Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

Nabokov delves into the mind of a man obsessed with the idea of making his own murder a perfect crime

A Novel

Despair

Safiya 

I have heard extensively about the author, and his praise not only once was brought up whenever I mentioned Russian Literature. The natural unfolding of my review now has already begun with an expectation, if not the prophecy of my friends as Nabokov is - according to them- a brilliant author, at least I would know what the fuss is all about?
If I haven't spoiled the plot for myself I don't think I would've carried through.. Although if it was trimmed and put in shape as a "classic" would have been, mind you a classic is a thoroughly worked writing that helps the reader turn its pages at a moderate speed (not the bestsellers type, where the plot and all are some joke of cocotte minute), it can turn out to be the legitimate heir of the Russian tragedies, but it is not. It was a novel with a mauvais goût... Granted that it was revised repeatedly, I haven't sensed the effort... I mentioned postmodernism earlier in my reading updates, and that amounts to the incredulous need for postmoderns to post the intimate details there naked for everyone to see about the process of the writing and so on... 
By the end of the book, I tried to see a metaphor in the novel, and that has made all the difference for the rating. This novel if taken as a flat novel with all of the disturbing details and unnecessary paragraphs can be a flop Russian book...The layer underneath depends on the reader's imagination, a good starting point can be a directed critique to the URSS, since as the Wikipedia page says it was banned by the authorities then... 
The plot is however closer to the imaginary Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas than the Double by Dostoïevski...

Arden Kowalski

3.5 stars

Lesser Nabokov, which is to say it's leaps and bounds better than most writers' best work. A darkly comic and brilliantly written novel with an adept vision. It's fascinating to see how the unlikeable protagonist of this novel compares to the more richly defined characters of later, more skilled works such as Lolita and Pale Fire. I'm impressed by the use of language as I always am. There are native speakers of English who don't understand the flow of a sentence as well as Vladimir Nabokov did. His command of literary devices is incomparable. I've got The Gift and Speak, Memory sitting on my shelf, and I'm beyond excited to dive into them.

Vladimir Nabokov

Self-satisfied, delighting in the many fascinating quirks of his own personality, Hermann Hermann is perhaps not to be taken too seriously. But then a chance meeting with a man he believes to be his double reveals a frightening 'split' in Hermann's nature. With shattering immediacy, Nabokov takes us into a deranged world, one full of an impudent, startling humour, dominated by the egotistical and scornful figure of a murderer who thinks himself an artist.

Melody Izard

I should have liked this story better than I did: Witty writing and all that. I'm not sure why I didn't. 

Hermann (the main character) is one like some running amok in these troubled financial times. He's living beyond his means, caught up in superficial things and quite full of himself. And then, bam!, his business crashes and suddenly he is not going to be able to tootle around in his little Icarus sports car (named for the god Icarus who tried to escape Crete by making some wax wings and flying away – but getting a little giddy about the flying and forgetting about the sun and how wax will melt if you get too close to the sun – and all that fits in nicely with the story-line of Despair too) and dress in his incredible dapper style and now he must come up with some solution. There’ve been far too many news stories recently about people who’ve lost their jobs and come out a-blazing with their guns: shooting innocents and the guilty in the last sunny afternoon of their life. OK – I’ll admit that Hermann plans to kill someone (who he thinks is his double) and collect insurance (because he thinks everyone will think it was he who was murdered and not he who was the murderer) and then resume a parallel life in a more subdued and peaceful plane, which is (although a warped one) somewhat a solution to his financial situation – but there are still some similarities to our current killers who are in a state of despair over financial depression and somehow think murder is going to solve it.

But I’m rambling like our narrator.

My point is, there is something missing (for me) in the equation: witty writing, thought provoking occurrence that can be contrasted and compared to current day happenings, despicable character, short read, author that is worshipped by many. But somehow it just equals an OK read for me. I haven’t given up on Nabokov – I do like to stretch my wings - but I’m that close.

Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965--thirty years after its original publication--Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime--his own murder.

Despair A Novel

Reviews