The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov

Product Details

• Inure: NEW
• Notes: Disgrace New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• ISBN13: 9780679729976

Description

From the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, and so many others, comes a magnificent collection of stories. Written between the 1920s and 1950s, these sixty-five tales--eleven of which have been translated into English for the first time--display all the shades of Nabokov's imagination. They range from sprightly fables to bittersweet tales of loss, from claustrophobic exercises in horror to a connoisseur's samplings of the table of human folly. Read as a whole, The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov offers and intoxicating draft of the master's genius, his devious wit, and his ability to turn language into an instrument of ecstasy.

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These stories, written between the early 1920s to the mid-1950s, reveal the fascinating progress of Nabokov's early development as they remind us that we are in the presence of a magnificent original, a genuine master. Edited by his son and translator, Dmitri Nabokov, this volume is a literary event.

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Customer Reviews

Love Nabokov, HORRIBLE binding.
My book was bound horribly. The glue was dried and squished out of the seams. It wasn't just one copy as I purchased two in two separate orders, one for myself and one for a gift. Go with another version as these new covers are not worth the crappy binding that will come apart within a year.

2010-02-11 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1

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Only after the food of the Gods has been sampled the epicurean is born
This book is incredible. It contains such mastery that honestly after reading it, I can't read anyone else. Everyone pales in comparison. Once you've tasted ambrosia, when you are kicked out of heaven (at page 642), you might, as I certainly have, come to see all other attempts at literature as somewhat incomplete, lacking, and even tasteless. Only after the food of the Gods has been sampled the epicurean is born. Dimitri's translation is just as good, with nuances you will never find anywhere in the English language. Ho-Ho.

2008-08-19 | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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Gold Standard for Short Stories
Put simply, this collection of short stories is a contemporary gold standard for the form. Nabokov's stories are packed with sparkling surprises, playful artifices and languid, confident language. I've put together a 50+ year reading vita and I find myself drawn back to these stories like a moth to flame...

2007-01-04 | Peqoudian (North Platte, NE USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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There's nothing like a good Nabokov story
Started out reading this book little by little in order to digest each story in full, but then began reading one story after another with seemingly no intermission in between. Both ways suited me fine. In fact, sometimes it doesn't really help to think all that long about some of his stories--they are are like simple chance meetings w/ strangers, while other stories of his spawn dramatic lifetime relationships and require, even demand your utmost attention.

Everytime I stray from reading Nabokov I always come back to his books and think, "Wow, he is such an amazing writer!". I can't say enough about his detailed descriptions, his amazing perspectives, and his uncannily large English vocabulary. He never ceases to amaze me.

2006-11-15 | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

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Wondrous
Although I had read various Nabokov stories over the years I had never done so in a comprehensive manner, and finally decided to do so. I anticipated that this would be a wonderful read, and of course, I was right.

I was well aware as to how gifted Nabokov is with the language; what surprised me is his versatility. It seems like there is nothing he can't do. Contained in this collection is every kind of character imaginable: rich, poor, simple, smart; there is even an entirely credible portrait of a Siamese twin. There is straight drama, fantasy, adventure, horror and intrigue. There are all the elements of what our English teachers told us make good writing: symbolism, allegory, descriptive power, observation, wit, cleverness, heart, and an enormous store of knowledge, performed in a style that can only be described as poetic. And woven through it are the themes that make up the web of humanity: beauty, truth, and love. It is an utterly splendid collection, as good a collection of short stories as any I have ever read.

One of the things that sets him apart is restraint, or perhaps subtlety is a better word. In, "The Reunion," for example, two brothers meet after not seeing each other for ten years. One escaped the Soviet Union and is living a poor, almost wretched existence in Berlin. His brother stayed, and was able to achieve some success as a Soviet functionary. They finally meet each other in the Berliner's shabby apartment. Most authors would not be able to resist the urge to let this to sink into melodrama. There would be arguments, tears, and recriminations. But not for Nabokov. In his story the brothers simply find that they are uncomfortable with one another, and when they go their separate ways the seeming lack of drama beforehand makes their parting all the more poignant.

Humor and sadness are evident in all of this collection, sometimes in succeeding stories, sometimes in succeeding pages. "A Bad Day," is the touching and amusing story of a little boy's visit to his cousins in the Russian countryside, a visit he dreads because he doesn't get along and because he will be teased. The last line of the story--which in the hands of somebody like Updike would be a devastating condemnation of humanity--is here bittersweet, bringing both a tear to the eye and a smile to the face in self-recognition. It is, after all, nothing more than a "bad day."

