What does it mean to be "placed" in "Ada", a novel of seven hundred and eighty-six pages, where each page exudes hundreds of scents, trying to play with time to stop it, fearing that it will pass and your stay in "Ada" will end, and you will return only from the world of imagination and dreams to reality with all its harshness.

What does it mean to feel "horrors" that you have never tasted before during a long period of immersion in the world of reading, which takes you with pleasure and ease, nullifying the boundaries of reason and logic and what has been built upon them in terms of statements, realizing that Nabokov is playing with you and stripping you of the weapons with which you have always been proud to defend and protect you from the "poisons" in life.

All this and more happened in the presence of "Ada" in the extraordinary and superhuman pen of the great Vladimir Nabokov.

His works are like a magical realm that draws readers in and makes them experience a range of emotions and sensations that they may not have encountered before. The detailed descriptions and the complex characters add depth and richness to the stories, making them truly unforgettable.

Nabokov's writing style is unique, with his use of vivid language and his ability to create a sense of mystery and intrigue. It is no wonder that his works have stood the test of time and continue to be read and studied by people all over the world.

Whether you are a fan of literature or simply looking for a good read, Nabokov's works are definitely worth exploring. You may just find yourself lost in the pages of his novels, experiencing a world that is both beautiful and terrifying, and coming out the other side with a new perspective on life and art.

It's time to continue filling the gaps in a complete, coherent, and non-contradictory picture of the world. I started rereading Nabokov back when I had a library, and I must say, I understood that I had made peace with him. Or perhaps I just grew up.

This novel, of course, is an undisguised delight, a teasing fireworks display, and the highest form of cynical virtuosity, especially when read through the slit of Pynchon's prism. The main infectious delight is the continuous mind-boggling verbal slices and resonances, the endless "scrappy dogs" and fetishes (like the prohibition on electricity coming from an Italian electromagnet, and water telephones from the French "allo"). True, sometimes they degrade to a student level and become deliberately unpleasant, as almost always happens in Nabokov's texts (uncle didn't know moderation and was unbearable in this regard, although it's clear that he was having a great time writing this), and this (like the pseudo-folkloric distortions of borrowed words and the author's personal language mannerisms attributed to the characters: all these "expressions", "cocotte" and such) starts to wear a little thin over time, so small doses are recommended.

It has become fashionable to talk about the parallels between "Ada" and "The Novel in the Making", but it seems that this is mainly done by those who have not read either text (or not finished reading). There are echoes, of course, but to say that there are direct _parallels_... Note:

- The general looseness of speech, the masterful use of the "linguistic residue", and some specific stylistic devices (like humorous character names and cross-language play).

- The "alternative" universe here is clearly any one, as in "The Left-Handed Thread" (which is "The Sign of the Illegitimate") or in any of his other novels where everything is somehow alternative. So there seems to be no particular point in getting hung up on such parallels if there is no task of scaring young ladies with literary inclinations. Any good literature is "alternative" and in this sense can serve as a source of inspiration for anything. And this "Anti-Terra" is not so "alternative" if you look closely: it's an ordinary augmented reality, or rather, a dream of it with a half-century lag.

- The lexical reduplication here is a bit deliberate, as with much of Nabokov (gossamer gossip, for example), rather than the natural and unnoticed doubling in Pynchon's eyes, like the birefringence of Iceland spar.

- The comic-strip blackmailer Kim leaves almost all the essential action off-screen - and to decipher him, Pynchon's apparatus would be needed.

- And here's the passage that lies at the foundation of one of Pynchon's devices:

Nothing happened—or perhaps everything happened, and his destiny simply forked at that instant, as it probably does sometimes at night, especially in a strange bed, at stages of great happiness or great desolation, when we happen to die in our sleep, but continue our normal existence, with no perceptible break in the faked serialization, on the following, neatly prepared morning, with a spurious past discreetly but firmly attached behind.

- Editorial articles on the individual perception of space-time. Sometimes, of course, it seems that Pynchon developed Nabokov's sketches, but no: their vectors (ok, ok, quaternions) are just similar, as is the setting of some episodes - the same altered Europe of the mind.

Here, of course, the main difference lies: Nabokov's novels are mainly masturbatory fantasies related to something very tangible (from girls to butterflies) or not so much, for example, the Russia that never entered the preeminent chronotope of the Russian Empire (or rather the eternal desire for Russia to be part of the civilized world, not all this). Although Nabokov's fantasies are a harbinger of Sorokin's future fantasies (which in turn grew out of Krasnov's fantasies), and of course, the sign doesn't change much there either.

The closest sonic analogue (not the "soundtrack" for) "Ada" would be some early Genesis album (when they were still a real band), and the best cover would probably be drawn by Paul Whitehead.

