by Vladimir Nabokov
I chose “The Original of Laura” as the first book to ever write about, because of several, of course subjective, reasons. I longed to read it ever since voices of the virtual cyber-sphere started whispering about it. Vladimir Nabokov is one of my all-time-favorites and I was hoping, in a somewhat mystical way, I would find my “original” within this odd novel, forbidden even by its own author.
… because, yes, indeed, “The Original of Laura” is the most exotic work of art you will ever read.
138 hand-written index cards represent the last mental chapters in the literary brilliant mind of late Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov. The controversial Russian-American novelist, best known for his “Lolita”, has, ever since infiltrating the Art of Writing, delighted (or shocked) us with a refreshing view on literature. Nabokov never sought to moralize or to educate with his writing. His synaesthetic mind taught us, perhaps, about the real essence within lyricism and fiction: the aesthetic echo of emotions and the ‘melody’ of words.
“The Original of Laura (Dying is Fun)” is a draft – the gathering of lyrical instances in the pre-conceptual phases of an idea. It’s fragmented, mysterious. An unfinished web of names and connections, which sometimes appear to be random entries in the diary of a mental patient. But beyond that, in my opinion, it is a catharsis through which even the darkest moments become a fading game of fun:
In his last days, the Writer, as incarnation of the World of Words, designs Death – quite logically if one thinks about it – as a slow Erasing (- read the “Original” and you’ll know what I mean).
Dying is Fun reminds us the title, and I bet this reading will be a delight to any of you EMOs out there. J
But “The Original of Laura” is more than ‘that’. This weird novel is at the same time this very, indeed ‘original’, insight in the mind of an extravagant Writer. We are able to peek at the reflections and echoes of ideas that represent the archetype of the artist: chaotic and yet seeking order, seeking words, rephrasing, effacing, expunging, erasing, deleting, rubbing out, wiping out … obliterating. It is basically the attempt at projecting Outside an impossible Inside.
To write a review about “The Original of Laura” is like to write a review of the postmodern world: scattered, in thousand stories and perspectives. A world Nabokov never wanted us to see … “unfinished”. He started dissecting a universe he never got the chance to “heal”.
The ‘novel’ creates ambivalent feelings – some will say it is a cruelty to publish these few notes, this embryonic pool of pluripotent words. Some will say anything written by someone like Vladimir Nabokov is worth reading. Some will be disappointed. You will surely not find the Nabokov you know in this ‘novel’. Some will enjoy the lightness of the melodic, inconsequent story.
I went through all of these feelings, and not seldom was I invaded by confusion while reading “The Original of Laura”, but, to quote from the novel,
“Oh you must! (…) it is, of course fictionalized and all that but you’ll come face to face with yourself at every corner. And there’s your wonderful death. (…)Damn, here’s my train. Are we going together?”
