Glory by Vladimir Nabokov, 1932

This semi-autobiographical early novel was written in the early 1930’s, but only translated into English in 1971, when Nabokov’s reputation as an author was secure. It did little to enhance it.

‘Glory’ follows the childhood and early life of Nabokov’s romantic protagonist, Martin Edelweiss, who escapes from the bloodshed of revolutionary Russia.to Switzerland and thence to England. In London he meets the Zilanov family, expatriate Russians like himself, and falls for their teenage daughter, Sonia. At Cambridge University he becomes friends with Darwin, a war hero and published author, now a fellow student. Cambridge is a period of restlessness for Martin – he finds it hard to settle on a field of academic study, or an occupation thereafter. His family is sufficiently wealthy for this to not be too much of a problem. A summer working as a farmhand in France does not quieten this restiveness. Slowly a plan forms in his mind – to return undercover to Soviet Russia. A search for glory will quieten his dissatisfaction with life. The precise purpose of this perilous journey is never articulated, and remains a mystery to Darwin even when Martin reveals his intended journey.

The novel closes on a consciously downbeat almost offhand tone – Martin leaves Darwin with some postcards for his mother to explain his absence, and sets off for Russia via Latvia. Darwin, although he argues with him, finds his plans ridiculous. Martin’s eventual fate is hinted at but never revealed, and the narrator even turns away from portraying the scene when Darwin explains what has happened to Martin’s mother.

‘Glory’ is an unsatisfying novel. If you come to this book having read the pyrotechnics of ‘Pale Fire’ or ‘Lolita’ you will be disappointed. As a stylist Nabokov is extraordinary, and in this respect ‘Glory’ can stand comparison with anything he wrote. He takes sentence construction and extended metaphor to the very limits of sustainability:

“Human thought, flying on the trapezes of the star-filled universe, with mathematics stretched beneath, was like an acrobat working with a net but suddenly noticing that in reality there is no net.”

Any further and this would read like parody. As it is the slight clumsiness at the end – “with a net but suddenly noticing that in reality there is no net” is the character’s, not the author’s awkwardness, and captures perfectly the gap between Martin’s perception of himself, as someone significant, and the reader’s understanding that he is something of a fantasist.

In his introduction to the English edition, written decades after the novel itself, Nabokov typically misleads and challenges the reader. He offers an interpretation of the novel in which:

 “(the fun of Glory) is to be sought in the echoing and linking of minor events in back-and-forth switches, which produce an illusion of impetus”.

This invites us to read the novel looking for intricacies of construction which are undoubtedly present, but which nevertheless fail to add much to the novel. Just because an author introduces a motif at the opening of a novel – here for example a path leading through a wood – and returns to it in a subsequent scene at the close, that in itself does little to enhance our appreciation, particularly if we have already had the author point out the device. There are undoubted traces in ‘Glory’ of the elusive genius that was to emerge in ‘Pale Fire’ (for example) but for all its skill and technique the former suffers from comparison with the later work.

One last point – apologies for the book cover illustration. I suspect the publishers were trying to cash in on Nabokov’s reputation as the author of ‘racy’ novels.

 

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, 1955

‘Lolita’ is not an easy book to review. Perhaps more than any other novel that I have reviewed on this blog thus far, ‘Lolita’ comes with a burden of critical responses that make it hard to see the novel for itself. It is an elusive text at the best of times, with its classically flawed narrator, constantly challenging the reader to ask whether Humbert’s words can be taken at face value, as they rarely can. ‘Lolita’ has lost none of its power to shock, even after the passage of more than fifty years since it was published, possibly gaining even more potency as our awareness of child sexual abuse has increased.

So I think I ought to start on safe ground, with a summary of the events and characters of the novel itself. The narrative is told as a recollection of events by the narrator, Humbert Humbert. An introductory chapter purporting to be by the book’s editor, but in fact forming part of the narrative, sets the scene – this is Humbert’s jail-cell confession, written shortly before his death. As with Nabokov’s earlier work, ‘Pale Fire’ there is a significant and palpable gap between the narrator’s view of events, and that of the reader’s, and it is navigating that gap that makes reading ‘Lolita’ both challenging and rewarding.

Humbert is a predatory paedophile, who after a period of grooming establishes a sexual relationship with his orphaned step-daughter, Dolores. It is significant that her name is not Lolita – this is a label given her by Humbert, as part of his attempt to erase her individuality and to control her. It is representative, if you will, of his abuse.