An unexpected bonus: the ghost of the homeland. At the very end, "Tomsk" (along with its agents) pops up incidentally, which first appeared 20 years earlier in "Carmichael Smith", and we remember where it was, right?

A relatively useful guide - or rather, an annotated edition - is here: https://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/. A quite decent explanation is also here: https://polka.academy/materials/879

4.5 stars, rounded down. Full write-up below (my first review in many months).

Link to my podcast episode on the book: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/sh...

“Art my foute. This is the hearse of ars, a toilet roll of the Carte du Tendre! I’m sorry you showed it to me. That ape has vulgarized our own mind-pictures. I will either horsewhip his eyes out or redeem our childhood by making a book of it: Ardis, a family chronicle” (430).

Thus the germ of Ada (as delineated by a blackmailed man plotting vengeance), an immensely creative retrospective-cum-journal of Ivan Veen, with annotations by cousin-sister Ada. Nabokov wrote Ada in English and published it in 1969. It bears the traditional Nabokovian hallmarks of wordplay, exactitude in description and nonpareil style. However, this book strays into Joycean territory regularly with numerous multilingual puns, anagrams and sections of dense opacity. Ada is often touted as Nabokov’s most difficult piece of fiction. In brief, Ada is the account of a life-long romance between “first-cousins,” who are revealed to be siblings early on. Their relationship is punctuated by stops and starts, and fidelity is not given much status. The story covers about 100 years, with most of the text focusing on their early life. Place also plays an important role, as the story is set on a planet similar to earth called Demonia, or Antiterra, which has no electricity and antiquated technology. The geography and place-names are confusing and intriguing. While Ada has a compelling plot and setting, the ultimate joy of the book is the language. Nabokov is more concerned with how the story is told than what the story tells, and he unleashes a torrent of words that entices the reader with the challenge of unraveling the jumbled language. The glutton of language can feast on the sumptuous pages of Ada and be sated.

I am continuing with my Nabokov project, and this implies that 'Ada..' is approximately my 15th novel by Nabokov as I am reading them in chronological order.

Nabokov is renowned for his sophisticated, witty, and difficult texts that are exceptionally beautiful, filled with unusual metaphors, non-existent words, puns, allusions, and alliterations. In my humble opinion, there are an abundance of these literary devices. The reader also experiences a synergy of more than three languages and cultures in this erotic and philosophical novel, which can be seen as a caricature or parody of various aspects.

However, it is Nabokov, but not the Nabokov I love. As far as I'm concerned, there is an excess of form, yet not enough content, despite his 'Treatise on Time'. It seems that his concern for his characters and the tenderness he once showed towards them, along with everything that was natural and sincere, is absent and only remains in his Russian texts.

Nevertheless, a 'carnival' with its magic still persists.

'Remembrance, like Rembrandt, is dark and festive. Remembered ones dress up for the occasion and sit still. Memory is a photo-studio de luxe on an infinite Fifth Power Avenue.'

'...we simply speak with our wounds; wounds procreate...'

'Remembrance, embers and membranes of beauty make artists and morons lose all self-control.'

'Life, love, libraries, have no future.'

'I can never get used [...] to the contrast between the opulence of nature and the squalor of human life.'

'Time is rhythm: the insect rhythm of a warm humid night, brain ripple, breathing, the drum in my temple—these are our faithful timekeepers; and reason corrects the feverish beat.'

'Now and then, when he detached his organs of locomotion from the lenient ground, and seemed actually to clap his hands in midair, in a miraculous parody of a jump, one wondered if this dreamy indolence of levitation was not a result of the earth’s canceling its pull in a fit of absentminded benevolence. Incidentally, one curious consequence of certain muscular changes and osteal "reclicks" caused by the special training was Van’s inability in later years to shrug his shoulders. Questions for study and discussion: 1. Did both palms leave the ground when Van, while reversed, seemed actually to skip on his hands? 2. Was Van’s adult incapacity to "shrug" things off only physical or did it "correspond" to some archetypal character of his "soul"? 3. Why did Ada burst into tears at the height of Van’s performance?'

'Being unfamiliar with the itinerary of sun and shade in the clearing, he had left his bicycle to endure the blazing beams for at least three hours. Ada mounted it, uttered a yelp of pain, almost fell off, googled, recovered—and the rear tire burst with a comic bang.'

'...thrushes were singing so richly, with such sonorous force, such fluty fioriture, that one could not endure the agony of consciousness, the filth of life, the loss, the loss, the loss. Gradually, however, he regained a semblance of self-control by the magic method of not allowing the image of Ada to come anywhere near his awareness of himself. This created a vacuum into which rushed a multitude of trivial reflections. A pantomime of rational thought.'

