22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eye Scream Ewe Scream We All Scream..., July 20, 2008
This review is from: The Eye (Paperback)
... for more Nabokov! If only he'd been as prolific as Anthony Trollope. This short novella, written in Berlin in 1930, is not nearly the apex of Nab's oeuvre, but it's awfully good. Even when no one could mistake his lepidopterine syntax, it's fun to see him writing in a new genre with every book. The Eye is a tale in the 'doppelgänger' tradition of Poe's William Wilson, Hawthorne's Wakefield, and Melville's The Confidence Man, though there's no reason to assume that Nabokov was aware of his American forerunners. Since the whole novella is built around the reader's dawning suspicions, I can't say much more about the plot without spoiling your pleasure.
The Marxist Revolution makes a cameo appearance in The Eye - its Russian title was closer to 'The Spy' - as in nearly all of Nab's books. In a brief dismissal of historical determinism, he writes: "Luckily no such laws exist: a toothache will cost a battle, a drizzle cancel an insurrection. Everything is fluid, everything depends on chance, and all in vain were the efforts of that crabbed bougeois in Victorian checkered trousers, author of Das Kapital, fruit of insomnia and migraine. There is a titillating pleasure in looking back at the past and asking oneself 'What would have happened if...' and substituting one chance occurrence for another, observing how, from a gray, barren, humdrum moment in one's life, there grows forth a marvelous rosy event that in reality had failed to flower. A mysterious thing, this branching structure of life..." That, my friends, is not only an eloquent dismissal of Marxism but also a fine statement of evolutionary contingency.
Just one more passage from Nab's own words, intended to entice your reading:
"And yet I am happy. Yes, happy. I swear, I swear I am happy. I have realized that the only happiness in this world is to observe, to spy, to watch, to scrutinize one self and others, to be nothing but a big, slightly vitreous, somewhat bloodshot, unblinking eye. I swear that this is happiness."
Okay, I'll accept that, as long as this eye has another Nabokov novel to read.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of Nabokov's best novels., September 13, 1998
This review is from: The Eye (Paperback)
The Eye is often overlooked because it is so short (around 100 pages in most editions) and because it turns on a gimmick: the narrator kills himself near the start of the story and then finds that his thoughts live on "by momentum." But it is Nabokov's special gift to make his tricks more than just tricks, and The Eye is the first of his books to do this on a grand scale. In some ways this is among the most moving of Nabokov's works, as well as one of the most entertaining.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not his best, but essential, January 17, 2000
This review is from: The Eye (Paperback)
In later works, Nabokov mused on the nature of identity with sharper, more amusing, and more penetrating results. But this book, by my count, was his first lengthy foray into the subject. In Smurov, he created a character whose self-image is an attempt at an amalgamation of the Smurov's everyone who knows him sees. A fun meditation on the importance of the opinions of others and a compelling death story. Much more, of course. And, of course, beautiful, beautiful.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