But if there is whimsy here there is also great power. In, "Signs and Symbols," an old man and woman make a trip to the sanatorium to visit their deranged adult son on his birthday. Such a simple exercise is made terribly complicated by their age, their lack of means, the unpredictable nature of their son, and the indifference of the hospital staff. Nothing is really resolved by story's end; we are simply given an indelible portrait of the difficult, arduous journey that life has been for these uncomplicated, decent people. It is very moving and also an excellent example of Nabokov's worldly or otherworldly knowledge.

Many of the stories here have to do with, as you would expect, Russians and Russian expatriates. ("Write about what you know!" the English teachers say.) Nabokov unfortunately knew about the horrible experience of being exiled from his country, a country that his stories make clear he deeply loved, and to which he never returned. He doesn't spend a lot of time condemning the evil system that drove him and millions like him away, (although he does, briefly, in two of his earlier, weaker stories), he instead concentrates on those that it drove away. There are many excellent examples of this, but perhaps my favorite is entitled, "Cloud, Castle, Lake." In it, an older fellow is taken on a holiday train excursion he tries to get out of, is coerced into taking part in activities he doesn't wish to engage, and told to forsake the simple pleasures he has come to enjoy; all for--he is told--his own good. The train eventually stops at a perfect little inn, which overlooks a perfect lake in which is reflected a lovely cloud and castle. He wants to stay. Of course, he can't. Sad as it is, the story is also very amusing, and, typical of Nabokov at his best, works on several different levels.

The story also contains examples of Nabokov's splendid use of the language at the height of his power. Our friend observes the countryside from his hurtling train: "The badly pressed shadow of the car sped madly along the grassy bank, where flowers blended into colored streaks. A crossing: a cyclist was waiting, resting one foot upon the ground. Trees appeared in groups and singly, revolving coolly and blandly, displaying the latest fashions. The blue dampness of a ravine. A memory of love, disguised as a meadow. Wispy clouds--greyhounds of heaven." How marvelously descriptive this, and so beautiful that one finds oneself emotionally engaged.

The book is loaded with this stuff. You can barely turn a page without some surprise or delight awaiting you. A twenty-eight year old son returns unexpectedly after many years to visit his mother in, "The Doorbell." In the dimly lit room, he is taken aback by the fact that she is clearly preoccupied with something. Suddenly, "like a stupid sun issuing from a stupid cloud, the electric light burst forth from the ceiling." This, by the way, is another great story. In, "Ultima Thule," as a character is walking on the beach, "a wave would arrive, all out of breath, but, as it had nothing to report, it would disperse in apologetic salaams."

I could go on and on. After picking up the book I decided to read it cover to cover, but after about a hundred and fifty pages, I simply opened it and read the stories randomly. After a time I began to open the book onto stories I had already read, and found that I couldn't help but to reread them. Finally, I became apprehensive in fear that I might have missed something.

But no matter. If I haven't gotten to one yet, I will eventually. The book has already become an old friend, and like an old friend I will return to its comfort and joys for many years to come.

2006-01-16 (Sacramento, CA) | Helpful Votes: 16 | Rating: 5

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Lolita

Description

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Glory

Description

Glory is the wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a twnety-two-year-old Russian émigré of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him. Convinced that his life is about to be wasted and hoping to impress his love, he embarks on a "perilous, daredevil project"--an illegal attempt to re-enter the Soviet Union, from which he and his mother had fled in 1919. He succeeds--but at a terrible cost.

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Customer Reviews

Tolstoyan read
This novel by Vladimir Nabokov is beautifully done and reminds me more of Tolstoy than anything else. Certainly it doesn't have that scope; the resemblance is in the construction of characters and their thought. I enjoyed it very much.

2008-07-07 (Chicago, IL USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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The Most Ironic Title in Literature
Edelweiss? Noble White, the shy alpine flower that so quickly vanishes after spring. Are we readers to look for meaning in Nabokov's choice of the name Martin Edelweiss for his focal character? A good deal is said about the name early in the book, and we're reminded of it at crucial moments throughout. Just a few pages of Nabokov's so-carefully-crafted prose inclines this reader to suppose that nothing in "Glory" is merely incidental, that every detail is laden with pertinence. Whatever else one says about this novel, the first fact is that it's gloriously written. Every sentence snaps the reader's mind into focus. Every description is a poem in itself. Every characterization is a full dramatic portrait of individual flesh and blood.