I.
"Nabokov is an unsettling writer as well as a funny one because he is deep where he looks shallow, moving when he seems flippant." - Michael Wood, The Magician's Doubts

II.
I've read most of Nabokov's novels and deliberately saved Ada for the end of my initial reading. I'm glad I did so because I needed the good impression I had built up to get through the first 30+ pages, which are the most challenging and unappealing of his career. They are meticulously baroque, self-satisfied, and hard to follow. It's almost as if he is weeding out his readers from the start. The style, in addition to being a parody of 18th Century Russian novels, turns out to reveal a lot about the narrator Van Veen, and the information presented becomes increasingly crucial to the story. But at first glance, I could understand why some critics had dismissed my favorite writer as an overly clever bore. Of course, he turned out to be up to much more than the opening suggests. Let's move on.

III.
"To Read Ada is to enter a sickly and elaborate world, a sort of hell which parades as a paradise; or a genuine paradise which is so broken, threatened, haunted, gloated over that it feels like an enhancement of hell." - Michael Wood

IV.
Many reviewers on this site have been amazed by the Ardis section of the book. After the previously mentioned introductory chapters, it takes up the first 200 pages. Set on a pastoral estate, it chronicles the ecstatic summers of love between Ada and Van Veen, who are both cousins and siblings. This is a lush and brilliant section, intended to seduce the reader, but I wonder if it has seduced some too completely. For all its genuine beauty and kinky erotic charge, there is something wrong in this supposed paradise, lurking around the edges, constantly off-key.

V.
"That originality of literary style which constitutes the only real honesty of a writer." - Van Veen

VI.
For me, Ada really started to pay off after Ardis. The book shows the first signs of its overall design - the complex investigations into loss, time, memory, what can be retrieved through the artifices of art and what cannot. Some readers miss the gorgeous sparkle of Ardis and think Nabokov has lost the plot - but this is the point. Ardis has become a paradise that has locked out both lovers and readers. We have to make do with substitutes that become increasingly pale and grotesque, threatening to mar the memory of the supposed idyll. The story here becomes increasingly complex, branching in many directions, its implications stretching far beyond the narrator's words.

VII.
Recently, there have been rumors that Wes Anderson is going to do a multi-part miniseries of Ada for cable. The matter-of-fact incest, the intricate design, the steam-punk world, the emotion that comes from oblique angles. It would be a stretch for Anderson, but it could work.

VIII.
The last sections of the book - with time mercilessly hurtling forward - were by far the most moving for me. I wasn't prepared for the passages that are among the most haunting and heartrending in Nabokov's work. You can feel Ardis turning to dust beneath your fingertips as the years pass and the pages turn. The watery death of Lucette. The scene of Van and his mother in the hospital. Van's pilgrimages to hundreds of brothels, vainly seeking another Ada. The encounter of Van and Ada as dumpy 50-year-olds. The sublime ending, which serves as a preface to the book and redeems the fussy opening pages. These are truly among the finest things I've read, period.

IX.
Yes, there are parts of Ada that are difficult to embrace. The constant puns and correspondences between the Anti-Terra of the novel and our own world are the worst offenders for me. There are times when Van Veen's style annoys as well as charms. A few plot points seem too easily contrived. But as the book rushed to its conclusion, I realized these were minor quibbles within the design of an artistically grand, morally complicated, and ultimately profound book about... more than can fit in a review. If you can set aside the time, it will reward your efforts. Ada's best sections shouldn't be rated in stars, but in constellations.

A scandalous story about intelligent people.

Van Veen and Ada Veen, two half-brothers raised by different families, two children with an absolutely amazing intelligence, fall in love with each other. The novel follows their stormy forbidden love over an almost century-long period until they pass into eternity.

In the nearly 600 pages, we discover a true prose poem about love without social or moral limits, about search, rediscovery, and genius.

Surprisingly, during reading, you become indulgent and lenient towards the hateful incestuous relationship of the two brothers. You can't help but be fascinated by the wisdom of the two adolescent protagonists (somewhere it is mentioned that Ada has an IQ of over 200), and you can't help but notice that throughout their lives, the genius of each of them is fulfilled and perfected only when they are together, one beside the other. Whenever life will separate them, the genius of each will regress, will be restrained in mediocrity, and then will rejuvenate again, will bloom, and will explode exponentially whenever they will be reunited after years.

If the dimension of this novel does not seem too discouraging to you and you have the patience to take it to the end, probably you will agree, as I also believe, that "Ada or Ardor" is the true masterpiece of Nabokov, his swan song, his literary testament.

And maybe you will think, as I also thought when I turned the last page of this book, that "Lolita" has usurped, solely through its cinematic notoriety, the rightful role of the Nabokovian prima donna of "Ada".

