''The Original of Laura'' is an
incomplete novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...
by
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...
, which he was writing at the time of his death in 1977. It was published by Nabokov's son
Dmitri Nabokov
Dmitri Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: Дми́трий Влади́мирович Набо́ков; May 10, 1934February 22, 2012) was an American opera singer and translator. Born in Berlin, he was the only child of Russian parents: author Vlad ...
in 2009, despite the author's request that the work be destroyed upon his death.
Commenters lambasted the quality of the writing and admonished Nabokov's executor for publishing the work in that state.
Plot
Based on discussions with unidentified scholars, ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'' summarizes the plot as follows:
[
]Philip Wild, an enormously corpulent scholar, is married to a slender, flighty and wildly promiscuous woman
Promiscuity tends to be frowned upon by many societies that expect most members to have committed, long-term relationships.
Among women, as well as men, inclination for sex outside committed relationships is correlated with a high libido, but evo ...
called Flora. Flora initially appealed to Wild because of another woman that he’d been in love with, Aurora Lee. Death and what lies beyond it, a theme which fascinated Nabokov from a very young age, are central. The book opens at a party and there follow four continuous scenes, after which the novel becomes more fragmented. It is not clear how old Wild is, but he is preoccupied with his own death and sets about obliterating himself from the toes upwards through meditation, a sort of deliberate self-inflicted self-erasure.
Background
According to his diaries, Nabokov first noted his work on the project on December 1, 1974, under the title ''Dying Is Fun''. By the summer of 1976, he noted that the story was completed in his mind, but by then his health was failing rapidly.[
When Nabokov died on July 2, 1977, he was still working on the novel, since retitled ''The Opposite of Laura'' and finally ''The Original of Laura''. The incomplete manuscript consists of Nabokov's own handwriting across 138 index cards, the equivalent of about 30 manuscript pages.][ The use of index cards was normal for Nabokov, the basis of many of his works, such as '']Lolita
''Lolita'' is a 1955 novel written by Russian-American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist and unreliable narrator, a middle-aged literature professor under the pseudonym Humbert Humber ...
'' and ''Pale Fire
''Pale Fire'' is a 1962 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is presented as a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire", written by the fictional poet John Shade, with a foreword, lengthy commentary and index written by Shade's neighbor and academic col ...
''.
Executor's dilemma
Nabokov was a perfectionist and made it clear that, upon his death, any unfinished work was to be destroyed. Nabokov's wife, Véra, and their son, Dmitri
Dmitri (russian: Дми́трий); Church Slavic form: Dimitry or Dimitri (); ancient Russian forms: D'mitriy or Dmitr ( or ) is a male given name common in Orthodoxy, Orthodox Christian culture, the Russian version of Greek language, Greek De ...
, became his literary executor
The literary estate of a deceased author consists mainly of the copyright and other intellectual property rights of published works, including film, translation rights, original manuscripts of published work, unpublished or partially completed wo ...
s, but ultimately ignored his will, and did not destroy the manuscript. Dmitri noted that Véra Nabokov "failed to carry out this task, her procrastination due, 'to age, weakness and immeasurable love.'"[Michiko Kakutani, "In a Sketchy Hall of Mirrors, Nabokov Jousts With Death and Reality", ''New York Times,'' November 10, 2009.] They placed it in a Swiss bank vault
A bank vault is a secure space where money, valuables, records, and documents are stored. It is intended to protect their contents from theft, unauthorized use, fire, natural disasters, and other threats, much like a safe. Unlike safes, vaults a ...
, where it remained until its eventual publication. In 1991 Véra died, leaving Dmitri Nabokov as the sole literary executor.[Craig Offman (1999)]
Salon Books Article
Retrieved January 29, 2005 Dmitri wavered on whether to destroy the manuscript. On the one hand, he felt bound to uphold his "filial duty" and grant his father's request, but he also said the novel "would have been a brilliant, original, and potentially totally radical book, in the literary sense very different from the rest of his oeuvre."[ Dmitri noted "his father, ... or his 'father’s shade,' would not 'have opposed the release of ‘Laura’ once ‘Laura’ had survived the hum of time this long.'"]
Scholars and enthusiasts disagreed over whether the manuscript should be made public; as the (London) ''Times
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events, and a fundamental quantity of measuring systems.
