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The Original of Laura |  | Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Creator: Dmitri Nabokov
Publisher: Knopf
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $20.47
as of 11/23/2009 18:29 CST details
You Save: $14.53 (42%)
New (28) Used (8) Collectible (1) from $18.95
Seller: Amazon.com
Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 322
Format: Deckle Edge
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.5
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.7
ISBN: 0307271897
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307271891
ASIN: 0307271897
Publication Date: November 17, 2009 (New: This Week)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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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.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
 Death as the Final Festish November 23, 2009
Andrew N. Weber (Merrick, New York USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
In the opening image of "The Original of Laura," a husband smashes a paperweight on the hand of his nymphomaniac wife as she rumages through his desk. The brutality is not payback for her affairs, but a warding off of her perceived attempt to snoop into his unfinished "poisonous opus." (In fact, she was searching for a piece of junk mail.)
Are we, the morbid readers of a work which the author never finished and, as the legend goes, gave instructions to destroy on his death bed, the ones who really deserve the bruised knuckles? Many who shell out full price for this thick hardcover which contains less than four thousand words will no doubt feel a certain stinging feeling. The decision to publish photographic images of Naboakov's original index cards side-by-side with a typeset version has its charm. But why the need to devote whole pages to their blank backs? I am not complaining, I am just not sure if this is a clue, a joke or a cheap con to get the volume up to fighting weight for the New Hardback racks.
The novel is about a fat, aging professor who copes with death by turning it into a sexual game and who copes with his wife's serial infidelities by writing a humiliating novel about her. As a side project, the professor is deconstucting, "The Interpretation of Dreams." We get plot and character in fragments. Yet the story has tremendous emotional heft. These are disturbed and, at times, ugly people. But we care about them despite ourselves, despite them and despite the fact that the novel is barely a first draft. Less is more, and, with a writer as miraculous as Nabakov, almost nothing is more than less.
The story behind the book's journey to print overshadows the actual story in the book, which itself is a unique literary achievement. In the introduction, Dimitri Nabokov explains the curse of his inheritance: satisfy his father's wishes when he is not sure of his father's wishes. In the end, he settles on a cop out: he is no longer going to deal with the debate, no more being hounded by academic stalkers. He has made us all the caretaker of his curse. We even get our own set of index cards.
a gem November 23, 2009
Reader from Texas (Texas, USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have enjoyed it immensely, but was very sad that these are just the fragments, bits and pieces of grandiose project which was sadly not to be completed. Lots of perfect Nabokovian thoughts and stylistic gems, but so short and so raw. One of the characters in the book named Rawitch - some called him Raw Itch and some Ra Witch - this raw itch I felt when the pages ran out...what a pity, no one will ever write like that, they may write with talent and verve but NEVER like him. So I am filled with profound sadness that he died before he finished the book, perhaps for this reason alone - the loss of a great book - it should not be published, it is too painful.
Another Nabokovian Puzzle November 21, 2009
Andreas Ramos (Palo Alto, California)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
My copy arrived yesterday and I read it in a single sitting. I've read absolutely nothing in advance of this, so I read it without anyone else's footprints in my path.
The title itself, "The Original of Laura", tells you this will be different. What does that mean, "the original of Laura"? That's a broken sentence. The origins of Laura?
Pull off the book's cover and wordplay begins. Hidden under the cover is a list of words for efface, erase, delete... and the list contains a deleted phrase. Words and reality intertwined. You've not yet begun to read, and already the book is mirroring itself.
Printed on card stock, Vladimir's index cards are photographically reproduced as punch-out cards; you can remove the cards and create your copy of Vladimir's index cards, just as he held them in his hands. This book isn't a book, it's the reproduction of the original (index cards) of Laura.
Dimitri Nabokov has created a puzzle worthy of his father. If you admire Nabokov's work, get this book. (Psst. I also recommend Danielewski's "House of Leaves".)