Martin Edelweiss is a frivolous young man embedded among Russian emigres utterly trivialized by the Bolshevik Revolution, about which we hear only frivolous rumors and reports in ephemeral newsprint. The only position Martin's querulous society seems to take toward the momentous events in their homeland is to wish they hadn't happened, but make no mistake, this a novel about the Revolution, seen through a lens of irrelevance. This is also a novel about the meaning of being Russian, though Nabokov conveys his meaning through the subtlest indirection. There's no ambiguity whatsoever about the ending of the novel. The meaning is as clear as plasma and as ominous as a drum-roll to a prisoner awaiting execution, but I do not choose to pre-empt anyone's reading excitement by declaring the obvious.

At the same time, "Glory" is a coming-of-age novel, similar to other such novels about young men going off to college. Scott Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise" and E.M. Forster's "The Longest Journey" might offer interesting comparisons. In all three, a sensitive young man confronts the tawdriness of the intellectual life, slips into depression over his own mediocrity, falls hopelessly in love with a disdainful beauty while at the same time exploring lust with more accessible lasses, and wrestles with the identity of a seemingly more well-prepared friend. Martin, however, isn't a titan waiting to be awakened to his own worth at the end of the novel. Nabokov takes pain to show us that Martin is NOT a poet, not a budding genius of any sort, just a modestly intelligent everyman of no particular bent. In fact, Martin's only talent seems to be at tennis. Like a young George Orwell, Martin stumbles into a brief romance with the simple life of honest toil, dwelling incognito for a 'chapter' in a wine-growing village in southern France. But, like most of Martin's experiences, this pastoral interlude sinks quickly into the chasm of memory. Above all, this is a novel about memory. It begins with Martin's memories of childhood. Martin's perceptions are all foreshadowed, and his actions are all predetermined, by his memories. Even the passing moment is no more than a memory.

Martin doesn't tell his story in the first person. Nabokov clings to Martin's shoulder like a personal daemon, or to be blunt, like a 19th C omniscient narrator. When suddenly, in the last chapter, the novelist shifts his perch to another shoulder, it's both a brilliant literary trick and a lucid statement of Martin's fate.

"Glory" is a translation from Russian of an early novel by a writer who went on to create far more famous books in English. Perhaps that explains why it's less widely read than the Forster or Fitzgerald novels mentioned above. It's the best book of the three by far, and proves beyond a doubt that Nabokov could write traditional narrative as brilliantly as the more idiosyncratic interior surrealism for which he is famous.

2008-06-21 (Wherever I am, I am.) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 5

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Glorious
Glory is the comic/tragic tale of a young man whose fantasies of heroism come to replace reality and eventually lead to his downfall. The theme is simple, but because the novel is set between WWI and WWII, Glory might be best described as a somewhat cynical allegory about the plight of the "Lost Generation"--those ex-patriots who retreated to Paris during the 20s and 30s. Martin, our protagonist, while not an American in Paris, most certainly is lost. Having been forced into exile during the Russian Revolution, Martin, who is a highly Europeanized hybrid, finds himself adrift in Europe, wandering from Switzerland, to England, to Germany in an aimless pursuit of what to do with himself. Eventually he falls in love with the sulky, dark-eyed temptress, Sonia. But that, of course, solves nothing. Martin does not know who he is, where he has come from, or where he is going. Falling in love merely heightens his anomie.

If this sounds somewhat uninspiring as a plot, you are right! There is very little action of note, and even less character development (which, in any event, Nabokov disdained). The appeal of this book is the sheer force of Nabokov's gorgeous writing. His exquisite attention to detail, his amazing insights into states of mind set him above all other writers. Perhaps you think I am overstating, but who else can take you to a river in Cambridge, make you smell the air, see the sky, feel as Martin feels, so deftly, so economically and with such great sensitivity? Nabokov, a synthaesthete, has a chef's awareness of how to spice his novels. A dash of this, a hint of that - he knows which sensations to describe in order to create a harmonious whole. There are passages in this book which I read and re-read, astounded by the clarity, the precision, the sheer beauty of Nabokov's prose.