Time or times may also refer to:
Temporal measurement
* Time in physics, defined by its measurement
* Time standard, civil time specific ...
'' posed the question: "the demands of the literary world versus the posthumous rights of an author over his art." The younger Nabokov remarked cryptically that one other person possessed a key to the manuscript, but did not say who that person was.[ Like Nabokov, many observers were on the fence about the disposition of the manuscript. The author ]Edmund White
Edmund Valentine White III (born 1940) is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics. Since 1999 he has been a professor at Princeton University. France made him (and later ) de l'Ordr ...
compared the author's last request to Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...
's request to destroy the ''Aeneid
The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan_War#Sack_of_Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to ...
'' (ignored by Augustus Caesar
Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pri ...
) or Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...
's request to destroy his papers (ignored by Max Brod
Max Brod ( he, מקס ברוד; 27 May 1884 – 20 December 1968) was a German-speaking Bohemian, later Israeli, author, composer, and journalist.
Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is best remembered as the friend and biog ...
).[ Nabokov weighed in on ]Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; uk, link=no, Мико́ла Васи́льович Го́голь, translit=Mykola Vasyliovych Hohol; (russian: Яновский; uk, Яновський, translit=Yanovskyi) ( – ) was a Russian novelist, ...
's decision to burn the sequels to ''Dead Souls
''Dead Souls'' (russian: «Мёртвые души», ''Mjórtvyje dúshi'') is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. The novel chronicles the travels and adv ...
.''
The journalist Ron Rosenbaum
Ronald Rosenbaum (born November 27, 1946) is an American literary journalist, literary critic, and novelist.
Life and career
Rosenbaum was born into a Jewish family in New York City, New York and grew up in Bay Shore, New York. He graduated fr ...
, who corresponded with Dmitri Nabokov, said that the son had been inclined toward destroying the manuscript, swayed by criticism of his father, such as allegations of plagiarism that arose from the discovery of a 1916 German short story, "Lolita" with some similarities to Nabokov's work, or critics who had interpreted Nabokov's work as suggesting that Nabokov was sexually abused.[
In April 2008 Dmitri Nabokov told many publications, including ''Nabokov Online Journal'' and '']Der Spiegel
''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...
'', that he intended to publish the manuscript after all.[Van Gelder, Lawrence. ]
Son Plans to Publish Nabokov's Last Novel
. ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', April 28, 2008. Retrieved April 29, 2008. In the ''Nabokov Online Journal'' interview with Suellen Stringer-Hye, Nabokov stated that he had never seriously considered burning the manuscript. Once Dmitri decided to publish the manuscript, "several short excerpts were published in advance in the Sunday Times Magazine, as well as Playboy, to which Nabokov was a contributor."
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
''Newsnight
''Newsnight'' (or ''BBC Newsnight'') is BBC Two's news and current affairs programme, providing in-depth investigation and analysis of the stories behind the day's headlines. The programme is broadcast on weekdays at 22:30. and is also availa ...
'' predicted that the novel's publication was "likely to be the literary event of 2009."
Publication of excerpts
In the late 1990s Dmitri Nabokov read a portion of the book to a group of about 20 scholars at a centenary celebration of his father at Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
. The scholars Brian Boyd
Brian David Boyd (born 30 July 1952) is a professor of literature known primarily as an expert on the life and works of author Vladimir Nabokov and on Literary Darwinism, literature and evolution. He is a University Distinguished Professor in ...
and Lara Delage-Toriel claim to have read the manuscript. In 1999 two passages from ''The Original of Laura'' were published in ''The Nabokovian'', a scholarly publication devoted to Nabokov. Zoran Kuzmanovich, a scholar of Nabokov, said of passages he heard at Cornell University, "It sounds as though the story is about aging but holding onto the original love of one's life."[
The German weekly '']Die Zeit
''Die Zeit'' (, "The Time") is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles.
History
The ...
'' in its 14 August 2008 issue reproduced some of Nabokov's original index cards which had been obtained by journalist Malte Herwig Malte Herwig (born 2 October 1972) is a German-born author, journalist, and literary critic. His articles have appeared widely in U.S., British and German publications, including The New York Times, The Observer, Vanity Fair, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, ...
. In the accompanying article, Herwig concluded that "Laura", although fragmentary, was "vintage Nabokov".
