Vladimir Nabokov
A book I’ve tried to read several times, but didn’t get into. I’m not sure why, having sat down with it with some more focus I found it extremely readable, entertaining and fast paced. It’s also quite funny, and overall captures the lighter expression of life with a lot more substance and general engagement than Glory did. The book is all about the titular professor Pnin, with his odd manerisms and only partial successful adaptation to the United States, and the array of odd encounters he has. It’s clearly aiming for less ambitious and more surface story than Lolita or Pale Fire, and on that grounds it succeeds, making a fun, interesting and well written book. At the same time, by the end it doesn’t seem to have offered as much of insight or underlying meta-drama as I’ve come to expect with Nabokov. The degree to which it’s autobigoraphical may be debated, on the whole certainly less than Transparent Things, and it should be said that this factor doesn’t inhibit the presentation of deep intimacy with the subject. That’s what being a skilled writer means, one can convey more than just their own life with utter conviction.
Off and on in this novel I was reminded of an East European professor I know, not quite as quirky or generally off beat but having some similar issues in incomprehensibility with American youth, alienation from modern society and less than fully effective academia. At times this worked in favor of my pleasure in the account, making it easier to sympathize with him and his perspective. At other times it undercut it, in points where the story went for comedy and I was reminded of the professor, and the way I’ve generally found his situation rather sad.
Better than: Glory by Vladimir Nabokov
Worse than: Bend Sinister by Vladimir Nabokov
Showing posts with label nabokov. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nabokov. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Glory
Vladimir Nabokov
For the third post in a row, I’m obliged to report ’not bad, but far from the author’s best’. This one just didn’t engage me the way I had been expecting, and while the characters, indiviudal moments and overall writing were great I felt a strong resistance to buying into the plot. This work was a lot warmer and less grim than Lolita or the like, but perhaps partly in consequence it also felt like it had lower stakes, lacking real urgency. Focused on the life of a Russian emigre, describing a type of imagined biographical aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution. Romance, travel and a type of distorted coming of age also feature heavily.
The story is at its best in little details of the time, bringing in a sense of the quiet angst and humor involved with a life on the magins of big historical events.
The characterization feels authentically incomplete, presenting both solid personality details as well as a type of internal tension and flux that promotes a more active personality. As always with Nabokov the prose is first rate, and a lot of people have found the basic story more engaging than I did. It feels like the sort of book that has all the elements one should like, and I’d recommend it, but with the reservation that for whatver ineffable reason it wasn’t fully enjoyable for me. This review is ending up being more a critique of my own reading experience than the book itself, but I’m left unable to just sign off on it in the straightforward fashion on some level I feel the book deserves.
Worse than: Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov
Better than: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
For the third post in a row, I’m obliged to report ’not bad, but far from the author’s best’. This one just didn’t engage me the way I had been expecting, and while the characters, indiviudal moments and overall writing were great I felt a strong resistance to buying into the plot. This work was a lot warmer and less grim than Lolita or the like, but perhaps partly in consequence it also felt like it had lower stakes, lacking real urgency. Focused on the life of a Russian emigre, describing a type of imagined biographical aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution. Romance, travel and a type of distorted coming of age also feature heavily.
The story is at its best in little details of the time, bringing in a sense of the quiet angst and humor involved with a life on the magins of big historical events.
The characterization feels authentically incomplete, presenting both solid personality details as well as a type of internal tension and flux that promotes a more active personality. As always with Nabokov the prose is first rate, and a lot of people have found the basic story more engaging than I did. It feels like the sort of book that has all the elements one should like, and I’d recommend it, but with the reservation that for whatver ineffable reason it wasn’t fully enjoyable for me. This review is ending up being more a critique of my own reading experience than the book itself, but I’m left unable to just sign off on it in the straightforward fashion on some level I feel the book deserves.
Worse than: Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov
Better than: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Monday, January 4, 2010
Look at the Harlequins!
by Vladimir Nabokov, 1974.
When reading all the fiction of a given author[1] I make it a point not to go in chronological order. I don't necessarily mind starting off with an earlier book first (although it rarely works out that way) but I hate the idea of ending my read-cycle with the last work published. With deceased authors, at least, for living ones it's not inherently depressing and is basically likely to happen if I outrace them yet they're still publishing. However, with authors already gone, their whole corpus turned around and ready to be dissected and museum display, I prefer to read the concluding work some point earlier, end with something more midrange in the career. Accordingly I've still a number of others works ahead, but have recently read Nabokov's last complete book, with his recently published fragments The Original of Laura impending.
So, the actual work. I've gathered from incidental references, both the New York Times book review and Adam Robert's blog, that Look at the Harlequins! is regarded as one of Nabokov's lesser works, off-focus from even his midrange stuff and a larger magnitude below works like Lolita or Pale Fire; that Nabokov fictionalizes his autobiography to no great end, and that the narrative collapses away to defeatism. For my part, I liked it well enough, but can't deny the criticism. The edition I checked out from the library for this end was a collection of Nabokov's last few novels, and compared with Transparent Things or (my personal favorite) Ada it is a lesser work. But I'd still say it's a major accomplishment, engaging and interesting, better than most novels. The prose is as beautiful as always, the dialog and description both first rate. One of the things that most struck me in this work--and something I'll have to look for in others--is the effectiveness of description of the body, its significance, power and fragility. A brief scene of the protagonist putting on a rob and going by the window carries such pathos, from age, from position, from the not completely defeated aspirations--it's precisely in the banality of such small moments that Nabokov shines.
