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Despair
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Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher: Vintage
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $10.17
You Save: $ 4.78 ( 32% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Vintage
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher: Vintage
Average Customer Rating:
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Despair Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679723431
ISBN: 0679723439
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 240
Publication Date: 1989-05-14
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 1989-05-14
Studio: Vintage
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679723431
ISBN: 0679723439
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 240
Publication Date: 1989-05-14
Publisher: Vintage
Product Release Date: 1989-05-14
Studio: Vintage
Editorial Review of Despair
Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965--thirty years after its original publication--Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime--his own murder.
Customer Reviews of Despair
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: great piece of literature
Review: This book is really hard to get into, but once you push yourself, you'll really get into it. Nabokov is an amazing writer. Every character is just an exploration into the depths of language. Also, he really gets into the mindset of his characters. Thats why the writing in this book seems a little cold, a little distant...
So if you are up for something different, I would recommend this book.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A most literary homicide...
Review:
With deliberate reference to Dostoyevsky, and sideways glances at Poe and Kafka, Nabokov's *Despair* takes on the classic literary theme of `the double' with gruesome, and often hilarious, results. Hermann, a failed businessman and aspiring writer, relates his story of one day coming by chance upon a tramp in the woods who bears a striking resemblance to himself. Alternatively repulsed, fascinated, and obsessed by his `twin,' he concocts a plan to commit the perfect murder...the criminal equivalent of the perfect novel.
Nabokov draws out the metaphor between murder and art all the way to the eerie conclusion of *Despair* and his self-conscious narrator is the perfect mouthpiece for expounding the central theme: the art of crime and the crime of art. Vain, egotistical, insecure, capricious...Hermann is the quintessential unreliable narrator, a self-admitted liar from childhood who lies simply for the pure creative joy of it. An artist, in other words...and, in this case, an author. Hermann creates fictions and his murder plot will be his `masterpiece,' except there are always a few flaws in any masterpiece and critics aplenty to point them out. In the case of murder, the critics are the police and a bad review means arrest, imprisonment, and possibly a death sentence.
*Despair,* in spite of its title, is a lot of fun, poking fun as it does at the conventions of the novel even as it exploits each and every one of them. In a sense, it's a book about writing as much, if not more than, the murder that is actually being written about. Nabokov thus adroitly turns an otherwise relatively conventional crime story into an existential commentary on the absurdity of the human condition and the ultimate failure of the artist to apprehend an entirely satisfactory expression of this absurdity. The question is: Can an artist get away with murder? Is any crime ((art)) perfect?
Whether as an extended and metaphoric meditation on art and personal identity or as a nifty, twisted tale of a mind unraveling into psychosis and murder, *Despair* is an impeccably written, entertaining, and intelligent novel by one of the 20th century's greatest writers.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Another Little Gem
Review: Despair is probably not the first novel that comes to mind when thinking about Nabokov and his works and it may not even be among the top ten. But it is a Nabokov novel and that all by itself makes it worthy of our attention. Typically, it is a delight.
Nabokov's forward tells us that it was originally written in Russian while he was living in Berlin in 1934. There was an early, clumsy translation to English; then, in 1965, the final one. Nabokov describes it this way: "The ecstatic love of a young writer for the old writer he will be some day is ambition in its purest form. The love is not reciprocated by the older man in his larger library, for even if he does recall with regret a naked palate and a rheumless eye, he has nothing but an impatient shrug for the bungling apprentice of his youth." The novel hasn't even started yet and already the reader finds a big grin crossing his face.
It is written in the first person by a German businessman, who, while walking in an unpopulated area one day, comes across a hobo who, to his surprise, looks exactly like him. The plot has to do with a scheme our narrator concocts then implements to use this unusual resemblance for his own unscrupulous monetary gain. It would not be prudent to give away more. Though it is a rather familiar formula, let's just say that it is nevertheless very intriguing but ultimately logical in its surprisingly unsurprising denouement.
