Author: Cameron Aitken. Cameron is a First Class English Literature Graduate and Jazz Musician. He loves poetry and philosophy, and has a background in literary theory. He is also interested in psychoanalysis, and thinks about films through this lens. He is an Early Modernist at heart.

There is a mystifying and elusive feeling about an author who is primarily famous (or infamous) for one novel: Lolita. Notwithstanding all of Vladimir Nabokov’s eccentric lifestyle and genius, people either shy away from him or — if their volition deserts them and curiosity mildly prevails — they flirt with the perimeter of his corpus, yet never really go beyond Lolita. Is this not tantamount to reading Pride and Prejudice but not Emma? Is it nearly as unforgivable as reading Plato but not Aristotle? Surely in order to put the readers at ease, the only way to circumvent this would be to create an almost comprehensive overview of his work, providing the groundwork so carefully designed, that it would not deny the reader the pleasure of discovering Nabokov’s prose for himself beyond his notorious novel.

         In David Vernon’s new monograph, he does precisely what one would expect from a book which aims to not only introduce the perturbed first-time reader of Nabokov to his extraordinarily exciting yet cruel world, but also enhance the ever-augmenting readings that one can take from him. Vernon produces short, interrelated essays that include all of Nabokov’s novels and other works. He adroitly magnifies the striking world of Nabokov’s fiction, and with a meticulous eye highlights the themes that pervade Nabokov’s many novels, poems, plays, and stories. Nabokov’s scope can best be described as Proustian, for his writing obsesses over life in often the most abstract of ways. Whether it be art or metaphysics, psychology or sound, Nabokov zooms in on these details with human nature at its core, seldom allowing his own personal opinions to obscure the views and eyesight of a character. Vernon does not squander a sentence in laying out these Nabokovian quiddities and profundities.

         The style of writing in the introduction to this book is Nabokovian in itself because Vernon writes with as much ebullience and linguistic delight as the novelist does. It almost prepares the reader for the coruscating prose for which Nabokov is so highly regarded. While intelligent and verbose, it does not distract the reader; if anything, he informs us that he is intimate enough with Nabokov to sound like him, while not mutating into a copy of him. Vernon understands the overarching themes that run throughout his work as well as the few that are a little more specific to individual novels. From this, he promotes that this book ought to be an introduction to Nabokov in order to grasp the areas which are at play. However, the book feels closer to a companion than a sheer introduction to him. It is redolent of a conversation that Harold Bloom and Charlie Rose had concerning Bloom’s book called Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human when he advised that the reader had plenty of liberty in how they wished to navigate the book: they could read or see a play and then read a chapter on that play, or they could simply read the sizeable tome straight through. The same is true in this case; while the chapters interweave in the same way that themes overlap in Nabokov’s work, it does not mean that the chapters do not stand alone. One could read a chapter on Despair without initially ever having read the novel. But Vernon is clever in the sense that he executes the balance between a first-time reader and someone who wishes to either elucidate or intensify the experience they had with the book twenty years ago. Nabokov himself once remarked that reading is always re-reading, and Vernon certainly encourages this.

         Vernon follows his extensive introduction with a brief biography of all the things in which literary critics are most interested: the books they read in their developmental stages. It seems that Nabokov had access to a library that resembled something in between that of Lord Byron and T.E. Lawrence. Like Byron’s, it was large, but it was also incredibly selective like Lawrence’s, for the library of Nabokov’s youth boasted books of great literature in several languages, predominantly French, English, and Russian. This largely apprises us of his early linguistic ability, particularly having the luxury of several governesses who communicated to a young Nabokov in languages foreign to his native Russia: English and French. These details, in addition to Nabokov’s later departure from the developing realm of revolution, are dealt with by Vernon with an air of sympathetic poignancy. Nabokov did not flourish at school, and, from Vernon’s assessment, it sounds as though he garnered little support and affection from his tutors and peers. His subsequent émigré status cements the focus on the literary elements of his life. Although historians may be more interested in what happens in the confinement of the bedroom — here, the reader could refer to Victor Sebestyen’s biography of Lenin which largely deals with the private life of the man — the literary critic is far more fascinated by social status and development. Infidelity does occur in his novels and is an important theme. Incidentally, Nabokov also cheated on his wife Véra; Vernon only fleetingly mentions this towards the end of the book, perhaps disregarding it as a necessary fact to understanding the works of Nabokov.

         Loss, however, appears to be the most crucial theme that runs throughout the course of Vernon’s book. This may refer to the loss of a loved one in the novels, or even that of his father who was killed when Nabokov was twenty-two. Vernon explains how this sticks with Nabokov throughout his career:

Memory repeatedly resurrects his father, only to continually kill him, again and again, in an artistic pattern that enriches the text as well as our understanding of personal loss.

