Look at the Harlequins! (Paperback)

by Vladimir Nabokov (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Look at the harlequins - trees, words, "situations and sums. . . jokes, images. . . Play! Invent the world! Invent reality." Thus the advice of an aunt to Vadim Vadimovich, during the childhood of this Russian born writer who emigrated to England and then Paris and then Germany and then the U.S., who now has written this theoretically "oblique" recit of his books and his wives although - under the slight maquillage of the harlequin - Vadim is of course none other than. Part of the pleasure for some will be the familiar ground (tired ground?) where butterflies fly above the flora or the nymphets in the grass - where the clef almost seems larger than the roman, or those other romans all with new names just slightly transposed, particularly Ardis, "my poor dead love" - the "best of my English romaunts." Was it? In between Vadim tells his story of his strange illness called the "numerical nimbus syndrome" in which he can't envision a volte-face - something seems very wrong with his sense of direction. . . from his first love for Iris in Cannice who doesn't speak at all until she begins to speak like a novelette, to his later love for Bel, his own daughter. . .and hovering here and there, another character Dementia - who will help him to realize in his late, late years how he has indeed confused direction with duration - his "fatidic" (prophetic) problem. But when all is said and done - the "jokes and images," the emblematic paraphernalia, the upsidedown referrals, riddles and diddles - one is troubled with the sad notion of a man spooked by the specter of duration trying to corroborate or commemorate himself by merely toying with his past achievements. We are more comfortable remembering the truly great writer who wrote his own syllogistic epitaph in Pale Fire: "Other men die; but I/Am not another; therefore I'll not die." (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (June 16, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679727280
• ISBN-13: 978-0679727286
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #170,961 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A late beauty from the crusty sage of Montreux, April 23, 2000

By	"lexo-2x" (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews

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.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars heavy-handed game-playing, June 10, 2000

By	Stephen O. Murray "Stephen O. Murray" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A pleasant stroll through an alternate reality, July 15, 2006

By	Steve (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

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.