Despair Vladimir Nabokov Christopher Lane 9781480541696 Books
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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.
“A beautiful mystery plot, not to be revealed.” - Newsweek
One of the twentieth century’s master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977.
“Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically.” — John Updike
Despair Vladimir Nabokov Christopher Lane 9781480541696 Books
I was pleasantly surprised at the ease with which I read Despair; not as difficult as Nabokov's more noted works, Lolita and Pale Fire. It was enjoyable and amusing. Beyond the puns and jabs at Dostoevsky, it is a serious portrait of the writer and the work of writing. The metaphor of the writer as criminal struggling to commit the perfect crime is excellent. The criminal in the throes of plotting and executing his crime experiences a delusion very similar to the writer living in the artificial world of his imagination. And, like Hermann, the rejected or unsuccessful writer is similarly disappointed that the readers didn't buy into his vision, his story. But, he never gives up, as the last paragraph attests.Product details
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Tags : Despair [Vladimir Nabokov, Christopher Lane] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965 — thirty years after its original publication — Despair</i> is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann,Vladimir Nabokov, Christopher Lane,Despair,Brilliance Audio,1480541699,General,Fiction,Fiction General,Literary,Unabridged Audio - FictionGeneral
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Despair Vladimir Nabokov Christopher Lane 9781480541696 Books Reviews
Russian-born Hermann Karlovich, 36, is a married and disappointed purveyor of chocolates in pre-war Berlin. When he meets a young vagrant he considers to be his physical double, he undertakes to exploit their likeness to commit the perfect crime. The less said about what happens next the better, as revealing any more might undermine your pleasure. And there is a lot to enjoy here. The plot is playful - it's contrived, familiar and somewhat childish, but as it unravels we realize those qualities are precisely part of Nabokov's point in choosing it. Hermann is a monstrous narcissist convinced of his own criminal (and literary) genius and unable to see his plot's fatal flaw. With Hermann as the narrator, recounting his criminal "triumph", the novel progresses with a highly self-conscious awareness of itself as a potential High Art text. Hermann is almost constantly reflecting on literature and the typical constructions by which such a mystery story, and novels in general, routinely unfold. This might be irritating if it weren't for the subtle intention behind it - Hermann's error is to assume that his life can and will be experienced as work of art (by himself and by others); that the "perfect crime" is possible and that he can commit it, just like in the world of fiction. In creating such a wonderfully unreliable and deluded narrator, Nabokov explores and critiques the literary conventions by which so many novels proceed, and contrasts them with a character (and climax) which are refreshingly, horrifyingly human.
DESPAIR is narrated by Hermann Karlovich, a failing and deranged chocolate manufacturer who is self-absorbed and needs money. Hermann, who thinks he is a lawbreaker of genius, is also obsessed with the idea of mirror-image doubles. But in Hermann's skewed world, the doubles that he sees are those in the funhouse mirror where "...a crooked mirror strips its man or starts to squash him, and lo! there is produced a man-bull, a man-toad, under the pressure of countless glass atmospheres; or else, one is pulled out like dough and then torn in two."
In DESPAIR, Hermann commits a shocking crime and then compares his story of that crime, which is the novel DESPAIR, to CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. But since the author is Nabokov, not Dostoyevsky, the tone of DESPAIR features wry and literate hubris, not tortured guilt. CRIME AND PUN Hermann writes at one point in his manuscript. He also observes that there are many layers to this narrative, producing subsequent broad appeal. "Aye, let other nations, too, translate it into their respective languages, so that American readers may satisfy their craving for gory glamour; the French discern mirages of sodomy in my partiality for a vagabond; and Germans relish the skittish side of a semi-Slavonic soul."
BTW, the title of this excellent novel refers to the despair Hermann feels when he learns that the perfect crime that he conceives and executes--his masterpiece, so to speak--is scorned by the newspapers. These "...behaved just as a literary critic does, who at the mere sight of a book by an author whom he does not favor, makes up his mind that the book is worthless."
Highly recommended
The main character of "Despair" stumbles upon a perfect double, a literary tramp of sorts, and draws him into his murder plot- one that leaves many corpses in its wake.
Nabokov/Herman kills off the main character, the double, and the real source of his despair, Dostoyevsky. His parody of the very genre that he despised is turned into the very device for his revenge upon it and its greatest Russian author. The result is brilliant.
His weapon is the pun. At one point when Herman describes his search for a title to this story, he considers calling it "Crime and Pun". At another point in the novel Nobokov has Herman cleverly sequester Dostoyevsky's name in an anagram, as noted by Alexander Dolinin in "The Caning of Modernist Profaners Parody in "Despair". [...]
As a professor Nabokov reviewed Russian literature as follows
"Tolstoy is the greatest Russian writer of prose fiction. Leaving aside his precursors Pushkin and Lermontov, we might list the greatest artists in Russian prose thus first, Tolstoy; second, Gogol; third, Chekhov; fourth, Turgenev." [Realizing the, really, silliness of such rankings, he adds] "This is rather like grading students' papers and no doubt Dostoevsky and Saltykov are waiting at the door of my office to discuss their low marks."
"Despair," being his first novel, and one he carefully revisted thirty years after its original publication, it represents his break with what Harold Bloom referred to as an author's "Age of Influence". He took Dostoyevsky out into woods, dressed him up in his parody of himself, shot him in the back, stole his literary passport, and fled the scene of the crime and pun. Not a bad start to a stellar career. But I think Dostoyevsky had hold over him that he would never have really admitted to.
I was pleasantly surprised at the ease with which I read Despair; not as difficult as Nabokov's more noted works, Lolita and Pale Fire. It was enjoyable and amusing. Beyond the puns and jabs at Dostoevsky, it is a serious portrait of the writer and the work of writing. The metaphor of the writer as criminal struggling to commit the perfect crime is excellent. The criminal in the throes of plotting and executing his crime experiences a delusion very similar to the writer living in the artificial world of his imagination. And, like Hermann, the rejected or unsuccessful writer is similarly disappointed that the readers didn't buy into his vision, his story. But, he never gives up, as the last paragraph attests.
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