Nabokov set himself a huge challenge here – how to portray a monster through his own eyes, without utterly repulsing the reader. And make no mistake, Humbert is repellent. His abuse of Dolores is charted with euphemisms which do little to disguise the nature of the abuse. Some reviewers and critics (and to be clear, this is not an academic work, so I am not going to provide references to support this claim – assume when I write things like this I simply mean “stuff I have read on the Internet”) fall for Humbert’s version of events, and portray Dolores as the under-age predator, sexually precocious beyond her years, and responsible for seducing poor, vulnerable Humbert. The term ‘Lolita’ has over the years been used generically in this manner, which is a pity, because it should mean “victim”. Indeed, in most popular culture representations of Lolita she is portrayed in Humbert’s terms – sexually precocious, mature, even provocative. I even read one review online which suggested that ultimately the great achievement of this novel is that it makes the reader “fall in love” with Humbert, and that it is a love story. I recognise I am taking a very moral tone here, but part of the reason for keeping this blog in the first place was to chart my authentic reactions to what I read.

What might be interesting would be to give Lolita back her voice. Not as an imaginative exercise, but simply to look at what she says, as recorded by Humbert, but without his commentary. In the first part of the novel Lolita is only glimpsed, and is almost completely silent. When she is collected from camp by Humbert following her mother’s death, she has a few lines, but these are mainly every day observances. Of her thoughts on her abuse we have scarcely half a dozen lines, including (and to be clear, this is not an exhaustive list of her comments, but I think quite representative):

Before Humbert begins to rape her:

“Don’t drool on me. You dirty man” (130)

“Look, let’s cut out the kissing game”

“Lay off , will you”

And after the attacks begin:

“You revolting creature. I was a daisy-fresh girl, and look what you’ve done to me? I ought to call the police and tell that you raped me. Oh you dirty, dirty old man.” (159)

“Can you remember, you know….the hotel where you raped me”.

“An ominous hysterical note rang through her silly words. Presently, making a sizzling sound with her lips, she started complaining of pains, said she could not sit, said I had torn something inside her” (159)

While you could expect Humbert to do everything possible to avoid this self implication, Nabokov has him implicate himself time and again. He is fully aware that he has no defence to his actions, and that Lolita is far from a willing accomplice, nor partially responsible for the crimes, as some commentators (see above) would have it. Apart from her age, and the significant age gap between them, he is a twice married man, and her step-parent, in loco parentis. He bribes her with clothes and treats, and finally pays her per sexual transaction. He threatens her with entry into the care system if she reports his attacks. He attempts to render her unconscious with sleeping pills in order to facilitate his attacks. None of this is consensual, even were consent to be possible.

“Eventually she lived up to her I.Q. by finding a safer hiding place, which I never discovered, but by that time I had brought prices down drastically by having her earn the hard and nauseous way permission to participate in the school’s theatrical programme. (209) With this clear illustration that even delusional Humbert realises his attacks are nauseating, can critics still describe this as a love affair? (I have found one reference to the magazine ‘vanity Fair’ describing ‘Lolita’ as “the only convincing love story of our century”.)

“She had entered my world, umber and black Humberland, with rash curiosity; she surveyed it with a shrug of amused distaste; and it seemed to me now that she was ready to turn away from it with something akin to plain repulsion. Never did she vibrate under my touch, and a strident ‘what d’you think you are doing?’ was all I got for my pains. To wonderland I had to offer, my fool preferred the corniest movies, the most cloying fudge. To think that between a Hamburger and a Humburger, she would – invariably, with icy precision – plump for the former” (Nabokov, 166).

Some kind of normality settles on their existence as Humbert and Dolores restlessly criss-cross the country, always on the move to prevent her from making any friends or appealing to anyone for help. But Humbert lets slip that Dolores never comes to terms with the tragedy of her situation, her captivity:

“I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night – every night, every night – the moment I feigned sleep”. (199)

Is this the behaviour of a young women enjoying the company of her older lover, (as Humbert would love it to be, but cannot persuade himself it is) or that of a deeply traumatised hostage?