Glory is a literary delicacy, best savored slowly. Take your time consuming it, and you will be well-satisfied.

2007-10-01 (williamsburg, ma) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 5

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Exquisite
In spite of multinational references in the book, "Glory" is quintessentially American. Martin Edelweiss (22 years old) is as every bit American as Rabbit Angstrom or Benny Profane (22 and 23 respectively). The unremitting chiseling oneself out is more in character with Rocky Balboa than with Raskolnikov.

Martin is a bit of a Holden Caulfield, sensitive and highly original. But instead of defining himself as the negation of the surrounding world, Martin has an inner flame that carries him forth. Stepping off the train in the middle of nowhere in Provence, and settling there. Going back on the perilous cliff just to prove to himself that he could do it. Crossing a dangerous state frontier. Even washing himself daily from his ubiquitous collapsible bathtub. All these are emanations of Martin's spirit. And in the book he, the least purposeful one, is the only one possessing it. He is that miraculous lonely green branch sprouting out of a withered tree. The book, in fact, is no less radical than Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" in its assertion that only according to your peculiar self is it worth living. The theme is not new, but the variation on it is presented with remarkable elegance. Only the preface, narcissistic and supercilious, is regrettably dissonant with the rest of the book.

And, naturally, the language. What a beautiful serving, what a feast! It is a hillock of beaten egg whites, under the dappled sunlight of a linden tree alley, smiling at you with all the sun-ignited freckles of its icy crystals. Weightless and radiant, it is a young steed, now trotting, now galloping, but always having the air of freshness about it. As is typically with Nabokov's novels, the pace of the book seems maddeningly slow, until one surrenders to its flow and lets their senses resonate with its spell. Nabokov savors language like a wine connoisseur savors wine: lingering with it, swirling the words, slowly, slowly, until they reveal their intricate bouquet.

Nabokov's lightness of touch, akin to Pushkin's, makes reading his books irresistible, like reading the best books in childhood, the ones to which you had to run home after school just to indulge yourself more.

2004-11-14 (Sleepy Hollow, NY) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 5

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youthful illusion
This is a very good novel about the fantasies of youth, i.e. misplaced idealism, mixed with the dangers inherent in the revolutionary upheavals of the early 20C. It is a slice of history, which may interest or may not. As the novel is translated from the original Russian, it lacks the extraordinary narrative texture that the Nab's original English novels exhibit.

Recommended.

2004-02-12 (Balmette Talloires, France) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 4

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Despair

Product Details

• Circumstances: NEW
• ISBN13: 9780679723431
• Notes: Characterize New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Description

Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965--thirty years after its original publication--Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime--his own murder.

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Customer Reviews

Contempt
What happens when Nabokov writes a murder mystery with no mystery? _Despair_. Not bad, but a Nabokovian take on a conventional tale. He often writes repugnant protagonists, but he makes them compelling and sympathetic. This is not the case here, in my reading. Hermann someone I wouldn't want to spend time with in a room, so even the 212 pages of text were a little much. There is little in the way of plot or characters to recommend the book, but stylistically Nabokov hits his stride and makes the novel compelling just for his language.

However, a caveat based on my emotional response. Nabokov's writing feels often as if it was written with a sneer. This is hard to quantify but an feeling that comes across to this long-time reader. This sneer is written on his face and embedded in his prose. I'm not sure if this is a sneer of arrogance or contempt; maybe it represents both. I'm also not sure if the contempt is for his readers, his critics, or himself.

2010-01-25 | teacher, poet, iconoclast (Chicago) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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You! Hypocrite Reader! My Double! My Brother!
(Title purloined from Charles Baudelaire)

"Despair" is structurally one of Nabokov's most conventional novels. It's the tale of the plotting, executing, and unraveling of a 'perfect crime' - in this version, a murder for insurance - and the bare plot could have been handled by any of dozens of mystery hacks. What lifts "Despair" to a higher state as literature is the implicit dialogue, psychological as well as verbal, between the murderous narrator and the reader.

