Nabokov's "lost" novel published as a collection of index cards

Shortly before Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he asked his family to destroy his last, unfinished novel. Following his death his family quarreled about whether to honor his dying wish. Finally they locked the book away in a Swiss bank vault for three decades. Until now. In a decision that's been very controversial among critics and scholars, Nabokov's son, Dmitri Nabokov, has allowed the book to be published by Knopf.

Nabokov wrote his novels on index cards, frequently changing the order of the cards as he worked. According to his diaries he had his last book finished in his mind, but then he died before he could complete his work. The Original of Laura (Dying is Fun) is now in stores, in an unusual format consisting of over 100 facsimile, removable index cards arranged in a tentative order by Dmitri Nabokov.

The Times of London summarized the book like this:

Philip Wild, an enormously corpulent scholar, is married to a slender, flighty and wildly promiscuous woman 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.

Dmitri Nabokov has attracted a lot of criticism for his decision, but any decision he made would be controversial. We know that Vladimir Nabokov didn't want this book published. But Kafka wanted his own work destroyed, and the world would be a poorer place if that had happened.

Unfortunately, while The Original of Laura apparently offers plenty for serious Nabokov fans to chew on, reviews suggest that it doesn't really hold together as a story and offers little of the mind games and dazzling wordplay of Nabokov's earlier books.

"Where the action was intended to go remains elusive," Michael Dirda writes in his Washington Post review, "and without any serious editorial apparatus it's difficult even to speculate. In consequence, this book remains only a posthumous collection of rough drafts and authorial notes, more novelty than anything else."

Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site? Send us an email.

Technocrati tags: [Vladimir Nabokov][The Original of Laura]