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Look at the Harlequins!

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Assuming that you haven't read LATH, how to describe it? It's a fake sort-of memoir by the Russian emigre writer Vadim Vadimovich, the general shape of whose career bears more than a slight resemblance to that of Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, with one important caveat; Nabokov was a famously happy and contented man (at least according to official versions of his life story), but Vadim is a cranky, impatient, cantankerous whinger. He thrashes his way through his basically unhappy life, turning out the odd book now and again and suffering rather than enjoying the occasional love affair, before finally finding peace with a radiant angel referred to simply as You - the book is cast as a long love letter to the supposed author's last love. Nabokov has good fun with the kind of critic who assumed in the wake of Lolita that he himself lusted after young girls (Vadim has a thing going with his own daughter, at one point); literary in-jokes aside, it's a remarkable study of a bitter and thwarted man from an author who was so supremely good at rendering happiness. Clearly, however free from demons Nabokov was, he was able to imagine what it would be like to be in their clutches. Not many writers do so well in their seventies.

Readers of much Nabokov should save this treat for last; this supposed autobiography by one "Vadim Vadimovich N." is a house of mirrors--is the main character really Nabokov? Or is he just someone with whom Nabokov is constantly embodied or misrepresented? Funny, witty, amazing--Look at the Harlequins! is material that plays with the jokes of Nabokov novels past, and rewards Nabokov fans with cameos by Lolita, Sebastian Knight, and many more. A must-read

Nabokov can tear your brain apart with narrative. In nearly all of his works, and especially in Lolita and Pale Fire, he invites the reader to examine every word as a piece of the narrator, always insisting, "This is not me, and if you think it is, you're a dolt." What, then, are his determined doters supposed to think when finally confronted with Vadim Vadimovich, emigre-novelist, almost self-aware deranged fictional character, and butterfly-hater? God only knows.

Obviously, he's not Vladimir Vladimirovich. He's something else. Maybe he is meant to be an inevitable distortion of Nabokov, but even that's questionable, as is everything in Nabokov's fiction.

Here's a thought. Perhaps, as is (almost) evident in Transparent Things, Nabokov eventually became so intrigued by the idea of networks of perspectives in fiction (the perspective of the narrator interacting with that of the reader, and maybe just a tittle of his own), that he couldn't resist the idea of writing a novel from the perspective of a fictional fictional Nabokov.

All fiction can be compared to the reflection of a painting in a puddle. Nabokov teaches us that the aesthetics of the puddle's ripples, manipulated by the right hands, can be as (nay, more!) breathtaking than those of the picture itself.

To get all the book's humor requires not only having read the collected works of Vladimir Nabokov, but all the idiotic things forgotten reviewers wrote about his work. Vadim, the Russian émigré narrator is a parody of misconceptions - at least what Nabokov considered misconceptions - of his character, in particular, that he must have been a pederast . Nabokov was playing with various imaginable pasts for someone with his general background, but his play seems to me to be as heavy-handed as his narrator is incapable of happiness in any of his relationships. Compared to its immediate predecessors (the seemingly endless Ada, and the brief but opaque Transparent Things) Look at the Harlequins is readable, but for me the last novels are a marked decline from his earlier masterpieces.

There are certainly pleasures in the text and flashes of wit, but overall the fictional memoir of a passive cloddish alter ego is a disappointment, a not-very-fun series of games and in-jokes. It seems to me that Vadim understood but cannot implement the title's command. At least he doesn't enjoy those he manages to see as harlequins there to amuse him.

LATH will not go down as Nabokov's most memorable or widely-read work. In fact, if it weren't for the novels that preceded it, it would probably be forgotten. And it's not a work I would recommend to anyone who hasn't already read most of N's other fiction. But to a diehard Nabokovian, LATH offers enough pleasures to make the read (and the wait) worthwhile.

Yes, it appears to be a "fictionalized" autobiography of Nabokov, with some key changes (Nabokov professed to be most content with life, while the same could not be said for LATH's protagonist-cum-"author", Vadim Vadimovich). Thus, one will not get much out of the book unless one has read N's other work and knows a bit about his life.

What make this novel truly enjoyable are (a) N's trademark wordplay (not as great as in "Lolita" and "Ada", but still magnificent); (b) small moments of genuine joy (as in the coy but cute resolution of Vadim's psychological conundrum); and (c) some excellent Nabokovian narrative tricks: Vadim feels he is living someone else's life and at one point appears to be on the verge of realizing that he is, in fact, Vladimir Nabokov (try wrapping your mind around that!)--only to have the epiphany slip away.

LATH should (as another reviewer recommended) be saved for last. Those who do get around to reading it, though, will almost surely enjoy it. I get a kick just thinking of the old guy--pushing 75, but still as vibrant and full of tricks as ever. That he never won a Nobel Prize is an terrible shame.

