Look at the Harlequins! (First Edition)

Nabokov, Vladimir

ISBN 10: 0070457387 / ISBN 13: 9780070457386

Published by McGraw-Hill, New York, 1974

About this Item

Halsman (Author photo); Robert L. Mitchell (illustrator). First printing of the first American edition. Light shelf wear to edge of boards, else book in fine condition; dust jacket with a couple short closed tears, mild creasing/edge wear, and foxing to top edge, faint toning to spine. A tight clean copy of this novel by Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich, his final published novel before his death in 1977. Look at the Harlequins! is a fictional autobiography narrated by Vadim Vadimovich N. (VV), a Russian-American writer with uncanny biographical likenesses to the novel's author, Vladimir (Vladimirovich) Nabokov. VV is born in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg and raised by his aunt, who advises him to "look at the harlequins" "Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!" The composition of Look at the Harlequins! followed on the heels of Andrew Field's biography Nabokov: His Life in Part, a biography that eventually resulted in the termination of Nabokov's relations with Field and in the novelist's failed attempt at legal suppression of the biography. Nabokov felt that Field had created a character named Vladimir Nabokov in his biography a character whom the real author could not recognize. Rear copies.

Seller Inventory # Fiction-Nabokov-2

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Look at the Harlequins! (First Edition)
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill, New York
• Publication Date: 1974
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0070457387
• ISBN 13: 9780070457386
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Russian Literature

About this title

Synopsis

Look at the Harlequins! is a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov, first published in 1974. The work was Nabokov's final published novel before his death in 1977. Look At the Harlequins! is a fictional autobiography narrated by Vadim Vadimovich N. , a Russian-American writer with uncanny biographical likenesses to the novel's author, Vladimir (Vladimirovich) Nabokov. VV is born in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg and raised by his aunt, who advises him to "look at the harlequins" "Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!". After the revolution, VV moves to Western Europe. Count Nikifor Nikodimovich Starov become his patron (is he VV's father?). VV meets Iris Black who becomes his first wife. After her death - she is killed by a Russian émigré - he marries Annette (Anna Ivanovna Blagovo), his long-necked typist. They have a daughter, Isabel, and emigrate to the United States. The marriage fails; and, after Annette's death, VV takes care of the pubescent Isabel, now known as Bel. They travel from motel to motel. To counter ugly rumors, VV marries Louise Adamson while Bel elopes with an American to Soviet Russia. After the third marriage fails, VV marries again, a Bel look-a-like (same birthdate, too), referred to as "you", his final love. Literary criticism has weighed in on both sides of this debate, some even claiming that Vadim is both a parody and a double (or Doppelgänger) of Nabokov. For example, Nabokov’s Lolita is acted out by the narrator of Look at the Harlequins! through his fondling of the nymphet Dolly VonBorg. The attribution to a string of wives to the narrator must be understood in the context of Nabokov's After the publication of Lolita the wider public and many critics thought that its author must be some "sexual daredevil"With the serial polygamy related in Look At The Harlequins!, Nabokov can be seen to be poking fun at these perceptions.

From the Back Cover

Focusing on the central figures of his life--his four wives, his books, and his muse, Dementia--the book leads us to suspect that the fictions Vadim has created as an author have crossed the line between his life's work and his life itself, as the worlds of reality and literary invention grow increasingly indistinguishable.