That Narrator, Hermann, is insufferable from the very first sentence: "If I were not perfectly sure of my power to write and of my marvelous ability to express ideas with the utmost grace and vividness..." But grace is hardly the hallmark of Hermann's style of narration; he's smug, parenthetical, digressive, and self-congratulatory throughout. Long before you the reader catch the spoor of Hermann's 'perfect' crime and escape - which turn out to be hopelessly imperfect and naive - you begin to despise the poor narcissistic bungler and to yearn for his come-uppance. What justifies Hermann's conception of his own marvelous writing talent is his allusive, evasive, condescending, snotty and snarky word-play, for which you will surely detest him... until you look in his mirror and see yourself, a person who delights in the snakiest word-play, who in fact is reading Nabokov precisely out of glee at such sophisticated verbosity. You! Dear Nabokov fan! If you attempted a 'perfect crime' wouldn't it be much like Hermann's? Would you be any less digressive and parenthetical? And wouldn't you also deceive yourself fatally?

Mirrors appear often in "Despair", often enough for a literary critic to pounce on their significance. "Despair" is another of Nabokov's books about a look-alike double, a theme that occurs so regularly in his work that one might suspect a mental aberration, a variation of Capgras Syndrome in the author. Whether the 'double' - Felix, a hobo - is really a mirror-twin of the narrator in anyone else's eyes is a question deliberately left open for the reader. The real issue of doubles, however, is the implied similarity of the writer and the reader.

Empathy with an insufferably egotistical murderer, by the by, seems more socially acceptable than empathy with a similarly insufferable middle-aged scholar who has a fetish for barely-pubescent girls. That's the lesson I draw from readers' responses to this novel compared with Lolita. No one, absolutely no one declares the the subject-matter of "Despair" is beyond the pale of empathy. Interesting...

"Despair" is NOT one of Nabokov's incomparable triumphs. It ends rather predictably, formulaically. Its virtues are in its details of language, once the reader overcomes her/his aversion towards the narrator. And just for thrills, for bonus points as it were, Nabokov lets Hermann in Chapter Six spout the most irrefutable, ineffably snarky demonstration of the non-existence of God you'll ever read. There are numerous snippy asides in "Despair" about Dostoyevsky and his novels Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment. Hermann's atheistical digression is patently a response to "Dusty's" mysticism. That's the kind of detail I refer to when I say that this is a book to be read for the pleasure of its digressions.

2008-11-29 (Wherever I am, I am.) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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great piece of literature
This book is really hard to get into, but once you push yourself, you'll really get into it. Nabokov is an amazing writer. Every character is just an exploration into the depths of language. Also, he really gets into the mindset of his characters. Thats why the writing in this book seems a little cold, a little distant...
So if you are up for something different, I would recommend this book.

2008-05-25 | Anna (Texas, USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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A most literary homicide...

With deliberate reference to Dostoyevsky, and sideways glances at Poe and Kafka, Nabokov's *Despair* takes on the classic literary theme of `the double' with gruesome, and often hilarious, results. Hermann, a failed businessman and aspiring writer, relates his story of one day coming by chance upon a tramp in the woods who bears a striking resemblance to himself. Alternatively repulsed, fascinated, and obsessed by his `twin,' he concocts a plan to commit the perfect murder...the criminal equivalent of the perfect novel.

Nabokov draws out the metaphor between murder and art all the way to the eerie conclusion of *Despair* and his self-conscious narrator is the perfect mouthpiece for expounding the central theme: the art of crime and the crime of art. Vain, egotistical, insecure, capricious...Hermann is the quintessential unreliable narrator, a self-admitted liar from childhood who lies simply for the pure creative joy of it. An artist, in other words...and, in this case, an author. Hermann creates fictions and his murder plot will be his `masterpiece,' except there are always a few flaws in any masterpiece and critics aplenty to point them out. In the case of murder, the critics are the police and a bad review means arrest, imprisonment, and possibly a death sentence.

*Despair,* in spite of its title, is a lot of fun, poking fun as it does at the conventions of the novel even as it exploits each and every one of them. In a sense, it's a book about writing as much, if not more than, the murder that is actually being written about. Nabokov thus adroitly turns an otherwise relatively conventional crime story into an existential commentary on the absurdity of the human condition and the ultimate failure of the artist to apprehend an entirely satisfactory expression of this absurdity. The question is: Can an artist get away with murder? Is any crime ((art)) perfect?

Whether as an extended and metaphoric meditation on art and personal identity or as a nifty, twisted tale of a mind unraveling into psychosis and murder, *Despair* is an impeccably written, entertaining, and intelligent novel by one of the 20th century's greatest writers.