Beginning with a list of the author's "other" books, which don't exist outside the distorted mirror world of what Nabakov calls "LATH" (as he acronymically pegs Look At The Harlequins! within that book's own text) is a wildly inventive metafiction in the bilingually verbose hyper-alliterative Nabokovian mold. We get splendid sentences here on the jeweled gift of selfhood giving reason to resist suicide from whatever facet, cranky meditations on the author's pederastic proclivities and ego, and, most brilliantly, strange slips down the semiotic slope into madness. In two or three places in this book we find ourselves in a meticulously rendered literary reality and then, through a process of what one might call overdescription as exquisite as it is subtle, we find that our narrator has lost contact with the very rich world he has created for us; there is also a (to me) fascinating motif of the author's self-analysis of a strange spatial or geographical malady: he cannot mentally reverse himself and return after picturing a scene in his mind's eye. (This perhaps is meant as a sly parallel to time's one-way flow: time, which via the magic of the book, as opposed to the temporal incarceration of life, can be reversed--a hint of a kind of "law of nature" that might apply to a "real" metafictional character.) And despite the hefty overlap of the life of the protagonist with that of Nabokov (e.g., he has English tutors, Russian aristocratic blood, contempt for psychoanalysts, and the like), this book is clearly metafiction. The protagonist here, as with the protagonists in Transparent Things and Lolita, is fascinated by butterflies but not an entomologist of Nabokov's caliber. What makes LATH different from the work of other authors of metafiction's alluringly magical, "self"-indulgent mode, depends on the previous richness Nabokov has built up in his fictions which, from the Russian-drafted Gift to Humbert Humbert in Lolita, *already* deal with a protagonist much like the author. Thus the slippage here is not dual, between the author and his protagonist, but "trial" (as one might say), between the author, his protagonist, and the lives of his other protagonists, memorably Humbert Humbert of Lolita. Nabokov is having sly taunts: not only at America's image of him as author of Lolita, but at himself for being too quick to disidentify from that potent catcher of words and nymphs,
and finally perhas, at the ontological conceit of a fixed self that could be wholly either one or another. The protagonist here is a dialectical monster flitting between Nabokov and Humbert Humbert, a monster Nabokov himself capture's like a moth between LATH's pages. The last, and in some ways perhaps richest novel from a modern master.

Beginning with a list of the author's "other" books, which don't exist outside the distorted mirror world of what Nabakov calls "LATH" (as he acronymically pegs Look At The Harlequins! within that book's own text) is a wildly inventive metafiction in the bilingually verbose hyper-alliterative Nabokovian mold. We get splendid sentences here on the jeweled gift of selfhood giving reason to resist suicide from whatever facet, cranky meditations on the author's pederastic proclivities and ego, and, most brilliantly, strange slips down the semiotic slope into madness. In two or three places in this book we find ourselves in a meticulously rendered literary reality and then, through a process of what one might call overdescription as exquisite as it is subtle, we find that our narrator has lost contact with the very rich world he has created for us; there is also a (to me) fascinating motif of the author's self-analysis of a strange spatial or geographical malady: he cannot mentally reverse himself and return after picturing a scene in his mind's eye. (This perhaps is meant as a sly parallel to time's one-way flow: time, which via the magic of the book, as opposed to the temporal incarceration of life, can be reversed--a hint of a kind of "law of nature" that might apply to a "real" metafictional character.) And despite the hefty overlap of the life of the protagonist with that of Nabokov (e.g., he has English tutors, Russian aristocratic blood, contempt for psychoanalysts, and the like), this book is clearly metafiction. The protagonist here, as with the protagonists in Transparent Things and Lolita, is fascinated by butterflies but not an entomologist of Nabokov's caliber. What makes LATH different from the work of other authors of metafiction's alluringly magical, "self"-indulgent mode, depends on the previous richness Nabokov has built up in his fictions which, from the Russian-drafted Gift to Humbert Humbert in Lolita, *already* deal with a protagonist much like the author. Thus the slippage here is not dual, between the author and his protagonist, but "trial" (as one might say), between the author, his protagonist, and the lives of his other protagonists, memorably Humbert Humbert of Lolita. Nabokov is having sly taunts: not only at America's image of him as author of Lolita, but at himself for being too quick to disidentify from that potent catcher of words and nymphs,
and finally perhas, at the ontological conceit of a fixed self that could be wholly either one or another. The protagonist here is a dialectical monster flitting between Nabokov and Humbert Humbert, a monster Nabokov himself capture's like a moth between LATH's pages. The last, and in some ways perhaps richest novel from a modern master.

