The Enchanter: An Adventure in the Land of Nabokov [Paperback]

As a half-century reader and lover of Nabokov's writings, I purchased this title (in ebook form) when I first heard about it in a Seattle Times review. While I find the biographical information about its author quite intriguing, and wish her well, I fail to see the bases for all the gushing reviews. The book is quite skimpy (and I don't mean pages but substantive content). To me it is fey (in its "affected" sense) to the extreme. If it would serve to bring more readers to the joys and wonders of Nabokov (possibly one of its intentions) I believe it quite fails. In fact, on that basis, I think it is a real turn-off. I have trouble believing that Nabokov himself would have approved -- although he might have appreciated meeting and conversing with its author, as his son obviously did, and as I likely would myself (although I don't see her jumping at the opportunity!). Yes, I'm an old crank.

One of these books that you can live without, written by an author who uses a big name as a prop for her own ambitions, and who strikes you as a cosseted, infatuated young writer, without real life experience and nothing interesting to say, tittering between daring to be a writer herself, and hiding behind so called "creative criticism." Enchanting at first, then simply pretentious; in short a waste of time. Good for literary students in need of cliff notes about Nabokov.

Since 30 years I was fully aware that Sirin NaBoakOff was one of the great fiction artists of the 20th century. I didn't need a young beautiful Iranian woman (born in Paris, apparently living in the US, teaching in Harvard, writing multilingual reviews for leading papers of the world) to come and tell me about it. She was born just shortly before he died. Her family shared similarities of fate with Nab's: like his father had to take his family out of Russia after the Soviet revolution, hers had to flee Iran when the Mullahs took over.

My personal entry to Nabokov's wonderland was Pale Fire, and I was hooked for good. At a later stage I read Lolita. That had made him rich and famous and infamous, but I half regretted that he wrote it, though not because there is anything wrong with it. It is just so prone to misinterpretation.
Several of my friends around amazon are unwilling to appreciate Nabokov. Lolita was frequently the trigger for that lamentable negativity. One of my friends, a very funny woman normally, even considers Nabokov tedious. Amazing.
Obviously, he was also not appreciated by the left wing critics of the 60s and 70s, which made him disappear somewhat from public awareness. That was, as far as I remember, the reason why I got to know him so late in my reading 'career'. I do remember that I owe my meeting with Pale Fire to a book by Anthony Burgess from the 80s. He published his list of '99 best English novels', with reviews, and that included Pale Fire and Lolita.

I was beginning to think that Nabokov works only for grumpy old men.
And here comes Lila Azam Zanganeh and is as enchanted by Nabokov as I am. That makes me feel younger by decades. I hope she finds a new audience and does not just preach to the choir.

She chose a book title that is itself a provocation: `Enchanter' was the title of an initially unpublished precursor to Lolita. Clearly Nabokov had been preoccupied with the pedophilia subject. Does that make him a pedophile? Hardly. He also wrote stories about incest and murder. Does that incriminate him? Hardly.

LAZ bases her Nab-rave mainly on 3 of his books: Lolita, Ada, and Speak, Memory. Only the last of these three (written first) is among Nab's very best, in my view, but Lila raves. She structures her non-essay like a trip through Alice in Wonderland. (As a student in Cambridge, Nabokov had translated Alice into Russian.) The book is biographical in a non-pedantic way, and text oriented.
I can't think of a better introduction to whet skeptics' appetite for more.