2007-03-30 | Literary Outlaw, author *Hardcore Romeo* and *61 Bang* (New York City) | Helpful Votes: 10 | Rating: 4

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Another Little Gem
Despair is probably not the first novel that comes to mind when thinking about Nabokov and his works and it may not even be among the top ten. But it is a Nabokov novel and that all by itself makes it worthy of our attention. Typically, it is a delight.

Nabokov's forward tells us that it was originally written in Russian while he was living in Berlin in 1934. There was an early, clumsy translation to English; then, in 1965, the final one. Nabokov describes it this way: "The ecstatic love of a young writer for the old writer he will be some day is ambition in its purest form. The love is not reciprocated by the older man in his larger library, for even if he does recall with regret a naked palate and a rheumless eye, he has nothing but an impatient shrug for the bungling apprentice of his youth." The novel hasn't even started yet and already the reader finds a big grin crossing his face.

It is written in the first person by a German businessman, who, while walking in an unpopulated area one day, comes across a hobo who, to his surprise, looks exactly like him. The plot has to do with a scheme our narrator concocts then implements to use this unusual resemblance for his own unscrupulous monetary gain. It would not be prudent to give away more. Though it is a rather familiar formula, let's just say that it is nevertheless very intriguing but ultimately logical in its surprisingly unsurprising denouement.

As usual with the Nabokov novel there is a lot more going on than initially meets the eye. Our narrator, fascinated by his scheme and by his own perceived cleverness, views his plan as a work of art. He comments that all art and great art especially is based on deception. How hilarious it is to discover that his scheme ends in such a banal, predictable way and how clever that Nabokov seems to be poking a little fun at his own pretensions.

No review of a Nabokov work would be complete without quoting at least a couple of passages as his use of the language is so exquisite. Here is our narrator describing the unpleasant landscape immediately prior to his fateful meeting with his doppelganger: "One could not leave the steps of the path, for it dug very deep into the incline; and on either side tree roots and scrags of rotting moss stuck out of its earthen walls like the broken springs of decrepit furniture in a house where a madman had dreadfully died." Wrenching, and structurally, the astute reader might also wonder whether it contains an element of foreshadowing.

Here is a delightful aside: "Germans got their due [losing World War I] for that sealed train in which Bolshevism was tinned, and Lenin imported to Russia."

A final example, after posting a letter that would put his plan into inexorable motion: "I felt what probably a purple red-veined thick maple leaf feels, during its slow flutter from branch to brook."

It's Nabokov. What else is there to say?

2006-12-31 (Sacramento, CA) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

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Lolita (Vintage International)

Description

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Customer Reviews

The Binding
I love the story, but I didn't like the quality of the binding and the paper-enough to convince me that this amazon purchase is two stars.

If you want to have your own private library, I don't think you'll be wanting this on your collection.

2009-12-19 | I like books (Illinois) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 2

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Brilliant insight into the human comedy (and tragedy)
One of my favorite books. The true seduction that lies within "Lolita" is not between Humbert Humbert and Lolita, but rather between Nabakov and the reader. With his prose and voice, he lures the reader in, and--content matter be damned--I was rapt until the last page. While some may be uncomfortable with the subject matter, it is handled with great care and the characters are far too complex for this to be a simple matter of predator and prey. The details in the book are exquisite, from expressing a simple gesture, a heartbreaking emotion, or a surreal and ludicrous road trip through America. Each character is fascinating--their motives, thoughts, actions, morals, and desires are complex, but often comedic at heart. And there is no lack of humor in "Lolita", the author cleverly uses comedy, often to reveal the undeniable truths of his characters. This book is rare in that so many people who read it have such a strong opinion or reaction to it...for that reason, and for the outstanding writing, I highly recommend this beautifully written classic. No matter what your opinion--it will rouse, interest, amuse, and grab you emotionally from beginning to end.

2008-12-16 (New York) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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Alas ... poor Humbert Humbert ...

Having just re-read this novel once more, probably for the very last time, I'm struck by a few things. First off, without a doubt, Lolita is a great novel and Nabokov was a fantastic writer.

I picked this back up because I had read about the hullabaloo concerning his final unpublished novel that had been in the custody of his son. I had also heard the story on NPR how everything he worked on, he planned out of index cards, which as a writer, sounded very familiar and incredibly intriguing. Writers always want to know exactly how their peers and heroes are pulling off their masterpieces. It's like looking behind the curtain in certain aspects. The truth is though, even great writers stumble, great men do cry, women have secrets, and so on. Yes, I know ...

