The Original of Laura [Hardcover]

So: Flora is married to a much older man. She's not satisfied. She has lovers galore. One of them has written a novel, "My Laura," in which he tells everything about her. A copy ends up in the hands of her husband, who is now dedicated to think himself out of existence--literally. That's the story. Only, it is not really there. You can guess it as you can feel the ghostly presence of future Nabokovian corrections (elimination of redundancies, substitution of common verbs for more striking ones, a vast cast of secondary characters, etc.). But in truth "The Original of Laura" is not a novel. It is something less and something more than that.

It is less because, unlike the case of Kafka's and Virgil's masterpieces, this is truly unfinished --that is, unfinished beyond any possible reconstruction-- and will forever remain so. In Flora's description we can find the following premonitory remarks: "Her exquisite bone structure immediately slipped into a novel -- became in fact the secret structure of that novel." That is exactly what we have: not a novel but its bones.

If you are not already a "Nabokovian," or if you simply want to "read a novel" during your morning trip to work, I suggest that you pick any other text by the master.

At the same time it is something more because it allows us to take a sneaky look at the creative process as Nabokov understood it --or as it was laid upon him by the Muse, Chance, McFate (remember the list in Lolita?) or whomever you choose. As most of his readers know he wrote his books on little index cards, not in the order of the finished story, but rather like a puzzle--today a piece here, tomorrow a piece there. What really makes this edition special is not so much the text itself --I hate to say this, I love Nabokov, and there are some gems buried in the heap, of course, things like "Mrs Lind cursed the old housemaid for buying asparagus instead of Aspirin and hurried to the pharmacy herself," or "A cloudless September maddened the crickets")-- but the fact that every single manuscript card is reproduced in very high quality, so that you have the manuscript and its printed version together in every single page. As if that were not enough, the cards are detachable, so you can shift them around and play with the order of the story, as the author would have done (well, not exactly as he would have done it, but you get to play "the great writer" for a little while).

I think this is a nice touch; that sitting in Nabokov's chair for a little while and looking at the work-in-progress is a way of paying our tribute to someone who has made us live a good part of our lives in a state of bliss.

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.

I have a whole shelf of Nabokov books in my home. I fell in love with the man's writings after reading the author's introduction to _Pale Fire_. I have thrilled over lines in his books and his short stories, lamented that he isn't studied in the academy as often as he should, and lent out his works.

But this most recent book, which I preordered and waited for with bated breath was not up to the standards of his most mediocre work. The production of the text is interesting to see as an academic curiosity, but I vastly overpaid for that privilege. There's about 30 pages of text here if it were broken down and no story. What happened was the seeds of a story were taken and turned into a middling post-modern novel. I respect what his literary executors were trying to do for fans and scholars, but I feel that Vladamir's wishes were honored on this occasion.

I have to say though that I am generally not against the publication of posthumous fiction. I have thrilled lately at the remnants of Kurt Vonnegut's life works. I have enjoyed _A Happy Death_, a novel found amongst the wreckage of Camus's life. I also puzzled over a collection of uncompleted speeches by Calvino. But what those texts had was completeness. _The Original of Laura_ lacks this completeness. However, as a fan of the man's works, I do still feel fortunate to have this last contact.