Nabokov is a Spider of a Writer

Areeba Zaidi
Aug 9, 2021
6 min read

Updated: Feb 4, 2022

Nabokov is an artist when it comes to his way with words and stories. For the longest time, his writing style has split my line of conversation about his characters. But I've avoided it for as long as I could. It demands a conversation now. Nabokov is a really good writer, I think that is something that makes me think about his characters exactly like he would want me to. His words are powerful and they make me reconsider any individual interpretations I could've deciphered. He gives it to me on the page straight away and I can't have dissimilar, individual opinions about his words. I might want to but he has the tendency of stitching words together in a way that doesn't leave a lot of scope for me to move away from his net, his grasp. And for the longest time, I've felt suffocated by it, but not knowing what to do with that.

I've honestly read only two of his books, maybe after completing an extensive reading list I might come here with more points, opinions or a change of them. But I don't believe the lack of extensive reading should stop me.

Nabokov has paved a different way for himself from the start. Most people I've ended up asking about Nabokov, have mentioned Lolita. You hear of the story and you plan to hate the protagonist, the pedophile. And then Nabokov gives him words, he gives his perspective in a way that makes you empathic. You, maybe, understand what he thinks which is mental because I wanted to slap myself when that happened because I'm a woman of words and they do have a power of me. But who doesn't fall under their spell from time to time?

One has to remember that expression of sexuality and erotic feelings does not, and should not, include illegitimacy to the point of absurdity. It is not 'being rebellious', or 'breaking the norm', or 'smacking the convention'. It is as it will always be: wrong. But that wrong is a reflection of the world in the most simple of ways.

However, a thing to be noted is that there is always such an underlying theme running naked through Nabokov's stories. The giving-in to impulses, and deep, dark, ulterior desires that spring up in the charcoal night. It is not for me to decide if these impulses, often very Freudian, are right or wrong. Nevertheless, there is such a twisted and yet comforting way how his story makes your eyeballs literally magnetise themselves to the calculated smears of ink on paper. But why are these impulses so woven into the fabric of his works? At least in the two I've read.

I've always wondered how ruthless Vladimir would have been in his stares across rooms, in his attempt to see how twisted people could get, how much they could try to conceal, how desperately they were after it, whatever that is.

I do have to remember that the very idea of reading a book needs an extent of dissociation from the author, no matter how unwilling I am to genuinely accept it, it's the one thing that retains its state of constancy. The whole reader and writer relationship always reminds me about Atwood's Negotiating With The Dead, A Writer On Writing. Pro tip by the way? If you like reading about how authors think and peak into the writer's mind through an educated lens, READ THIS BOOK. It's smart, calculative, and offers a personal take on how writers write or even think about writing. Needless to say also very educational in its expansive discussion of some very important works of literature as well as some works of art.

Some of the choicest quotes I have read are;

"Real life's jagged extremes mixed with verbal artistry are a potent and sometimes explosive combination."

"Love and marriage pulled one way, Art another, and Art was a kind of demonic possession. Art would dance you to death. It would move in and take you over, and then destroy you. Or it would destroy you as an ordinary woman."

"No writer emerges from childhood into a pristine environment, free from other people's biases about writers. All of us bump up against a number of preconceptions about what we are or ought to be like, what constitutes good writing, and what social functions writing fulfils, or ought to fulfil."

But coming back to the writer in discussion-

Like Nabokov, Atwood has a similar web of mapping the reader's steps of imagination. They obviously have their ways as distinct as the smell of rotten eggs, but their similarity lies in their genius of writing. Their sentences cascade through your brain like softly steamed momo skin breaking apart in your mouth. (Weird, I know, but food truly does help us grasp the concept so exact a way, it's almost decimally perfect... The supplement of food analogies). The first Atwood book I read was The Handmaid's Tale and then I read The Edible Woman. It changed so much of how I believed sentences worked. It has only happened with a few other writers before. I mean, I love a lot of books, but everyone can relate to that one glass breaking moment when a writer shatters another layer of how comprehension works. This has happened to me with Emily Brontë, C. S. Lewis, Atwood, Nabokov, Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Gillian Flynn, Friedrich Nietzsche and a few others. But Nabokov has a very peculiar aftertaste in my mouth, if we taken Charles Lamb's quote about tasting, chewing, and swallowing books into inspirational consideration.

I would have loved to quote some of the biting lines of Nabokov's prose here but then, what's the point if you're a lazy reader? I am a lazy person, sure. I am one so I get that, but if you want to it your way you have to read. You cannot be a lazy reader. And if the recommendations I've made stand true for you too? Please do let me know. I have, however, quoted Atwood because those are some of the choicest quotes on writers, writing and general awesomeness that can be understood with minimum context.

Sorry about the tangent, Nabokov's work has elicited a lot of scrutiny over the years after Lolita's publication, and I must say the dazzling prose does not cover how the book navigates descriptions and actions that are... inappropriate to say the least. Yes it's wonderful prose, as with "Laughter in the Dark". The latter having a little more karma play into action with the protagonist suffering cruelly for his wrong-doings. But somehow it feels very tame in Lolita, with Humbert dying of a heart disease before his trial. I don't know, I was expecting something more like him being hanged or thrown into a tub of hot boiling oil but that would be disingenuous for two reasons: One, Vladimir plans to seduce us with Humbert's words so him being punished cruelly because people could not stand his existence sort of ruins it... Two, in doing so it makes me feel like he sympathises with Humbert and somehow that tricked me into reading more. This is my very personal opinion on how it was. I feel like two of his books were enough to understand how most of Nabokov's stories would go. I'm not necessarily accusing him of something, but I'm not erasing the chance of its possibility either. This brings up an important point about reading and writing both. It makes me truly understand the power of words, and the way they can manipulate just as easily as a pretty face can (see Ted Bundy), and it also brings up the question of how we need to analyse what we read and not just read it as and when fiction comes our way. There should be a sense of responsibility in our consumption of both media and literature, considering the swaying powers of influence it can hone on people.

It is a complex and continuous trait of Nabokov's writing--how well he understands his protagonists, how fiercely real his writing is. But there should be critical evaluation of texts and the authors individually, before people flock murder mystery writers and ask them who they murdered to have such an acute understanding of the act of killing, or plundering life however they seem fit (a Hannibal-esque manner).

It is essential to have a sense of critical analysis about pieces of media and literature we consume, before we condemn or recommend them. This is the sieved message I want to shine through this piece. While it is essential because also there is a sense of dissociation of the author from the text they have written, it is imperative to understand how you cannot dissociate from being a human being and no matter what you do, those actions, in however which way they take form, will be held accountable as a part of you.