I've gathered from incidental references, both the New York Times book review and Adam Robert's blog, that Look at the Harlequins! is regarded as one of Nabokov's lesser works, off-focus from even his midrange stuff and a larger magnitude below works like Lolita or Pale Fire; that Nabokov fictionalizes his autobiography to no great end, and that the narrative collapses away to defeatism. For my part, I liked it well enough, but can't deny the criticism. The edition I checked out from the library for this end was a collection of Nabokov's last few novels, and compared with Transparent Things or (my personal favorite) Ada it is a lesser work. But I'd still say it's a major accomplishment, engaging and interesting, better than most novels. The prose is as beautiful as always, the dialog and description both first rate. One of the things that most struck me in this work--and something I'll have to look for in others--is the effectiveness of description of the body, its significance, power and fragility. A brief scene of the protagonist putting on a rob and going by the window carries such pathos, from age, from position, from the not completely defeated aspirations--it's precisely in the banality of such small moments that Nabokov shines.

On the larger questions of plot and characterization one runs into the central issue of judging a fictionalized autobiography. It's difficult to assess how much is gained by this approach, that is to say the broader relevance of this approach beyond Nabokov's own life. I wasn't as bothered going through by the question of how much Vadimovich's life resembled Nabokov--though I do have a strong urge to read Speak, Memory now. I was most curious on how the explicit political views compared, the sensory details and subjective actions I'm prepared to accept as fundamentally novelistic. And in that light it's a worthwhile story, tracking Vadimovich's travels and life of quiet escape. Like Ada (although less effectively) the story's structure grounds memory, with both explicit judgement and

So, in conclusion a very strong work which I heartily recommend. I'm pretty sure that everyone wouldn't enjoy it, though, and I'm not even sure that I'm in the ideal position to read it--perhaps I would like it more or less if I'd read all of his earlier work and had a closer awareness of his life (although the Vintage Three Volume edition had a nice detailed timeline at the back that provided a fair bit of context). Maybe my approach to not ending with the last is flawed after all. Although perhaps this (call it a) novel is most valuable not for the direct story but for the way it destabilizes categories of thought and memory, including an explicit destabilizing of fact/fiction and story/self. Of course all fiction has an element of the auto-biographical in it, but making this trend much stronger can cause some interesting breakdown.

This work reminded me of but was better than: Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year.
This work reminded me of but was worse than: Nabokov's Ada.

Most of the enjoyment with this book is the discovery of Nabokov's creation. Frankly, I suggest that you skip the reviews here, close your eyes for the moment and simply read the book - the same recommendation that I make for most of his books. Read the comments later. By the way, the novel has nothing to do with Harlequin romance novels - or maybe it does indirectly.

Vladimir Nabokov (1899 to 1977) is a Russian born writer who went to Cambridge, then lived in western Europe, the US, and finally retired in Switzerland. He has a medium sized body of work with numerous novels, short works, and well known non-fiction. Most know him for his 1955 creation of Lolita, which he wrote and re-wrote for over twenty years before the final product. It was based on a real life French story, but set in America. He has 20 novels.

Eleven of Nabokov's novels come from his early European period when he could write in many languages but he wrote his first 11 novels all in Russian. The present work is from his Swiss period, that is from his retirement years, written in English and one of his last novels. It was published in 1974.

Without revealing too much about the plot, it is a story of a fictional Vadim Vadimovich who lived at the same time as the author and who has a life similar to the author including a love off butterflies, writing, and living in similar cities and towns. However, we must assume it is a work of fiction and leave if for the reader to discover the details.

It is a very humorous and entertaining a book. I have read about half of his novels and thought it was excellent but a touch short of his best. It is a matter of taste, but I liked "King, Queen, Knave" and "Laughter in the Dark" as his best works, notwithstanding "Pale Fire" and "Lolita."

It is an entertaining read but not his best work. Saying that, readers will be far from disappointed and there are many funny sections.

The only thing Nabokov accomplished here was to induce me to yawn at the head harlequin. HARLEQUINS is an exercise in (no--better make that "an excretion of") self-congratulatory lit-chat. It's a roman-a-clef that makes all the obligatory allusions to Nabokov's self-overrated oeuvre. It is a suffocating borefest. I got the distinct sensation of being hermetically sealed far up the netherlands of Nabokov's preening patoot. Although I did enjoy the following passage:

"Would I like to know something? (Dilatory sip and lip lick.) Well, at all my five public readings since the first on September 3, 1928, in the Salle Planiol, she had been present, she had applauded till her palms (showing palms) ached, and had made up her mind that next time she'd be smart and plucky enough to push her way through the crowd (yes, crowd--no need to smile ironically) with the firm intention of clasping my hand and pouring out her soul in a single word, which, however, she could never find--and that's why, inexorably, she would always be left standing and beaming like a fool in the middle of the vacated hall."