Vladimir Nabokov, The Original of Laura (Dying Is Fun)

Barbara Wyllie (University College London)

Ed. by Neil Cornwell, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1977

Places

Russia (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

On finishing his seventeenth novel,

Look at the Harlequins!

, in April 1974, Vladimir Nabokov signed a new contract with McGraw-Hill for six books over four years, one of which was to be his next novel,

The Original of Laura: Dying is Fun

. He was seventy-five. By May

Laura

was already “mapped out rather clearly for next year”. It was to be “Inspiration. Radiant insomnia. The flavour of snow of beloved alpine slopes. A novel

without

an I, without a he, but with the narrator,

the gliding eye

, being implied throughout” (Boyd 643-44). Work on it had to be postponed, however, until he had completed final revisions to his French

Ada

, as well as a set of translations of his Russian stories, and it was not until December 1975, after an operation on a benign prostate tumour, that he was…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

3652 words

Citation: Wyllie, Barbara. "The Original of Laura (Dying Is Fun)". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 15 January 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=28518, accessed 22 November 2024.]

Vladimir Nabokov, The Original of Laura (Dying Is Fun)

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Resources

Save this article

Leave Feedback