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A review by leventmolla
The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov by Andrea Pitzer
5.0
I learned about this book from a fellow translator who has published the Turkish translation of Pale Fire (no small feat!) and is currently translating this. I wanted to read it as quickly as possible for the Nabokov adaptation I'm currently doing for a play.
The book is a much enlarged version of an academic study Andrea Pitzer did and she seems to have done several years off research which has been enabled by a Harvard grant. The quality of the research is apparent from the richness of the notes at the end (which take up almost one third of the Kindle version I read).
The premise is simple: Nabokov is a controversial author, mainly due to his portrayal of a pedophile in Lolita and the perception that he is performing art for the sake of art and is not really interested in whatever is happening in the outside world. He himself has also reinforced this view - could be by design, of course. Here is what he says in the Introduction to Bend Sinister: " Politics and economics, atomic bombs, primitive and abstract art forms, the entire Orient, symptoms of 'thaw' in Soviet Russia, the Future of Mankind, and so on, leave me supremely indifferent". Pitzer's hypothesis is that this is a big façade. Nabokov is indeed wrapping his observations of the real world in his books, but he is doing it in the least obvious way. It is when you read his whole oeuvre that a common theme in the background arises: Although Nabokov keeps repeating that he is not interested in politics, he is indeed putting cleverly hidden references to the Nazi and Soviet regimes' atrocities in the form of concentration camps (like Dachau for Nazis or the Gulag for the Soviets) and he has especially tried to immortalise through art, the suffering of the Jews. Although he himself is not a Jew, his wife Vera is and he has always reacted to anti-Semitism since his early ages.
This hypothesis brings a completely different interpretation of his works, especially the one that has been the subject of many controversies, namely Lolita. Pitzer shows a lot of thickly veiled references in Lolita to the struggling of his fellow Russian émigrés and the Jews. It is his highly intelligent mind and a different artistic sense that has caused him to use words to point out these references to the careful and methodical reader instead of using a direct method such as the one Alexander Solzenythsin has used in his Gulag Archipelago or earlier novels.
The book has been invaluable to me for my own purpose, but I think it is in general interesting for the general reader, due to the episodic structure, describing the unfolding events in Europe and the U.S. in a long period in the 20eth Century. Pitzer is covering most of the books (except Transparent Things, which is one of Nabokov's last books and among one of my favourites).
I am sure this new vision brought to one of the greatest writers of the 20eth Century will also trigger new academic work on his life and creations. I could actually see a movie possibility, given the rich information and appeal of the subject. Highly recommended.
The book is a much enlarged version of an academic study Andrea Pitzer did and she seems to have done several years off research which has been enabled by a Harvard grant. The quality of the research is apparent from the richness of the notes at the end (which take up almost one third of the Kindle version I read).
The premise is simple: Nabokov is a controversial author, mainly due to his portrayal of a pedophile in Lolita and the perception that he is performing art for the sake of art and is not really interested in whatever is happening in the outside world. He himself has also reinforced this view - could be by design, of course. Here is what he says in the Introduction to Bend Sinister: " Politics and economics, atomic bombs, primitive and abstract art forms, the entire Orient, symptoms of 'thaw' in Soviet Russia, the Future of Mankind, and so on, leave me supremely indifferent". Pitzer's hypothesis is that this is a big façade. Nabokov is indeed wrapping his observations of the real world in his books, but he is doing it in the least obvious way. It is when you read his whole oeuvre that a common theme in the background arises: Although Nabokov keeps repeating that he is not interested in politics, he is indeed putting cleverly hidden references to the Nazi and Soviet regimes' atrocities in the form of concentration camps (like Dachau for Nazis or the Gulag for the Soviets) and he has especially tried to immortalise through art, the suffering of the Jews. Although he himself is not a Jew, his wife Vera is and he has always reacted to anti-Semitism since his early ages.
This hypothesis brings a completely different interpretation of his works, especially the one that has been the subject of many controversies, namely Lolita. Pitzer shows a lot of thickly veiled references in Lolita to the struggling of his fellow Russian émigrés and the Jews. It is his highly intelligent mind and a different artistic sense that has caused him to use words to point out these references to the careful and methodical reader instead of using a direct method such as the one Alexander Solzenythsin has used in his Gulag Archipelago or earlier novels.
The book has been invaluable to me for my own purpose, but I think it is in general interesting for the general reader, due to the episodic structure, describing the unfolding events in Europe and the U.S. in a long period in the 20eth Century. Pitzer is covering most of the books (except Transparent Things, which is one of Nabokov's last books and among one of my favourites).
I am sure this new vision brought to one of the greatest writers of the 20eth Century will also trigger new academic work on his life and creations. I could actually see a movie possibility, given the rich information and appeal of the subject. Highly recommended.