this designation by Art Spiegelman - but I still don't know what it
means), or distribute unwanted truths?