On the larger questions of plot and characterization one runs into the central issue of judging a fictionalized autobiography. It's difficult to assess how much is gained by this approach, that is to say the broader relevance of this approach beyond Nabokov's own life. I wasn't as bothered going through by the question of how much Vadimovich's life resembled Nabokov--though I do have a strong urge to read Speak, Memory now. I was most curious on how the explicit political views compared, the sensory details and subjective actions I'm prepared to accept as fundamentally novelistic. And in that light it's a worthwhile story, tracking Vadimovich's travels and life of quiet escape. Like Ada (although less effectively) the story's structure grounds memory, with both explicit judgement and
So, in conclusion a very strong work which I heartily recommend. I'm pretty sure that everyone wouldn't enjoy it, though, and I'm not even sure that I'm in the ideal position to read it--perhaps I would like it more or less if I'd read all of his earlier work and had a closer awareness of his life (although the Vintage Three Volume edition had a nice detailed timeline at the back that provided a fair bit of context). Maybe my approach to not ending with the last is flawed after all. Although perhaps this (call it a) novel is most valuable not for the direct story but for the way it destabilizes categories of thought and memory, including an explicit destabilizing of fact/fiction and story/self. Of course all fiction has an element of the auto-biographical in it, but making this trend much stronger can cause some interesting breakdown.
This work reminded me of but was better than: Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year.
This work reminded me of but was worse than: Nabokov's Ada.
----
[1] Which I have currently done with Joe Haldeman, Frank Herbert, Iain Banks, Philip K. Dick, Robert J. Sawyer, Vernor Vinge, Robert Charles Wilson and Ian McEwan, FYI. I am seeking to finish all the works of China Mieville, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nancy Kress, Toni Morrison, Ursula K. Le Guin and Vladimir Nabokov, further FYI. Although technically the whole blog fits into FYI territory, but this list--and most footnotes--are more so.
When reading all the fiction of a given author[1] I make it a point not to go in chronological order. I don't necessarily mind starting off with an earlier book first (although it rarely works out that way) but I hate the idea of ending my read-cycle with the last work published. With deceased authors, at least, for living ones it's not inherently depressing and is basically likely to happen if I outrace them yet they're still publishing. However, with authors already gone, their whole corpus turned around and ready to be dissected and museum display, I prefer to read the concluding work some point earlier, end with something more midrange in the career. Accordingly I've still a number of others works ahead, but have recently read Nabokov's last complete book, with his recently published fragments The Original of Laura impending.
So, the actual work. I've gathered from incidental references, both the New York Times book review and Adam Robert's blog, that Look at the Harlequins! is regarded as one of Nabokov's lesser works, off-focus from even his midrange stuff and a larger magnitude below works like Lolita or Pale Fire; that Nabokov fictionalizes his autobiography to no great end, and that the narrative collapses away to defeatism. For my part, I liked it well enough, but can't deny the criticism. The edition I checked out from the library for this end was a collection of Nabokov's last few novels, and compared with Transparent Things or (my personal favorite) Ada it is a lesser work. But I'd still say it's a major accomplishment, engaging and interesting, better than most novels. The prose is as beautiful as always, the dialog and description both first rate. One of the things that most struck me in this work--and something I'll have to look for in others--is the effectiveness of description of the body, its significance, power and fragility. A brief scene of the protagonist putting on a rob and going by the window carries such pathos, from age, from position, from the not completely defeated aspirations--it's precisely in the banality of such small moments that Nabokov shines.
On the larger questions of plot and characterization one runs into the central issue of judging a fictionalized autobiography. It's difficult to assess how much is gained by this approach, that is to say the broader relevance of this approach beyond Nabokov's own life. I wasn't as bothered going through by the question of how much Vadimovich's life resembled Nabokov--though I do have a strong urge to read Speak, Memory now. I was most curious on how the explicit political views compared, the sensory details and subjective actions I'm prepared to accept as fundamentally novelistic. And in that light it's a worthwhile story, tracking Vadimovich's travels and life of quiet escape. Like Ada (although less effectively) the story's structure grounds memory, with both explicit judgement and
So, in conclusion a very strong work which I heartily recommend. I'm pretty sure that everyone wouldn't enjoy it, though, and I'm not even sure that I'm in the ideal position to read it--perhaps I would like it more or less if I'd read all of his earlier work and had a closer awareness of his life (although the Vintage Three Volume edition had a nice detailed timeline at the back that provided a fair bit of context). Maybe my approach to not ending with the last is flawed after all. Although perhaps this (call it a) novel is most valuable not for the direct story but for the way it destabilizes categories of thought and memory, including an explicit destabilizing of fact/fiction and story/self. Of course all fiction has an element of the auto-biographical in it, but making this trend much stronger can cause some interesting breakdown.
This work reminded me of but was better than: Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year.
This work reminded me of but was worse than: Nabokov's Ada.
----
[1] Which I have currently done with Joe Haldeman, Frank Herbert, Iain Banks, Philip K. Dick, Robert J. Sawyer, Vernor Vinge, Robert Charles Wilson and Ian McEwan, FYI. I am seeking to finish all the works of China Mieville, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nancy Kress, Toni Morrison, Ursula K. Le Guin and Vladimir Nabokov, further FYI. Although technically the whole blog fits into FYI territory, but this list--and most footnotes--are more so.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)