Word: nabokovs
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Narrated by Ellellou, deposed and comfortably exiled in the South of France, the story has that sad, ironical tone of dis location found in the novels of Vladimir Nabokov. "All their languages were second languages . . . clumsy masks their thoughts must put on," are among Updike's Nabokovian touches...
...fact, a light and lavender comedy about a crazed Russian émigré named Hermann Hermann, who watches in amazement as his mind splits like his name, into two equal parts. The film is set in Berlin. Based on a 1936 novel written in Russian by Vladimir Nabokov, it is hopeless in mood, but most cheerfully so. Nabokov once pointed out in print that the novel is devoid of message, ideas or Freudian "Wiener schnitzel dreams." The despair of the title therefore may only have been that of the penniless young ex patriate author who supported himself by giving tennis...
Thoughtfully, Hermann takes out an insurance policy. As it happens, he has met a poor carnival worker who seems to him to be his exact double, though in fact - and Nabokov's smile can be discerned here - there is no resemblance between the two men. Undeterred by reality and convinced that fate has handed him a chance at the perfect crime, Hermann changes clothes with the fellow, then shoots him, intending to collect on the in surance policy through his wife and live blissfully ever after...
...working-out of the crime has the mannered artificiality of an Agatha Christie thriller, which seems surprisingly like Nabokov's own mannered artificiality. The only blunder comes at the end. The police have surrounded the alpine chalet where Hermann is hiding. In the book, his mania produces the possibility of a brilliant escape. He yells to the crowd of onlookers, "Frenchmen! This is a rehearsal ... A famous film actor will presently come running out of this house. He is an archcriminal, but he must escape Hold those policemen, knock them down, sit on them - we pay them...
...introduction to his collected stories John Cheever recalls a crusty, idiosyncratic editor at The New Yorker. But, adds the author, "since the men he encouraged ranged as widely as Irwin Shaw and Vladimir Nabokov, he seems to have done more good than anything else." Cheever may be the only person in the world who would mention these writers in the same sentence. There are many who would not mention Shaw at all. Alfred Kazin's massive study of American fiction, On Native Grounds, has no room for the author. Edmund Wilson's definitive survey, Classics and Commercials, gives...