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Loading... Look at the Harlequins! (original 1972; edition 1990)by Vladimir Nabokov
Work InformationLook at the Harlequins! by Vladimir Nabokov (1972)
   No current Talk conversations about this book.  dchaikin | Dec 24, 2021 |    ) gtross | Sep 21, 2020 | A disappointing read: 1.5 star. (  ) DanielSTJ | Oct 15, 2019 |  ) ltfitch1 | Jun 5, 2016 |  ) dbsovereign | Jan 26, 2016 | no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesGallimard, Folio (2427) Awards
As intricate as a house of mirrors, Nabokov's last novel is an ironic play on the Janus-like relationship between fiction and reality. It is the autobiography of the eminent Russian-American author Vadim Vadimovich N. (b. 1899), whose life bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, though the two are not to be confused (?). Focusing on the central figures of his life -- his four wives, his books, and his muse, Dementia -- the book leads us to suspect that the fictions Vadim has created as an author have crossed the line between his life's work and his life itself, as the worlds of reality and literary invention grow increasingly indistinguishable. 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. "One of the greatest masters of prose since Conrad." -- Harper's No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.7)
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Wikipedia in English
1
published: 1974
format: 253-page paperback
acquired: December 12
read: Dec 15-21
time reading: 10:08, 2.4 mpp
rating: 3
locations: Cambridge England. the French Riviera (or Cote de Azure), Paris, sort of Massachusetts etc.
about the author: 1899 – 1977. Russia born, educated at Trinity College in Cambridge, 1922. Lived in Berlin (1922-1937), Paris, the US (1941-1961) and Montreux, Switzerland (1961-1977).
This was a tough read. It seemed clear until I realized I was getting lost. (I stopped at page 30 and re-read from page 1...and it didn't help). Most of it is a narrator talking crazy, which gets tiresome. There is complexity and it calms down in the last 100 pages. But, i was happy to be done.
One of the interesting things about this novel is how Nabokov writes about himself in variations of apparent integrity and apparent opposition. The narrator here has a number of parallels with the real VN, including a set of parallel novels in Russian and English. He's also crazy and in other ways directly counter to Nabokov. But, not entirely crazy. The counter-real-VN stuff is also revealing about the author...and interesting if you are trying to understand him....but not if you're not.
This was his 17th and last novel. He was working on another when his health very suddenly declined. I have now read all of his novels, plus a novella, a kind of autobiography ([Speak, Memory]), a small biography and a longer one of his wife - and that may be my favorite of all this. Anyway, closing this chapter.
2021
https://www.librarything.com/topic/333774#7689534 (