This is strikingly similar to that scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) when Scottie resurrects the fictional Madeleine only to lose her a second time. Nabokov understood the ephemerality of life and depicted this many times in his work, often providing the thematic intertextuality of which Vernon speaks. Indeed, Vernon recognises the cruel yet amusing world that Nabokov provides the reader. He presents an image of Nabokov’s province that corresponds with the Lacanian notion of jouissance, that kind of blend of simultaneous pain and pleasure:

His works are playgrounds of perfection and dungeons of despair, workshops of invention and laboratories of cruelty.

Vernon imagines Nabokov as not merely a scientist of lepidopterology but as a literary scientist, too. Like Hitchcock, Nabokov regarded his characters or players as those which could be moved around (as chess pieces) in any way he so desired. This enables manipulation, distortion, and treachery to disturb and convulse any harmony within this literary world.

         Vernon beautifully captures the essence of each novel without spoiling important elements of the plot for the reader. This is where Nabokov and Flaubert share the commonality – for both, the plot in itself did not matter as much as the form of the novel did. A subheading to each chapter is provided, informing us of the focus thereof. These subheadings are either concrete, like ‘Dogs, Dolls, Dachau’, which highlight symbols, or they can also be abstract headings, such as ‘The Embassy of Silence’, ‘Pregnant with Death’, and so forth. Either way, these titles are plaintively ominous. The book not only discusses Nabokov’s work but also alludes to the wider world of literature. He gifts us a wealth of knowledge of literature, referring to Shakespeare as many times as Pushkin and (to a lesser extent) Proust. He would often start his argument in these short essays with a reference to an earlier work of literature — the book is as intertextual as Nabokov’s own work. The sheer scope of topics upon which Vernon touches is remarkable for such a condensed book. He even discusses the overlooked topic of materiality in the case of Lolita. As David Vernon completed a PhD on Shakespeare, materiality will certainly be on his mind, as is expected with Early Modern scholars. He notes the disconcerting images of young, superficially innocent girls that are displayed on the front of some covers. There is a Dutch version with an inchoate sketch of Humbert Humbert standing over Lolita in a leering and domineering manner with his fedora clutched in his right hand like a weapon designed for acute suffocation. Indubitably this fascination with pre-pubescent girls suffuses the chapter and is the cornerstone that fascinates us as readers. Why Nabokov chose to tackle such socially prohibited subject matter is a conundrum to many, yet the success for Nabokov leads us to believe that he is furtively and unashamedly glad that he did. What is more disconcerting is that Vernon also apprises us of Nabokov’s eerie but necessary research into young girls, including average measurements of waist size, height, and wrist circumference. As Martin Amis points out, this obsession became unhealthy and stayed with him during the rest of his literary output, when discussing how the writing of great writers can vertiginously decay:

Nabokov lost his sense of moral delicacy and reserve (the last four novels are heedlessly infested with twelve-year-old girls).

Vernon does not find it disconcerting, as he makes it clear that Nabokov’s writing did not deteriorate despite this ‘infestation.’ Nevertheless, Nabokov had an eye for detail and an ear for free indirect style which evidently became useful when he started to write the screenplay for the film adaptation of Lolita. The filmic tends to deal quite abundantly with images and, in this sense, the material.

         Another notable observation from Vernon is Nabokov’s exploration of the filmic within his novels and short stories. According to Vernon, Nabokov was curious about film and admired the genius of Charles Chaplin and others. There is even a moment during a skiing sequence in King, Queen, Knave where Nabokov appears as a minor character, comparable to Hitchcock’s later use of the cameo. Apropos of this topic, Vernon highlights one of Nabokov’s most filmic moments in Laughter in the Dark, which of course centres around an aspiring actress who suffers the banalities of the picture house, seductively gazing at the allure of the big screen. The author expertly guides us through this chapter with constant allusion to his ironical subheading: ‘Seeing is deceiving’. Vernon formulates the argument for his essays and trickles little gems of inspection along the way. The novels are covered with valuable insights; so are the short stories and Nabokov’s Memoir Speak, Memory. Nabokov is regarded as a superb educator, and Vernon refers frequently to the lectures as a profound resource for his sometimes idiosyncratic take on works of both Russian and English literature. Nabokov may write dismal and cruel scenarios but he is very much a moral and educational writer. Although Vernon believes that Nabokov is only didactic when it is totally necessary — Nabokov does not preach. Like Vernon, he instils little moments of wisdom along the way that are too good to be discarded.

If there is one thing that David Vernon excels at in this book, then it is lucidity: he unravels the oeuvre of Nabokov with as much coherence as the length of this work permits. He envisages Nabokov as a whole corpus in an excitingly readable way that has not hitherto been accomplished. This book will arguably become a foundational text for studies of Nabokov, opening up further study to the lavish selection of books Vernon discusses at the end of his work, which provides further context and annotation. ‘Nabokov unravelled’ is truly the most candid title that can be assigned to a survey of this magnificent achievement.

Sources:

Amis, Martin. Inside Story. London, Vintage, 2021.

Vernon, David. Ada to Zembala: The Novels of Vladimir Nabokov. Edinburgh: Endellion Press, 2024.