According to a 2006 account of the book by Lara Delage-Toriel, the narrator and protagonist of Nabokov's book receives a novel titled ''My Laura'' from a painter. The narrator realizes that the novel is in fact about his own wife Flora, whom the painter had once pursued. In this novel within the novel, Laura is "destroyed" by the narrator (the "I" of the book). Delage-Toriel also notes that the names of Laura and Flora, possibly refer to well-known High Renaissance
In art history, the High Renaissance was a short period of the most exceptional artistic production in the Italian states, particularly Rome, capital of the Papal States, and in Florence, during the Italian Renaissance. Most art historians stat ...
portraits of women by Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italians, Italian (Republic of Venice, Venetian) painter of the Renaissance, considered the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school (art), ...
and Giorgione
Giorgione (, , ; born Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco; 1477–78 or 1473–74 – 17 September 1510) was an Italian painter of the Venetian school during the High Renaissance, who died in his thirties. He is known for the elusive poetic qualit ...
, both evoking the Italian sonneteer Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca (; 20 July 1304 – 18/19 July 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (), was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists.
Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited w ...
's unconsummated obsession with a woman named Laura.[
According to Delage-Toriel, the meaning of "the Original" is unclear:]
Does it refer to the mistress of the “I,” the Laura of My Laura, or to the probable mistress of this novel’s author, the Flora of The Original of Laura? The manuscript’s playful juxtapositions obviously incite the reader to fuse both ‘originals’ into a single original, a gesture which Nabokov graphically performs in ‘chapter’ 5, by contriving an amusing hybrid, ‘Flaura’. On close observation of the manuscript, one notices that the name contains in fact two capital letters, ‘F’ and ‘L’, as though Nabokov had been loath to give precedence to either name and had instead opted for some typographical monster, a bicephalous cipher of sorts.
''The Original of Laura'' was the subject of a 1998 literary prank which capitalized on its cachet as a mysterious "lost work" of a renowned author. Jeff Edmunds, a Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...
employee and editor of the Nabokov website Zembla, posted an essay on his site entitled "The Original of Laura: A First Look at Nabokov's Last Novel". The essay, supposedly written by a Swiss scholar named Michel Desommelier, included concocted passages from ''Laura'' that fooled scholars and even Dmitri Nabokov. Edmunds then worked with Nabokov's Russian translator, Sergei Il'in, to publish the fake passages in Russian literary journals.
Content
John Banville
William John Banville (born 8 December 1945) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry J ...
called the published volume, designed by Chip Kidd
Charles Kidd (born 1964) is an American graphic designer known for book covers.
Early childhood
Born in Shillington in Berks County, Pennsylvania, Kidd grew up being fascinated and heavily inspired by American popular culture. Comic books w ...
, "a triumph of the book maker's art". The pages are gray and heavy. Each one comprises a reproduction of an index card above and a printed version of the card below. The photographs of the cards are perforated so the reader can take them out and rearrange them. Banville considered the perforations "dubious", and a review in the ''Washington Times
''The Washington Times'' is an American conservative daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., that covers general interest topics with a particular emphasis on national politics. Its broadsheet daily edition is distributed throughout ...
'' called it "little more than gimmick" that "would surely have disgusted the author", but a review in the ''Cornell Daily Sun
''The Cornell Daily Sun'' is an independent daily newspaper published in Ithaca, New York by students at Cornell University and hired employees.
''The Sun'' features coverage of the university and its environs as well as stories from the Associa ...
'' called the format "ingenious".
The book also includes an introduction by Dmitri Nabokov about the writing of the book and his decision to publish it.
Literary significance and reception
A review of the German translation in the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
The ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' (; ''FAZ''; "''Frankfurt General Newspaper''") is a centre-right conservative-liberal and liberal-conservativeHans Magnus Enzensberger: Alter Wein in neuen Schläuchen' (in German). ''Deutschland Radio'', ...
'' compared the fragment to a "labyrinthine, overgrown garden without a gazebo
A gazebo is a pavilion structure, sometimes octagonal or turret-shaped, often built in a park, garden or spacious public area. Some are used on occasions as bandstands.
