Laura and Flora and Philip and…

My copy of The Original of Laura arrived yesterday! Only had enough time for a tentative glance-through so far (even though there is actually very little text in it). Was pleased to find that the date on the front page is “2008″. The book is very heavy, even for a hardback, because the original index cards are reproduced inside (alongside typeset text) on thick, cardboard-like paper – the edges of these photographs are perforated so that these copies of the cards can be removed and rearranged in any fashion (or lost, which would seem like their more obvious fate). The novel turns out to be even less “finished” than I expected (I haven’t read any of the reviews). As someone who has never had the fortune to come into contact with larger portions of Nabokov’s manuscripts (just small reproductions in various books), I found it a true joy to leaf through this book. The scholar in me is absolutely enthralled, what a wonderful chance to examine Nabokov’s work in progress! However, I think that the novel might be of limited interest to the “general reader”, at least not in its present edition (sort of like Nabokov’s EO commentary). I may be wrong though, perhaps in the end it is more of a Ulysses than a Finnegans Wake – I haven’t yet read all of it, after all.