Ein Splitter:

… He who wishes to know what an erotic novel is can learn here. The high (book) price fades beside the high claim of this literature full of intelligence and indolence, voluptuousness and lament, pornography and poetry, obscenity and optimism, incest and tenderness, hubris and gaiety, delicacy and disgust. After reading, one doesn't really know whether one should throw the book away in a rage over this educational darkness or press it to one's breast with delight and count it among the ten most important books ever produced on our planet.

Certainly, no average citizen and reader can keep up here. Even Arno Schmidt fans can lay down their arms and be left behind. The principle of literature as an art that skillfully cheats itself is taken to the extreme.

Source: Gerhard Zwerenz, Rez. Ada in NDR (16.03.75)

To be read in: Letters from Terra: Vladimir Nabokov to Honor

This book is pure passion, from the spasmodic and satisfying one that softens your spirit to the unsatisfied and stinging one that does nothing but multiply in a catastrophic effervescence.

It is written with such elegance that at first it made me feel like when you arrive at a dinner and notice that you are not dressed for the occasion. VN treats memories with the majesty of Proust, but without his pitiful melancholy, rather with cynicism and boldness.

His eroticism is intertwined with a voluptuous, sensual and intoxicating nature, whose fruits are the finest metaphors. He appropriates words and plays with them, with languages, with time and its texture.

It is a book that is not read, one has to concentrate and engage in order to feel the memories that Nabokov captures like butterflies in the net of the present. I felt it as a work of art.

It is a literary masterpiece that takes the reader on a journey through a world of passion, desire, and memory. The language is rich and evocative, painting vivid pictures in the reader's mind. The characters are complex and multi-dimensional, and the story is both engaging and thought-provoking.

Overall, this book is a must-read for anyone who loves literature and wants to experience the beauty and power of words. It is a book that will stay with you long after you have finished reading it.

For me, Nabokov is like a band that you hear one song from and instantly fall in love with. You excitedly buy the album, only to discover that you don't really care for any of the other songs the band has to offer.

This novel gives the impression of peering into someone's life, which might sound fascinating in theory. However, in practice, it is long-winded, meandering, frequently dull, often perplexing, and largely lacking in purpose. I still maintain that Nabokov was a genius, but perhaps he is simply too intellectually advanced for me to derive much pleasure from the majority of his work.

The quest to find a Nabokov novel that I enjoy even remotely as much as the flawless Lolita persists!

Word, words, words. WORD!

Words are the building blocks of communication. They have the power to convey ideas, emotions, and stories. From the simplest of greetings to the most complex of literary works, words play a crucial role in our lives.

However, it is important to note that not all words are created equal. Some words may have negative connotations or be inappropriate in certain contexts. For example, the mention of incest and insects in the original text is rather strange and perhaps not suitable for all audiences.

In conclusion, while words are a wonderful tool, we must use them carefully and thoughtfully to ensure that our messages are clear and appropriate. We should strive to use words that build up and inspire rather than tear down and offend.

Nabokov's unique style reaches its zenith, in my opinion. He manipulates the English language just as he did in Lolita, yet in a more entertaining manner, liberally incorporating Russian and French. What sets this apart from, for example, Pale Fire, is the presence of some warmth. Pale Fire seemed like a cold and impersonal exercise, and it was difficult to feel much sympathy for the constantly irritating Kinbote. However, while Van and Ada can be rather pretentious, they are also endearing, and it's hard not to care about their story.

And it is, unlike some of Nabokov's works, a story, at least until the last fifty pages or so. Here, we are treated to an extended exploration of the nature of time and memory, which is alternately unintelligible and enlightening, boring and fascinating. It's definitely not for everyone, and the length can be intimidating. Someone noticed me reading it and commented that Nabokov is "self-indulgent." That's surely true, but if there were nothing more to it than that, I wouldn't be reading him.

His works, despite their flaws, have a certain allure that keeps pulling me in. They are complex, challenging, and full of surprises. And while I may not always understand everything he's trying to say, I always find myself engaged and intrigued by his unique perspective and masterful use of language.

Bettie's Books

The rating, any status updates, and those bookshelves, all serve as indicators of my profound feelings for this book. "Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle" by Vladimir Nabokov is a literary masterpiece that has captivated my imagination from the very first page. The complex and intricate plot, filled with unexpected twists and turns, keeps me on the edge of my seat. The characters are vividly drawn, each with their own unique personalities and motives. Nabokov's prose is simply beautiful, rich in imagery and language that dances off the page. I find myself constantly rereading certain passages, savoring the words and the emotions they evoke. This book is not just a story, but a work of art that I will cherish for a long time.