A tender interval November 21, 2009
Lee Tomkow
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
To hold the pupae of a novel by VN really is spine tingling enough. There is no need to review the merits of this book as an attempt at a finished work. Anyone critiquing Laura as a novel probably only read Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle once and failed to define it. To have bound and pinned as if to a cork board the scales of this undefined fritillary is something that must be part of the full VN documentation and collection. Many years back the New York Public Library had a full Nabokov retrospective display, the most prominent but under-appreciated aspect was the index cards. To have the opportunity to dwell on each "photograph" of VN's thought is novel enough. This is the "lost wax method", the scaffolding before construction, the perpetual potential for joy. The Tender Interval.
 Nabokov's last play on us all November 19, 2009
Bachelier (Ile de France)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Nabokov's last play on us all.
The legend runs that Nabokov "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 I think the old playmaster knew what would happen, and that this work is complete after all.
This is an entrance into the playful world of a novel and her birth, and then taking the little parts apart for our delight and amusement, and continues much of the ambiguity that surrounds "Pale Fire" all here in "The Original of Laura." Literature, after all, was born when the boy cried "wolf" and there was no wolf. Nabakov said "burn my unfinished novel" and instead we have the last puzzle pieces to play with.
And so here it is:
The plot follows the reflections and interactions in four scenes-in decreasing complexity and length--of Doctor Philip Wild, a fat scholar, ("I stalked butterflies fat and hatless..." "Speak Memory") --married to tiny, wifty and promiscuous "Flora." Wild's initial attraction to Flora was because she is an echo of another woman he had been in love with, Aurora Lee (Annabel Lee again, and Lolita again). Wild is described as "a brilliant neurologist, a renowned lecturer ...[and?] a gentleman of independent means." He is dull propriety himself. But his inner life is also a cramped landscape, petty and rich at the same time. We never know if Flora's adultery is motivated by Wild trying to copulate with a ghost through her, and her reacting to that revelation, or whether she is simply a creature haunted by her own demons (Humbert again). Death stalks every well-lit corner and the banality of death as well.
The story starts at a party where fractured conversations and revealing word choice make us laugh. Four scenes follow, each with declining detail, word choice, and revelation. It is a novel in reverse, ending in fragments, rather than beginning from them. The central character Wild also has turned to meditation (and a banal form at that) to erase himself, beginning with those most ridiculous of our appendages: his toes.
Nabokov's famous juxtaposition and using the banal as a technique to point to a worthless interior life is also evident in Wild's mental picture of Flora's peripheral emotional and physical presence: "Every now and then she would turn up for a few moments between trains, between planes, between lovers. My morning sleep would be interrupted by heartrending sounds -- a window opening, a little bustle downstairs, a trunk coming, a trunk going, distant telephone conversations that seemed to be conducted in conspiratorial whispers. If shivering in my nightshirt I dared to waylay her all she said would be 'you really ought to lose some weight' or 'I hope you transferred that money as I indicated' -- and all doors closed again."
Wild sets about losing weight by erasing himself.
This is a delightful final testimony to the process of removing and erasing what has been written in the flesh (a corpulent body) and in literature (it ends in fragments), and that even that nullification is a delightful game.
Editor and son Dmitri Nabokov had some tough choices as far as editing, and in this modern world they picked full disclosure and letting the devoted reader in on the game. The rather unusual construct is you have both a printed version of the story, and a facsimile of the original index cards, which are detachable (it reminded me of Nabokov's memories of odd playthings in "Speak Memory") and now you can move the bits around as you like (I once composed my college papers this way...citations on the back, quote on the front, my reactions on the next card, each indexed one to the other).
I was immediately reminded of the end of Eco's "The Name of the Rose" and continued to delight in the technique "a neurotic and hesitant man of letters, who destroys his mistress in the act of portraying her," [the novel is a mistress, a Muse], word choice (mad crickets? Could they ever be? But of course they are!), and names that are triple entendres. The poetic phrases that no other could have written are all present "the orange awnings of southern summers" "some sticky invisible substance" "auto-dissolution afforded the greatest ecstasy known to man" [Hesse's Buddha, Kafka's Metamorphosis and its shrinking insect]. I howled at the affect on the reader, and connections with Borges. This is a last chess puzzle that will keep Nabokov scholars amused for decades as we uncover these last delights.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
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