Nabokov in Three Years discussion

Right away, I enjoyed this book more than Mary, and it's amazing to see Nabokov's immense leap in attention to craft and storytelling in such a short amount of time. There's much more of a sense of each character, and this is helped by the fact that he lets all three (Dreyer, Martha, and Franz) breathe throughout the novel. From the coincidental beginning to the tragic ending, the intertwining fates of our three face cards are thoroughly explored.

And Berlin comes into its own here as well. By the time this was published, Nabokov had been living in the city for two extra years, and that seems to make a world of difference. Where in Mary Berlin is a sketchy vague nebulous setting that just happens to be where the group of Russian expatriates all live in the same boarding house, in KQK the city comes alive, especially through Franz's visits on public transport and through his perambulations on the city's sidewalks.

The affair between Franz and Martha, and their decision to kill Dreyer, is telegraphed in the back cover copy, and so the lead up to it seemed slow, but after reaching that point in the novel, the rest of it races to the finish. The various considered methods of dispatching poor hapless Dreyer are comical in that they are easily dismissed because the adulterous duo don't know where to acquire poison or a gun, and then turn exactingly serious as Martha remembers her husband is a weak swimmer, and a good candidate for drowning instead. The irony of her backing off from this plan, and then dying from pneumonia caught whilst sitting in the boat is quite delicious.

Nabokov does an incredible job showing the progression of the relationship between Martha and Franz, from her assertive initial approach of seeking him out in his rented room, then the bloom of infatuation and early romance, to a sort of repetitive routine, to his comparing her appearance to a toad. The ways that Franz views her directly correspond to the immoral path on which she leads him, and the closer they get to the actual deed of killing her husband, the more he comes to loathe her. That mirroring of immorality with perception is a brilliant touch.

And the ending is just spot-on perfect. Franz's descent into a sort of madness, or at least of a highly confused befuddlement, and the way that Nabokov describes this and intersperses it with vivid dream imagery, is a marvelous capstone to such a wonderful work. The Kafkaesque uncertainty (could Nabokov have named Franz after Kafka? This book was written and published shortly after that other German-speaking author had died) that Martha is still alive, with the hallucinogenic last voyage to Swistok, to the very last paragraph where Franz himself has apparently split into multiple personalities all talking at once, is such a surreal way to end, and marks the confident command of the polished writer.

Hi Jason, I'm assuming this is your second book in the reading task. I have been reading a lot of Nabokov's work and over the past few months have already read most of them. So I won't be able to read them along with the task but It'll be fun to follow the progress of the group as you get through more of the books.

Speaking specifically about King Queen Knave, I've already posted a review of it. Its the second last book of his that I've read and size-wise I guess you can consider it medium length because he has a number of shorter books that he's written. For me it came as a big disappointment after reading the rest of his work. Im not sure if it's because of the weakness of the translation or because of the story itself. Though in Nabokov the story is always of lesser importance than the beauty of the language and the absolute uniqueness and subjectivity of Nabokov's perceptions of the world around him.

What stood out for me is the initial passage of Franz wandering around the city without his glasses which is a typically accomplished Nabokovian set-piece. The ending, also with it's surrealistic description of events serves to disorient you somewhat and is also quite good. However, for me, the book as a whole is somewhat laboriously paced to the extent that I was almost willing it to finish as I had a few chapters to go. Something I've never felt with any other Nabokov Novel. Definitely my least favourite of all of his works.

(Also, i feel if you had more people aware of this reading group i think it would liven up the discussion a bit. Have you thought about posting on the official nabokov group...to let people know about this reading group?)

Hi Mahesh,

Thanks for your comments; I didn't realize there was an official Nabokov group! I'll definitely post a note there to hopefully get some more eyeballs over here.

Prior to starting this challenge, I'd only read Lolita and The Enchanter, so I don't have his entire oeuvre in mind when reading these. I actually enjoyed KQK quite a lot, even if some chapters are a bit draggy. The relationship between Franz and Martha is one full of suspense, especially the idea that they might get caught, and the feeling that this all leads up to attempted murder kept me turning the pages.

(And having just finished The Luzhin Defense, I can say that KQK is like a jet ski compared to the plodding rowboat of TLD.)

But if you say this was actually a weak novel, then I have some very good books to look forward to!