As usual with the Nabokov novel there is a lot more going on than initially meets the eye. Our narrator, fascinated by his scheme and by his own perceived cleverness, views his plan as a work of art. He comments that all art and great art especially is based on deception. How hilarious it is to discover that his scheme ends in such a banal, predictable way and how clever that Nabokov seems to be poking a little fun at his own pretensions.
No review of a Nabokov work would be complete without quoting at least a couple of passages as his use of the language is so exquisite. Here is our narrator describing the unpleasant landscape immediately prior to his fateful meeting with his doppelganger: "One could not leave the steps of the path, for it dug very deep into the incline; and on either side tree roots and scrags of rotting moss stuck out of its earthen walls like the broken springs of decrepit furniture in a house where a madman had dreadfully died." Wrenching, and structurally, the astute reader might also wonder whether it contains an element of foreshadowing.
Here is a delightful aside: "Germans got their due [losing World War I] for that sealed train in which Bolshevism was tinned, and Lenin imported to Russia."
A final example, after posting a letter that would put his plan into inexorable motion: "I felt what probably a purple red-veined thick maple leaf feels, during its slow flutter from branch to brook."
It's Nabokov. What else is there to say?
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: How far gone can one be?
Review: This story is about a person who looks/acts relatively "normal", but who's inner desperation leads him to hallucinate--and act on these delusions--in order to see the things that he wants to see. Unfortunately, the world doesn't cooperate. I liked "Despair" because it enabled me to witness an experience from a deranged perspective, but again, it isn't one of my favorite Nabokov stories. It was kind of short, so that might have something to do w/ it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: humbert = hermann lite
Review: as vlad puts it: "hermann and humbert are alike only in the sense that two dragons painted by the same artist at different periods of his life resemble each other. both are neurotic scoundrels, yet there is a green lane in paradise where humbert is permitted to wander at dusk once a year; but hell shall never parole hermann."
both are self-obsessed, manipulative, solipsistic sociopaths...initially they charm readers with their wit and meticulous deconstruction of their surroundings...and by then end they have you laughing wildly...pitying them even, as if they simply cannot help the fact that they feel emotion for nothing other than themselves...like a person with cretinism. it isn't their fault, simply a flaw in their makeup.
combine arrogance and intelligence with self-obsession and an emotional black hole in place of a heart...and you get a brilliantly entertaining comedy. but the character in despair is hardly worthy of contempt. he is a jester and a mastermind...as is nabokov himself.
Review Summary: great piece of literature
Review: This book is really hard to get into, but once you push yourself, you'll really get into it. Nabokov is an amazing writer. Every character is just an exploration into the depths of language. Also, he really gets into the mindset of his characters. Thats why the writing in this book seems a little cold, a little distant...
So if you are up for something different, I would recommend this book.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A most literary homicide...
Review:
With deliberate reference to Dostoyevsky, and sideways glances at Poe and Kafka, Nabokov's *Despair* takes on the classic literary theme of `the double' with gruesome, and often hilarious, results. Hermann, a failed businessman and aspiring writer, relates his story of one day coming by chance upon a tramp in the woods who bears a striking resemblance to himself. Alternatively repulsed, fascinated, and obsessed by his `twin,' he concocts a plan to commit the perfect murder...the criminal equivalent of the perfect novel.
Nabokov draws out the metaphor between murder and art all the way to the eerie conclusion of *Despair* and his self-conscious narrator is the perfect mouthpiece for expounding the central theme: the art of crime and the crime of art. Vain, egotistical, insecure, capricious...Hermann is the quintessential unreliable narrator, a self-admitted liar from childhood who lies simply for the pure creative joy of it. An artist, in other words...and, in this case, an author. Hermann creates fictions and his murder plot will be his `masterpiece,' except there are always a few flaws in any masterpiece and critics aplenty to point them out. In the case of murder, the critics are the police and a bad review means arrest, imprisonment, and possibly a death sentence.
*Despair,* in spite of its title, is a lot of fun, poking fun as it does at the conventions of the novel even as it exploits each and every one of them. In a sense, it's a book about writing as much, if not more than, the murder that is actually being written about. Nabokov thus adroitly turns an otherwise relatively conventional crime story into an existential commentary on the absurdity of the human condition and the ultimate failure of the artist to apprehend an entirely satisfactory expression of this absurdity. The question is: Can an artist get away with murder? Is any crime ((art)) perfect?
