The Original of Laura

The Original of Laura
В. Набоков · Public domain · source
Name	The Original of Laura
Author	Vladimir Nabokov
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Novel, Metafiction
Publisher	Knopf / Penguin Books
Pub date	November 17, 2009
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	278
Isbn	978-0-307-27189-1

The Original of Laura. It is the incomplete final novel by the renowned Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov, left unfinished at his death in 1977. The work, consisting of 138 handwritten index cards, was a subject of intense debate for decades before its posthumous publication in 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf. The novel's fragmented state and its provocative themes concerning art, obsession, and destruction have cemented its status as a unique and controversial artifact within Nabokov's literary canon.

Background and conception

The novel's conception occurred during the final years of Nabokov's life, while he was residing at the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland. Following the critical and commercial success of works like Lolita and Pale Fire, Nabokov began this new project, which he described in a 1975 interview with The New York Times as "the best thing I ever wrote." The manuscript was composed on the author's preferred medium of index cards, a method he also used for Ada or Ardor and Transparent Things. His declining health, however, prevented its completion. Nabokov had left strict instructions for his wife, Véra Nabokov, and later his son, Dmitri Nabokov, to destroy the manuscript if he could not finish it, creating a profound ethical dilemma that would span over thirty years.

Plot summary and structure

The narrative, as decipherable from the fragments, centers on a corpulent, neurologist named Philip Wild and his much younger wife, Flora, who is believed to be the inspiration for a scandalous roman à clef titled *My Laura*. This book-within-a-book is authored by a character resembling a novelist, potentially named Hubert H. Hubert. The plot intertwines Wild's philosophical experiments in self-erasure through meditation with Flora's promiscuous past and her role as a muse. The structure is inherently nonlinear, presented as a series of discontinuous scenes and notes on the reproduced index cards, featuring Nabokov's characteristic wordplay, allusions to Tolstoyan themes, and motifs of doppelgängers. Key episodes include Flora's childhood encounters with Hubert H. Hubert and Wild's clinical descriptions of willing his own bodily dissolution.

Publication history and controversy

The decision to publish the fragments ignited a major literary controversy, involving scholars, critics, and the Nabokov estate. For decades, Dmitri Nabokov and the executor of the estate, Andrew Wylie, guarded the manuscript. After much public speculation and pressure from institutions like the Library of Congress, where a typescript was held, Dmitri announced in 2008 his decision to publish, arguing his father would not have wanted "the novel to burn." The 2009 edition, edited by Dmitri Nabokov, features facsimiles of the handwritten cards with transcriptions on facing pages, allowing readers to view the raw compositional process. This publication by Penguin Books and Alfred A. Knopf was met with both acclaim for its transparency and criticism for defying the author's presumed wishes, echoing debates surrounding other posthumous works like Kafka's The Trial.

Critical reception and analysis

Critical reception was deeply polarized, reflecting the work's ambiguous nature. Reviewers in The Guardian and The New Yorker noted its brilliant, aphoristic passages but deemed it an essentially unformed and often unpalatable sketch. Scholars analyzed its connections to Nabokov's enduring themes of artistic possession, memory, and parody, often comparing Flora to other Nabokovian nymphets from Lolita. The novel's focus on a degrading portrait of its female protagonist sparked feminist critique, while its metafictional framework was seen as a continuation of the experiments in Pale Fire. The presentation of the fragments, however, led some, like critic James Wood, to question whether it should be judged as a novel at all, but rather as a fascinating glimpse into Nabokov's writing process.

Legacy and cultural impact

Despite its incomplete state, *The Original of Laura* holds a significant place in literary history as a key to understanding Nabokov's late style and authorial intentions. It has inspired scholarly symposia, artistic responses, and discussions on bioethics in literature, paralleling debates about the papers of writers like Max Brod and David Foster Wallace. The work's very existence challenges notions of textual authority and the relationship between an author's instructions and a work's public life. It remains a poignant coda to the career of one of the twentieth century's most meticulous stylists, a fragment that continues to generate interpretation and debate within the global community of Nabokov studies.

Category:Novels by Vladimir Nabokov Category:2009 American novels Category:Unfinished novels Category:Novels published posthumously Category:Alfred A. Knopf books