CARNAL NATION

Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov's been dead for thirty-two years, but that's not stopping publishers from releasing his newest novel on Tuesday.

The Original Of Laura is the manuscript the revered author was working on at the time of his death in 1977.  Written on a series of 138 index cards, Nabokov ordered their destruction upon his death.  His wife held on to them, however, and last year their son Dmitri announced plans to publish it.

Intriguingly, publisher Knopf has reproduced each of the original index cards, printing the book only on one side of the page and perforating the cards so that they can be pulled out of the book.  Beneath each of the hand-written cards, the text is printed somewhat more clearly.

The story deals with an obese, suicidal writer whose wife Flora was once the subject of an erotic novel called My Laura.  Considerably younger than her husband, the much desired Flora had been molested at the age of twelve by a much older Englishman named Hubert Hubert.  (Those of you that have read Lolita might see a parallel in there.)

Reviews are mixed.  Martin Amis, writing for the Guardian, hates the book.  "Nabokov, in his decline, imposes on even the keenest reader a horrible brew of piety, literal-mindedness, vulgarity and philistinism," he says.  Slate also thinks it's very bad, and cynical, too: "[T]he fragments dealing with Wild's self-eradication traverse the border between plain silly and ridiculously serious -- and are, at times, sloppily prolix...."  Bookforum, meanwhile, was a lot nicer:  "The book is deeply interesting, not so much for what it thinks itself to be as for what we know it is: a master's final work."

The original cards are going up for auction next month, and they're expected to fetch about half a million dollars.

(via Jacket Copy)