Whether as an extended and metaphoric meditation on art and personal identity or as a nifty, twisted tale of a mind unraveling into psychosis and murder, *Despair* is an impeccably written, entertaining, and intelligent novel by one of the 20th century's greatest writers.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Another Little Gem
Review: Despair is probably not the first novel that comes to mind when thinking about Nabokov and his works and it may not even be among the top ten. But it is a Nabokov novel and that all by itself makes it worthy of our attention. Typically, it is a delight.
Nabokov's forward tells us that it was originally written in Russian while he was living in Berlin in 1934. There was an early, clumsy translation to English; then, in 1965, the final one. Nabokov describes it this way: "The ecstatic love of a young writer for the old writer he will be some day is ambition in its purest form. The love is not reciprocated by the older man in his larger library, for even if he does recall with regret a naked palate and a rheumless eye, he has nothing but an impatient shrug for the bungling apprentice of his youth." The novel hasn't even started yet and already the reader finds a big grin crossing his face.
It is written in the first person by a German businessman, who, while walking in an unpopulated area one day, comes across a hobo who, to his surprise, looks exactly like him. The plot has to do with a scheme our narrator concocts then implements to use this unusual resemblance for his own unscrupulous monetary gain. It would not be prudent to give away more. Though it is a rather familiar formula, let's just say that it is nevertheless very intriguing but ultimately logical in its surprisingly unsurprising denouement.
As usual with the Nabokov novel there is a lot more going on than initially meets the eye. Our narrator, fascinated by his scheme and by his own perceived cleverness, views his plan as a work of art. He comments that all art and great art especially is based on deception. How hilarious it is to discover that his scheme ends in such a banal, predictable way and how clever that Nabokov seems to be poking a little fun at his own pretensions.
No review of a Nabokov work would be complete without quoting at least a couple of passages as his use of the language is so exquisite. Here is our narrator describing the unpleasant landscape immediately prior to his fateful meeting with his doppelganger: "One could not leave the steps of the path, for it dug very deep into the incline; and on either side tree roots and scrags of rotting moss stuck out of its earthen walls like the broken springs of decrepit furniture in a house where a madman had dreadfully died." Wrenching, and structurally, the astute reader might also wonder whether it contains an element of foreshadowing.
Here is a delightful aside: "Germans got their due [losing World War I] for that sealed train in which Bolshevism was tinned, and Lenin imported to Russia."
A final example, after posting a letter that would put his plan into inexorable motion: "I felt what probably a purple red-veined thick maple leaf feels, during its slow flutter from branch to brook."
It's Nabokov. What else is there to say?
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: How far gone can one be?
Review: This story is about a person who looks/acts relatively "normal", but who's inner desperation leads him to hallucinate--and act on these delusions--in order to see the things that he wants to see. Unfortunately, the world doesn't cooperate. I liked "Despair" because it enabled me to witness an experience from a deranged perspective, but again, it isn't one of my favorite Nabokov stories. It was kind of short, so that might have something to do w/ it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: humbert = hermann lite
Review: as vlad puts it: "hermann and humbert are alike only in the sense that two dragons painted by the same artist at different periods of his life resemble each other. both are neurotic scoundrels, yet there is a green lane in paradise where humbert is permitted to wander at dusk once a year; but hell shall never parole hermann."
both are self-obsessed, manipulative, solipsistic sociopaths...initially they charm readers with their wit and meticulous deconstruction of their surroundings...and by then end they have you laughing wildly...pitying them even, as if they simply cannot help the fact that they feel emotion for nothing other than themselves...like a person with cretinism. it isn't their fault, simply a flaw in their makeup.
combine arrogance and intelligence with self-obsession and an emotional black hole in place of a heart...and you get a brilliantly entertaining comedy. but the character in despair is hardly worthy of contempt. he is a jester and a mastermind...as is nabokov himself.