Monday, March 06, 2006

 

Reading Nabokov

Today started the first few pages of "laughter in the dark" by Vladimir Nabokov...if there is one description that I find exactly fit nabokov’s style of writing it was the quote by John Updike who once said..."Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written that is, ecstatically." …how true it is!!Nabokov once called 'Laughter in the Dark' one of his worst books...but... his worst is worth a whole lot more than a lorry load of garbage blockbusters and pulp fictions in the estimate of many...i agree...

Like many of us I discovered nabokov through ‘lolita’….when I was quite young…and like most young men we were only looking for the obvious and prurient stuff …but oh how as one gets older one can understand and identify with humbert humbert ‘s insane lust and longing for the forbidden…but after lolita I left nabokov quite alone for years …until I received ‘despair’ as a present and that revived my interest and love for nabokov….

But reading nabokov is no easy feat… it requires full concentration as every sentence is so well crafted that it makes you want to cry….reading nabokov sometimes get you into a state of almost mystical transcendence and gets you excited and your mind wander into voyeuristic ecstasy of your own….i have attempted to read a few others by him…’the gift’, ‘pale fire’…and about him ..’speak memory’ and ‘vera’ but somehow other ‘easier’ books intervened and I never finish any….and I’m sure it’ll take probably years before I will finish ‘laughter in the dark’…but I don’t mind…. I’ll savour nabokov at my own turtle pace…..

Comments:
i enjoyed "lolita" but it was a long time ago ... have a collection of his stories on my 'to be read shelf' - he is for sure one of the great short story writers
 
The amazing thing about Nobokov was when he made me understand his justification for doing what he did to Lolita.. esp his narration of the motel.

Not that i condone his acts.. but still..
 
nabokov is one of the only few that i came across that exactly capture the anguish of randy old goats for young grass...as one of my dirty old goat vietnamese frields put it...and 'laughter in the dark' is lolita all over again...
 
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