The first two-thirds of this book is very patiently written, complex and incredibly absorbing. In some places the reader almost feels guilty of reading something taboo and disgust creeps under the door frame quietly causing mild disturbance. Certain passages almost make you want to throw the book to the floor and go wash you hands of it, but you know that it was all intentional. Some of Nabokov's best writing is achieved in the first portions of this book without a doubt, and a few passages are indelible, touching and even sweet.

However, without gilding the lilly with praise which is easy to do, I must say that this book also has a few flaws. While the realism of the conclusion is probably factual and not fantasy, the tone of the writing obviously shifts because of it. Nabokov strings you along into dizzying heights of all kinds of interest and intrigue and then pulls the carpet out as the book closes, drying out his text like beef jerky left on hot concrete in the midday sun -- forcing real life down your throat in a very mechanical manner. I often wonder if some of this was due to the material itself, or suggestions and changes made by his agent or subsequent changes that he made himself during the editing process and so on. I can imagine his representation being frightened to push this book.

The point is that 'Lolita' almost collapses in on itself with it's ending. It seems like an ending to a different book entirely. Like the mid section of Oliver Twist where the lascivious and murderous deeds are removed for the length of almost a bible whilst our young Twist becomes a country squire and we have to endure a failing love-affair, the story degrades, interest wanes and the conclusion is read to the end, because you are compelled to see the ending even if it doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the story. Many good books have the tendency to fall apart, but the world of novels is not today what it was yesterday and such is the curse of change, marketing and popular culture. It makes a person wonder if Nabokov wasn't making a parody of himself here and denigrating it openly by naming himself Humbert Humbert.

I think realistic conclusions are often better than overly-dramatic or contrived ones to be honest. I've done that myself and in the same genre, but if Nabokov had to submit Lolita today to the grinder of New York literary acceptance, the world would probably be minus one book.


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2008-11-17 (Palm Desert, CA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 4

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A Literary Dichotomy
I've never been so impressed--yet so repulsed--by a piece of literature in all my days until I finally picked up this Vintage International edition of Vladimir Nabokov's disturbing novel, LOLITA. Because the story has become part of our cultural lexicon, we're all familiar with Nabokov's sordid tale of hapless Humbert Humbert's personal destruction because of his unflinching love for the conniving, manipulative, pubescent Dolly Haze (his Lolita). Accordingly, there are parts of this narrative that literally made my skin crawl. But the writing. . .

The writing is brilliant, darkly and fatalistically humorous, and flawless. All the more extraordinary to Nabokov's flowing prose is the very real fact English was not the author's first--or even second--language, but his tertiary endeavor. At the present I am attempting to learn Espanol; it is difficult at best to master a second language, so Nabokov's English fluidity two languages removed from his Russian mother tongue is all the more impressive. The writing is sweeping and engaging and extremely emotional; over and over, I found myself rereading certain passages and paragraphs, out loud, because I was so struck by Nabokov's dynamic symmetry. Again, brilliant, flawless, writing.

And again, this story is certainly not for the faint of heart, and you, as the reader, will be deeply disturbed by the problematic chain of events that take place through the pages of this novel. In many ways, this book very much reminds me of Malcolm Lowry's 'Under the Volcano': brilliantly written, horrific story. And just like Lowry's masterpiece, I have no intention of ever reading Nabokov's LOLITA again; the literary dichotomy is complete.
--D. Mikels, Author, The Reckoning

2008-10-30 | It's always Happy Hour here (Skunk Holler) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Lolita

Description

Originally written in 1955, this comic satire of sex and the American ways of life focuses on the love of a middle-aged European for an American nymphet. It was made into a Stanley Kubrick film in 1962, starring Peter Sellers, James Mason and Sue Lyon.

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Despite its lascivious reputation, the pleasures of Lolita are as much intellectual as erogenous. It is a love story with the power to raise both chuckles and eyebrows. Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.

Playfully perverse in form as well as content, riddled with puns and literary allusions, Nabokov's 1955 novel is a hymn to the Russian-born author's delight in his adopted language. Indeed, readers who want to probe all of its allusive nooks and crannies will need to consult the annotated edition. Lolita is undoubtedly, brazenly erotic, but the eroticism springs less from the "frail honey-hued shoulders ... the silky supple bare back" of little Lo than it does from the wantonly gorgeous prose that Humbert uses to recount his forbidden passion:

She was musical and apple-sweet ... Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice ... and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty--between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock.

