Young and funny Mr. Nabokov

Ever since the news came out a couple of weeks ago that the last Nabokov novel/stack of 138 index cards roughly equalling a novel, The Original of Laura , was officially coming out on November 3, I've been wanting to get back to, or get to more of, Nabokov's work. So, here we are: I'm reading one Nabokov novel a month.

First up, from early in his career: Invitation to a Beheading (1935-36)

When Invitation first came out, it was often called "Kafkaesque," even though Nabokov says that he never read Kafka or anything in German prior to writing this novel. (Apparently, the marketing people who put out the 1989 edition that I have did not get that message: The summary on the back starts out, "Like Kafka's The Castle...".)

Invitation does have the same dark, dreamlike quality as The Trial, the book it was most often compared with, and Cincinnatus C. certainly reads like it could be a parody of Joseph K. It's been a while since I read The Trial , but in my memory it was fairly menacing and nightmarish. Invitation, on the other hand, is funny. Really funny.

With each scene, Nabokov ramps up the absurdity to hilarious levels. The jailor invites the prisoner to waltz; the prison director tip-toes through the prison in a frock coat stuffed with cotton padding; the lawyer causes a big to-do looking for his lost cuff-link.

Cincinnatus C. as a character is like a void, his existence boiling down to two questions: When am I going to die? Why won't anyone tell me when I'm going to die? The other characters whirl around him like a bunch of Vaudeville acts trying to bring him round to the lighter side of life. He tries desperately to make a connection that will help him feel like a part of the world—first, with his unfaithful wife who, when she finally comes to visit, brings her boyfriend and full family with all their furniture, then with the jailor's daughter, Emmie.

I wish I would have read this when I was in high school or early college, when questions about the absurdity of existence still had the ability to blow my mind. Nabokov's writing, though, still intimidates and surprises me. Even in translation, Invitation has moments of insanely twisted, densely imaginative prose that hint at the passages to come—in books like Speak, Memory and Pale Fire. 

Here's a sample or two:

...the lawyer leaned his elbows on the broad stone parapet, whose top was overgrown with some kind of enterprising vegetable.

...one could see the weed-blurred outlines of the ancient airport and the structure where they kept the venerable, decrepit airplane, with motley patches on its rusty wings, which was still sometimes used on holidays, principally for the amusement of cripples. Matter was weary. Time gently dozed.

It's also fun to see the early flickers of themes that, from my limited experience with Nabokov, would continue to be Nabokovian staples:

1) Chess: One of my favorite scenes in the novel is a chess game between Cincinnatus and his neighbor in the prison, who talks on and on about his conquests with women while coaching Cincinnatus on how to play chess, even though Cincinnatus is clearly beating him at the game.

2) The mysteriously wise and flirty young girl: Nabokov complains in the introduction that "the evil-minded will perceive in little Emmie a sister of little Lolita."  And as she sits on his lap, blowing in his ear and saying "We'll run away, and you'll marry me," it's pretty hard not to, even if Emmie's antics are just a bit of Cincinnatus C.'s imagination.

3) Butterflies: Ok, there's a moth, not a butterfly. (Nabokov was an accomplished entomologist. There's actually a genus of butterfly named after him.)

Of course, the most interesting character in the world of Nabokov is always Nabokov. In the book's introduction he rails against critics who've compared him to other writers, refusing to acknowledge any writer's influence on his writing, except:

...the melancholy, extravagant, wise, witty, magical, and altogether delightful Pierre Delalande, whom I invented.

Nabokov even uses a "quote" from Delalande as the epigraph for Invitation to a Beheading.

Next up: Lolita!