Etymology
The etymology given by Oxford Dictionaries (website), Oxford D ...
in its center" and "a puzzle with too many missing pieces". Alexander Theroux
Alexander Louis Theroux (born 1939) is an American novelist and poet. He is known for his novel ''Darconville's Cat'' (1981), which was selected by Anthony Burgess for his book-length essay '' Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 ...
's review of the book in ''The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' criticized the publication as an exemplar of a writer who has lost his literary powers except for a few hints and "witty Nabokovian moments", comparing the Nabokov of ''Laura'' to Lou Gehrig
Henry Louis Gehrig (born Heinrich Ludwig Gehrig ; June 19, 1903June 2, 1941) was an American professional baseball first baseman who played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Yankees (1923–1939). Gehrig was renowned f ...
in 1939. Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amis (born 25 August 1949) is a British novelist, essayist, memoirist, and screenwriter. He is best known for his novels ''Money'' (1984) and ''London Fields'' (1989). He received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir '' ...
echoed this sentiment somewhat more directly in his review in ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', "When a writer starts to come off the rails, you expect skidmarks and broken glass; with Nabokov, naturally, the eruption is on the scale of a nuclear accident." Theroux concluded, "The last card of ''The Original of Laura'' is a poignant list of synonyms for 'efface'—expunge, erase, delete, rub out, wipe out, obliterate ... it is a pity that his instructions were ignored and the novel survived in such a form. English professors may assign ''The Original of Laura'' to their students someday, but it is really better suited to a college ethics class." He was not the only reviewer to suggest that the fragments should not have been published or should not be read.[
However, a reviewer in '']New York Magazine
''New York'' is an American biweekly magazine concerned with life, culture, politics, and style generally, and with a particular emphasis on New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to ''The New Yorker'', ...
'' was glad to have the book; he enjoyed reading it and enjoyed the opportunity to see Nabokov's work "rough". A reviewer in the ''Christian Science Monitor
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
'' said the book was "filled with sly wit and memorable images" and considered the publication of it "a generous gift to readers". Writing for ''Literary Review
''Literary Review'' is a British literary magazine founded in 1979 by Anne Smith, then head of the Department of English at the University of Edinburgh. Its offices are on Lexington Street in Soho. The magazine was edited for fourteen years by v ...
'', David Lodge asks, "Is it, as the blurb claims, Nabokov's 'final great book'? No. Does it contain brilliant, funny, astonishing sentences only Nabokov could have written? Yes. Should it have been preserved and published? Definitely."
Few reviewers commented on the introduction, but at least two criticized it harshly.[
]
See also
*List of works published posthumously
The following is a list of works that were published posthumously.
An asterisk indicates the author is listed in multiple subsections. (Philip Sidney appears in four.)
Literature Novels and short stories
* Douglas Adams* — ''The Salmon ...
References
External links
* Kirschbaum, Alexis.
The inside story of Nabokov's last work
. ''The Guardian.'' 17 November 2009.
*Albina Kovalyova,
A Literary Legend Resurfaces
. Russiaprofile.org. 28 July 2009. Requires registration.
ABC Radio National. 24 February 2008. Discussion among Brian Boyd
Brian David Boyd (born 30 July 1952) is a professor of literature known primarily as an expert on the life and works of author Vladimir Nabokov and on Literary Darwinism, literature and evolution. He is a University Distinguished Professor in ...
, Ron Rosenbaum
Ronald Rosenbaum (born November 27, 1946) is an American literary journalist, literary critic, and novelist.
Life and career
Rosenbaum was born into a Jewish family in New York City, New York and grew up in Bay Shore, New York. He graduated fr ...
, Leland de la Durantaye
Leland de la Durantaye (born 1972) is a writer, critic, translator and professor of comparative literature. He has taught at the École normale supérieure and Harvard University and is currently Professor of Literature at Claremont McKenna Col ...
and Ramona Koval
Ramona Koval (born 1954, Melbourne) is an Australian broadcaster, writer and journalist.
Her parents were Yiddish-speaking survivors of The Holocaust who arrived in Melbourne from Poland in 1950.
Koval is known for her extended and in-depth in ...
.
* Chloé Deroy's website http://lolita-laura.e-monsite.com/ where you can watch lectures on "Lolita" and "The Original of Laura"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Original Of Laura, The
Novels by Vladimir Nabokov
Unfinished novels
2009 American novels
Books with cover art by Chip Kidd
Novels published posthumously