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Loading... The Original of Laura: (Dying Is Fun)by Vladimir Nabokov
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won't like
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  anamuk | Nov 20, 2009 |  
 These fragments of “Laura” — so cryptic and sketchy — represent an incomplete, fetal rendering of whatever it was that Nabokov held within his imagination. Yet, at the same time, these bits and pieces of “Laura” will beckon and beguile Nabokov fans, who will find many of the author’s perennial themes and obsessions percolating through the story.  The Original of Laura can't escape the musty air of an estate sale: The trinkets that piled up in the attic; the damp books from the basement; the old man's stained cravat; the lonely figurines that used to be part of a cherished set; the mismatched, overworn clothing—all are brought out in the hope that there might appear a buyer for those sad objects, someone blinded by literary nostalgia and willing to rescue the family possessions from the waste basket.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0307271897, Hardcover)When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left instructions for his heirs to burn the 138 handwritten index cards that made up the rough draft of his final and unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. But Nabokov’s wife, Vera, could not bear to destroy her husband’s last work, and when she died, the fate of the manuscript fell to her son. Dmitri Nabokov, now seventy-five—the Russian novelist’s only surviving heir, and translator of many of his books—has wrestled for three decades with the decision of whether to honor his father’s wish or preserve for posterity the last piece of writing of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. His decision finally to allow publication of the fragmented narrative—dark yet playful, preoccupied with mortality—affords us one last experience of Nabokov’s magnificent creativity, the quintessence of his unparalleled body of work.(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:18:46 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Next the publish/burn controversy. I wanted to read it, so I'm on the side of publish so no debate here.
Brass tacks, this is not a novel, its the skeleton or scaffold of a novel, what appears to be an interesting multi-layered novel with potentially one or more novels inside. Is it genius ? Well it shows potential, it also shows potential to sprawl in the way Ada does.
What else is there to say ? I'm happy with it, I'm happy with the price I paid both for the form of the book & its contents. (