- Hardcover: 278 pages
- Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group; 1 edition (17 Nov 2009)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0307271897
- ISBN-13: 978-0307271891
- Product Dimensions: 16.8 x 4.3 x 24.1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,454,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
There are forty sentences alone that make this volume worth having. (Ian McEwan )
This edition is a triumph of the book maker's art… The Original of Laura is magic right through, from the dust jacket, in sideways-fading white on black with just the merest flicks of gules, past the cloth cover that reproduces the last words of Nabokov the novelist, to the heavy gray pages divided between, on the top half, photographic reproductions of the 138 file cards, front and back, and, on the bottom half, the text in print, including misspellings, slips of the pen, blank spaces, all… the book is deeply interesting. (John Banville, Bookforum )
It’s like seeing an unfinished Michelangelo sculpture—one of those rough, half-formed giants straining to step out of its marble block. It’s even more powerful, to a different part of the brain, than the polish of a David or a Lolita. (New York magazine )
…“Laura” will beckon and beguile Nabokov fans, who will find many of the author’s perennial themes and obsessions percolating. (The New York Times )
…this tantalizing, fascinating, occasionally perplexing manuscript. Pity he didn’t get to finish it. Fortunate we get to see it at all. (The Christian Science Monitor )
What literary news could be more thrilling? (Robert McCrum, The Observer )
There are enough Nabokovian touches…to tantalize any devotee of the English language. (James Marcus, The Los Angeles Times ) --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
This edition is a triumph of the book maker's art… The Original of Laura is magic right through, from the dust jacket, in sideways-fading white on black with just the merest flicks of gules, past the cloth cover that reproduces the last words of Nabokov the novelist, to the heavy gray pages divided between, on the top half, photographic reproductions of the 138 file cards, front and back, and, on the bottom half, the text in print, including misspellings, slips of the pen, blank spaces, all… the book is deeply interesting. (John Banville, Bookforum )
It’s like seeing an unfinished Michelangelo sculpture—one of those rough, half-formed giants straining to step out of its marble block. It’s even more powerful, to a different part of the brain, than the polish of a David or a Lolita. (New York magazine )
…“Laura” will beckon and beguile Nabokov fans, who will find many of the author’s perennial themes and obsessions percolating. (The New York Times )
…this tantalizing, fascinating, occasionally perplexing manuscript. Pity he didn’t get to finish it. Fortunate we get to see it at all. (The Christian Science Monitor )
What literary news could be more thrilling? (Robert McCrum, The Observer )
There are enough Nabokovian touches…to tantalize any devotee of the English language. (James Marcus, The Los Angeles Times ) --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Product Description
When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions for his heirs to burn the 138 handwritten index cards that made up the rough draft of his final and unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. But Nabokov’s wife, Vera, could not bear to destroy her husband’s last work, and when she died, the fate of the manuscript fell to her son. Dmitri Nabokov, now seventy-five—the Russian novelist’s only surviving heir, and translator of many of his books—has wrestled for three decades with the decision of whether to honor his father’s wish or preserve for posterity the last piece of writing of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. His decision finally to allow publication of the fragmented narrative—dark yet playful, preoccupied with mortality—affords us one last experience of Nabokov’s magnificent creativity, the quintessence of his unparalleled body of work.
Photos of the handwritten index cards accompany the text. They are perforated and can be removed and rearranged, as the author likely did when he was writing the novel.
Photos of the handwritten index cards accompany the text. They are perforated and can be removed and rearranged, as the author likely did when he was writing the novel.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Absolutely amazing, sublime. Nabokov's notes make it unique and a must have not only for those who adore Nabokov, but for all book lovers. Best Christmas present.
20 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I hope it will not be misunderstood if I say I'm glad Vladimir Nabokov didn't complete this novel. I love it, just the way you are.
The fragmented, the untidy, the smudged, the not-quite-laid-down-yet, the eccentric, the unfinished, up-in-the-air, down-in-the-dumps... are exactly the qualities of language that get me excited. Especially when the novel is dealing with death, self-erasure, deletion, writing, and the-state-of-having-a-massive-stomach-shaped-gap-at-the-centre-of-your-self-assessment.
Nabokov fans need not worry. There are exquisite contortions of expression (that's at least 1/3rd of the reason why we read him, right?) aplenty (especially earlier on in the novel.)
