Despair

One of Nabokov's first forays into English fiction. Many of his favorite tricks are here - literary allusions, intricate and dazzling prose, false identities, unreliable narrators. Pure Nabokov - nothing wrong with that at all. ( )

How far gone can one be?: This story is about a person who looks/acts relatively "normal", but who's inner desperation leads him to hallucinate--and act on these delusions--in order to see the things that he wants to see. Unfortunately, the world doesn't cooperate. I liked "Despair" because it enabled me to witness an experience from a deranged perspective, but again, it isn't one of my favorite Nabokov stories. It was kind of short, so that might have something to do w/ it.

The title describes it perfectly. Such good writing! I wish it wasn't so sad though. I got to about the middle before I realized that something bad was going to happen. Very quick read. ( )

Nabokov's mastery of style, and not necessarily his plots, are what make him a success, and that's why if one were to read Despair because of the back cover praise that it is "a beautiful mystery plot, not to be revealed" one would very quickly find himself bored and disappointed.

This book is not about what happens as much as it's about the person making it happen, the deceptive, arrogant, and thoroughly reprehensible narrator Hermann. He is obsessed in the same way that Nabokov's other famous depraved lunatic, Humbert Humbert, is: changing the course of his life to satisfy his need to see doubles in his world and act upon the consequences of meeting those doubles.

What happens to Hermann and his unwitting double, the dissheveled beggar Felix, is far less important, though, than the patient, methodical development of Hermann's psychosis, revealed in his increasingly digressive and unreliable narration.

This book is a feast of self-referentiality and a marvel of successfully slow pacing, and enjoyed as such, it is indeed a revelation. Just don't expect too much perfectly-crafted mystery.

Dark and strange murder tale with an extremely unsympathetic main character. Hermann, repugnant as he is, represents a real feat of literary creation. To say this is not Nabokov's best work is by no means an insult.