Much has been made of Lolita as metaphor, perhaps because the love affair at its heart is so troubling. Humbert represents the formal, educated Old World of Europe, while Lolita is America: ripening, beautiful, but not too bright and a little vulgar. Nabokov delights in exploring the intercourse between these cultures, and the passages where Humbert describes the suburbs and strip malls and motels of postwar America are filled with both attraction and repulsion, "those restaurants where the holy spirit of Huncan Dines had descended upon the cute paper napkins and cottage-cheese-crested salads." Yet however tempting the novel's symbolism may be, its chief delight--and power--lies in the character of Humbert Humbert. He, at least as he tells it, is no seedy skulker, no twisted destroyer of innocence. Instead, Nabokov's celebrated mouthpiece is erudite and witty, even at his most depraved. Humbert can't help it--linguistic jouissance is as important to him as the satisfaction of his arrested libido. --Simon Leake

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Customer Reviews

Review for Albee's version
This is a review for the way the item is being described on Amazon. This is a stage script of 'Lolita' as adapted by Edward Albee. The reviews seem to indicate that this is the actual work by Nabokov, it is not. Since I'm not interested in reading a stage version of the book before reading the book, I have no idea if the adaptation was any good.

2010-03-16 | Tech Dabbler (Jersey City, NJ) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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You love it while hating it. Such a work of art.
I found myself guiltily reading this book. It was given to me and it sat on my shelf for years. Then I curiously picked it up to read a few pages. . .I was hooked. The lush sensuality of the language pulled me in. I wanted to live in a world with language like this. While enjoying the author's delivery, I was acutely aware of the disturbing direction this book was taking. It felt honest in that you could see through Humbert's twisted thinking to the distruction he was causing. This book didn't idealize perversion and the idolization of Lolita was like a piece of fruit that was gorgeous on the outside, then you took a bite and realized that it was being devoured by a worm. This book made me think and is one of the best books I've ever read.

I remember being an adolescent girl. I remember the subtle looks or even the daring catcalls from men twice my age. . . this book is scary and divine, disgusting and beautiful. That is why it's a work of art.

2010-02-27 (denver, co) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Did NOT get proper information when ordering!
I did NOT get proper information when placing the order!

When the order was placed - your representative did NOT give accurate information as to when the book would be delivered; therefore, after seeing the correct date it would arrive in Italy in your follow-up missive, the order was cancelled and I am waiting for the refund to be sent to me!

2010-02-11 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1

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Peeling the Onion of Humanity
First of all the topic and concept are utterly wretched. A pervert praying on female children, spending an extraordinary amount of energy trying to squeeze empathy from the readers. As if that wasn't ugly enough the story conclude by murdering the person that saved the poor child. But in spite of all that, I still enjoyed reading the book and basking in the naked perversion. Being a male in a victorian society, one looks for outlets, even imaginative ones, and it's difficult to get outraged about your own lurid nature, a nature put there by God. To love is our nature. This book appeals to the base humanity and the lowly creature stirring within. It was brave material for its day and maintains a universal but savage appeal.

2010-01-10 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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A must read... If at least once.
Nabokov is my boyfriend's favorite author and when he heard that I had not read any of his novels he immediately suggested I read Pale Fire and then suggested Lolita.

I started off with Lolita, though I did not know what it was about. Going off of my bf's suggestions I assumed I would not be offended...

But as someone who was molested at the age of 11, I was deeply offended and I think that that was what ultimately got me to strive to finish the book as fast as I could. Read a classic till the end just for the fact that I could say that I'd read it. Yes, the style is great, Nabokov is an excellent writer, if not one of the best I have ever read. The thing that got to me, though it was not the author's fault by any means was the reopening of old wounds, the content, and the attempt (at times successful) to make his characters likable, albeit demented in some way or another. I had to force myself to keep an open mind even though I personally did not WANT to know any of the mindless dribblings of a pedophile. It was a one sided love story, and when I say love story I mean a delusional obsession with a little girl who grows up not as a strong individual, but as a sexual deviant...

Again, Nabokov is a great writer... It was just hard to cope with the content.

2009-12-31 | Mia (Bellingham, WA USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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