‘Lolita’ is an extraordinary novel, written in a complex, allusive and elusive style which almost demands a re-reading. Its subject matter makes it hard to read at points, and I found myself immune to the charms of the monster that is Humbert Humbert. You have to admire Nabokov’s bravery in tackling what remains a taboo subject, and doing so by rejecting an easy stereotypes. In looking for a key to understanding this novel, a fruitless search I know, I keep coming back to the author’s post-script, where he describes the germ of the novel. A newspaper story told of an experiment where a chimpanzee was taught to draw, and eventually drew the bars of its cage. We can ignore the reality of the chimp’s life, but when given the ability to communicate it is the thing it draws. Lolita was caged, imprisoned by Humbert, and deprived of a voice, and we can catch glimpses of the horror of her situation all the more vividly because we see them through the soft-tinted lens of Humbert’s perspective.

 

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

“Pale Fire” is a complex, multi-layered post modernist novel – but for goodness sake don’t let that put you off! At the heart of this novel is an extraordinary romp – and that’s not a word you expect to see used to describe a modern novel.

The structure of the novel is worth spending a minute or two outlining. It opens with a 999 line poem, which is followed by what appears to be at first a detailed critical analysis of the poem. The critic uses appropriate technical language and phrases, and the reader is not alerted to there being anything out of the ordinary in this set up. This appearance slowly begins to unravel. The first hint that all is not as it seems occurs when the critic is disturbed by some noise outside, and this intrusion appears in his notes. The situation quickly spirals from here, as we come to understand that the writer – Charles Kinbote, academic and friend of the now deceased poet John Shade, is in fact delusional. He is the ultimate unreliable narrator, and nothing he tells us can be taken at face value. Sometimes slips in his facade reveal a different perspective, but any “revealed truth” has to be treated with equal care. This is not a world in which the true state of affairs is within our grasp; we are just shown different levels of illusion.

Kinbote’s footnotes to the poem steadily lead the reader to understand that he took a teaching job in the United States and cultivated an acquaintance with Shade, imposing his company despite the resistance of Shade’s wife. over time he tells Shade the fantastic story of King Charles the Beloved of Zembla and his escape into exile. We are invited (by Kinbote) to infer that he is telling his own story, and that he wants Shade to turn this narrative into his poem; a suggestion Shade stubbornly resists.

The real delight of the novel is this Zemblan fantasy. It is outrageously kitsch, almost unquotable in that every sentence is at once ridiculous, over-written, camp, and hilarious. The king’s escape from imprisonment, his disguises and near misses, is all related breathlessly, kept superbly in tone. A parallel narrative relating the journey of Shade’s accidental assassin across Europe to the US is of a piece of this comic operetta style, closer to some of the tone of cheap gangster or spy stories.

In constructing this inner narrative we are invited to see the world outside it as real – similar to the way McEwan uses the alternative ending of “Atonement” to bring into focus the “real” ending. In this “real” world Kinbote is a disturbed academic, Gradus the assassin an escaped lunatic or criminal trying to kill the judge from whom Kinbote rents his house, and Shade is who we are told he is, the one constant through all the layered narratives. But there are many warning signs that tell us that however flawed and ridiculous Kinbote’s stories may be, the world from which he relates them is equally artificial. There is no safe ground to which the reader can anchor themselves, no fixed point of reliable perspective. The “real” world is equally flawed and ridiculous, albeit in a different, less comic, way.

On one level, the simplest reading of this novel is a satire on academia, and in particular the hangers on that surround famous writers, noting down their every comment for future inclusion in memoirs, chronicling the mundane details of the famous one’s life, and attempting to gain their place in the margins of the picture frame of posterity. No doubt this was in part Nabokov’s point, reflecting on some of the response to the publication of “Lolita”, but on its own this is a fairly mundane reading. But this is a fairly limited reading.

An alternative approach is to see the novel as a mystery story, in which we are invited to unpick the accidental revelation of the real events of the novel from Kinbote’s confused perspective. This is a seductive reading, as the reader is always led carefully into “guessing” what really happened a few pages before Kinbote confirms it. A good example of this is his identity – we work out that he believes he is Charles the Beloved well before the mask slips and he refers to Charles as “I” rather than “He”. But this guessing game is, once the reader realises that Kinbote is telling his own story, far too easy. Guessing games are sometimes fun, but they aren’t great literature.

Which leaves the complex, multi-layered narrative which is open to multiple, all equally valid readings. Which in turn makes this a classic modernist novel.

There are no rules about how or when to enjoy a novel, and the escapist fantasy of the King of Zembla, which wouldn’t feel out of place in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, is still for me the funniest, most enjoyable part of this novel.