Why else do we read him, again? Oh yes, his riotous wit, deliciously exquisitely thin irony and bald brave explorations of undesired desire and sexually-chagrined foibles. Well that's all here too.
A letter to Chip Kidd: You're the best damn book-designer out there. You can see how striking, classy, disconcerting and subtly faded the dustjacket is. Slip it off and you have a pencil-smudged hard cover to die for. It's fun. Inside the pages include the index cards Nabokov composed on, alongside a plain-text version. It's fascinating, stunning and beautiful and seductive and playful and every page felt like an event. It felt like the novel was coming together, emerging as I read. It is a masterstroke to see the smudges on the reverse of the index cards; what a little insignificant impression we leave behind us.
Dmitri's introduction is interesting. I found the descriptions of Nabokov's last while a little upsetting to be honest. Especially the slightly bizarre tale about him falling while butterfly hunting and returning with his shorts askew to the hotel. I don't know, I just so love those old photographs of a curious, mad, confident playful man with a net.
Laura sits beside Transparent Things, the one about the beheading, the eye, Sebastien Knight, Bend Sinister and Mary, Pnin, and The Enchanter among Nabokov's slighter works. But presented like this there is a temptation to read it as a more ambitious work, perhaps alongside Pale Fire, Lolita,, ADA and Look at The Harlequins. I forgot King Queen Knave that is great too, and sort of middling in length. Just speaking of size. It's my sense that Laura will take its place alongside these great books. I mean, it deserves to. It's much more than a well-presented curiousity. It is in a sense a culmination of Nabokov's art- a last foray into the 'venn-diagram'ish themes of power, control, writing, desire and narcissism. But it's a novel that resists culmination, fading away, effacing and evading instead.
This is a very moving and funny and intriguing book.
The fragmented, the untidy, the smudged, the not-quite-laid-down-yet, the eccentric, the unfinished, up-in-the-air, down-in-the-dumps... are exactly the qualities of language that get me excited. Especially when the novel is dealing with death, self-erasure, deletion, writing, and the-state-of-having-a-massive-stomach-shaped-gap-at-the-centre-of-your-self-assessment.
Nabokov fans need not worry. There are exquisite contortions of expression (that's at least 1/3rd of the reason why we read him, right?) aplenty (especially earlier on in the novel.)
Why else do we read him, again? Oh yes, his riotous wit, deliciously exquisitely thin irony and bald brave explorations of undesired desire and sexually-chagrined foibles. Well that's all here too.
A letter to Chip Kidd: You're the best damn book-designer out there. You can see how striking, classy, disconcerting and subtly faded the dustjacket is. Slip it off and you have a pencil-smudged hard cover to die for. It's fun. Inside the pages include the index cards Nabokov composed on, alongside a plain-text version. It's fascinating, stunning and beautiful and seductive and playful and every page felt like an event. It felt like the novel was coming together, emerging as I read. It is a masterstroke to see the smudges on the reverse of the index cards; what a little insignificant impression we leave behind us.
Dmitri's introduction is interesting. I found the descriptions of Nabokov's last while a little upsetting to be honest. Especially the slightly bizarre tale about him falling while butterfly hunting and returning with his shorts askew to the hotel. I don't know, I just so love those old photographs of a curious, mad, confident playful man with a net.
Laura sits beside Transparent Things, the one about the beheading, the eye, Sebastien Knight, Bend Sinister and Mary, Pnin, and The Enchanter among Nabokov's slighter works. But presented like this there is a temptation to read it as a more ambitious work, perhaps alongside Pale Fire, Lolita,, ADA and Look at The Harlequins. I forgot King Queen Knave that is great too, and sort of middling in length. Just speaking of size. It's my sense that Laura will take its place alongside these great books. I mean, it deserves to. It's much more than a well-presented curiousity. It is in a sense a culmination of Nabokov's art- a last foray into the 'venn-diagram'ish themes of power, control, writing, desire and narcissism. But it's a novel that resists culmination, fading away, effacing and evading instead.
This is a very moving and funny and intriguing book.
Format:Hardcover
The packaging is superb. The small collection of index cards that Nabokov had begun writing to produce the framework of his intended novel has been made to look like a complete novel. But it is far from that: it is an interesting insight into Nabokov's creative process. If it were sold as such it would deserve a higher rating.
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