When Vladimir Nabokov died in 1977, he left behind the fragments of an unfinished novel on 138 hand-written notecards. After much deliberation, his son Dmitri has now decided to have them compiled as a book under Nabokov's original title—The Original of Laura. Next Monday, upon Laura’s publication, the Poetry Center is proud to host A Celebration of Nabokov, with appearances by Martin Amis, Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd and Chip Kidd, the book’s designer. (Please note: A dozen of these notecards will be on public display for the first time at the Celebration, courtesy of Christie's auction house. Only ticket-holders will gain access to this special one-night-only exhibit, which will open at 6:30 pm on the night of November 16.)

Professor Boyd first spoke about Nabokov at the Poetry Center in 1992, as part of our Biographers and Brunch series:

“Nabokov hated novelized biographies, where biographers think they can bring to life a scene that they didn’t witness, or peer into the thoughts of a person they didn’t invent. Yet he loved to biographize his novels. For Nabokov, the past one lives through is enormously particular, irreducible to any formulae or generalizations, and not accessible to another mind. It’s not even accessible—real though it is—to the mind of the person who’s lived through it all, except through the faded images and misplaced files in the photo-library of memory.

“Nabokov’s novels are filled with invented biographers, biographies and autobiographies because he loved to explore the themes of the unrevisitable nature of time past and the impenetrable uniqueness of the individual. He loved to contrast what was possible in novels, where other minds are accessible and the past endlessly revisitable, with the conditions of real life.”

Today’s post is the entirety of Professor Boyd’s lecture from 1992. Of particular interest, perhaps, are his remarks during the question-and-answer session near the end, when an audience member asks him about Laura.

In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of recordings from our archive. To purchase tickets to A Celebration of Nabokov, please click here. For more information about the rest of the upcoming season, please click here. And for access to other recordings from the Poetry Center archive, please click here.

Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.

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