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A review by leventmolla
The Luzhin Defense by Vladimir Nabokov
4.0
Vladimir Nabokov’s characters are elaborately described and they are not always very well-balanced. Just think about Charles Kinbote in Pale Fire or Humbert Humbert in Lolita. Adam Krug in Bend Sinister is a well-balanced intellectual but loses his mind after he goes through a senseless tragedy.
The Luzhin Defense is about obsession and the detachment from reality an individual can have. It is one of Nabokov’s Russian novels, one he published through a Russian émigré publishing house in Berlin in 1930. It took about 35 years for this novel to be translated and published in English. As usual, Nabokov offers a description and some hints to explain his story, but as usual we can never trust him when he does an introduction to one of his novels, just as we can not trust any of his narrators.
We meet Luzhin as he is assigned a French governess and he is told he will now be called by his surname, as is the traditional address for grown-ups. His father, Luzhin Senior wants to make sure his son live up to his expected performance and is disappointed when his teachers classify the boy as having ability but being somewhat listless. When Luzhin junior tries to chess from an aunt - we are given the implication that the father may be having an affair with her - the father is not sympathetic.
The boy starts going to her aunt’s house every day, skipping school and learns chess. When Luzhin senior notices this and checks his ability himself, to be badly beaten by the boy, he asks for help from a doctor who is a much better chess player.
Eventually the boy becomes an excellent player and starts going to tournaments, being on his way to a potential world championship match. However, this has all happened with a hidden cost. He is seeing everything with the lens of chess and has very little interaction with the real world. When he is playing a formidable opponent and is worried about what defense he could execute against his opponent’s imminent attack, he has a breakdown and has to recover with the help of his new fiancee, but has to forego chess. The rest of the book describes how he slowly brings himself to the unavoidable catastrophe, based on an obsession that he could not really be cured off.
Obsession with sports and art is a theme which has been covered many times in literature and cinema. Black Swan and Whiplash are two examples from cinema where the obsessed artist or conductor would forego normal human behaviour to follow the obsession.
It is not clear whether Nabokov takes any side in relating the horrible obsession Luzhin has and the devastating effect it has on him. He utilises his usual verbose narrative with elaborate descriptions, wordplay and hidden humour while he prepares us for the inevitable end.
One could also sense a parallel with the desperate state Luzhin finds himself after his game with the opponent (Turati) has ben adjourned and he has difficulty finding a defense for the impending attack, and with the desperate state Russian émigrés find themselves in after they had to flee Russia after the revolution. Although Nabokov never explicitly states this or let his characters comment on this situation, the detailed and somewhat nostalgic referral to past times in Russia gives me the hint that this may be the case.
Although I did not find this book on par with his other creations, it is still an example of fine writing and has several aspects of his detailed character analysis and elaborate descriptions.
The Luzhin Defense is about obsession and the detachment from reality an individual can have. It is one of Nabokov’s Russian novels, one he published through a Russian émigré publishing house in Berlin in 1930. It took about 35 years for this novel to be translated and published in English. As usual, Nabokov offers a description and some hints to explain his story, but as usual we can never trust him when he does an introduction to one of his novels, just as we can not trust any of his narrators.
We meet Luzhin as he is assigned a French governess and he is told he will now be called by his surname, as is the traditional address for grown-ups. His father, Luzhin Senior wants to make sure his son live up to his expected performance and is disappointed when his teachers classify the boy as having ability but being somewhat listless. When Luzhin junior tries to chess from an aunt - we are given the implication that the father may be having an affair with her - the father is not sympathetic.
The boy starts going to her aunt’s house every day, skipping school and learns chess. When Luzhin senior notices this and checks his ability himself, to be badly beaten by the boy, he asks for help from a doctor who is a much better chess player.
Eventually the boy becomes an excellent player and starts going to tournaments, being on his way to a potential world championship match. However, this has all happened with a hidden cost. He is seeing everything with the lens of chess and has very little interaction with the real world. When he is playing a formidable opponent and is worried about what defense he could execute against his opponent’s imminent attack, he has a breakdown and has to recover with the help of his new fiancee, but has to forego chess. The rest of the book describes how he slowly brings himself to the unavoidable catastrophe, based on an obsession that he could not really be cured off.
Obsession with sports and art is a theme which has been covered many times in literature and cinema. Black Swan and Whiplash are two examples from cinema where the obsessed artist or conductor would forego normal human behaviour to follow the obsession.
It is not clear whether Nabokov takes any side in relating the horrible obsession Luzhin has and the devastating effect it has on him. He utilises his usual verbose narrative with elaborate descriptions, wordplay and hidden humour while he prepares us for the inevitable end.
One could also sense a parallel with the desperate state Luzhin finds himself after his game with the opponent (Turati) has ben adjourned and he has difficulty finding a defense for the impending attack, and with the desperate state Russian émigrés find themselves in after they had to flee Russia after the revolution. Although Nabokov never explicitly states this or let his characters comment on this situation, the detailed and somewhat nostalgic referral to past times in Russia gives me the hint that this may be the case.
Although I did not find this book on par with his other creations, it is still an example of fine writing and has several aspects of his detailed character analysis and elaborate descriptions.