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The
Real Life of Sebastian Knight
by
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Book
Description
"I
am very happy that you liked that little book," wrote Vladimir
Nabokov to Edmund Wilson in 1941. "As I think I told you, I wrote
it five years ago, in Paris, on the implement called bidet as
a writing desk--because we lived in one room and I had to use
our small bathroom as a study." The book in question was The Real
Life of Sebastian Knight. And despite its humble origins, Nabokov's
first novel in English showed him to be in absolute command of
his adopted language.
Like
many of the author's later triumphs, this one revolves around
a question of identity. The late Sebastian Knight, we discover,
was a transplanted Russian novelist whose taste for linguistic
trickery bears a certain resemblance to Nabokov's. Now his half-brother
is attempting to reconstruct the existence of this elusive figure.
As he readily admits, the raw material isn't exactly the stuff
of melodrama: "Sebastian's life, though far from being dull, lacked
the terrific vigour of his literary style." But even the most
mundane facts prove difficult for the narrator to nail down. He
does, on the other hand, describe Sebastian's creative processes
in exquisite and accurate detail:
His
struggle with words was usually painful and this for two reasons.
One was the common one with writers of his type: the bridging
of the abyss lying between expression and thought; the maddening
feeling that the right words, the only words are awaiting you
on the opposite bank in the misty distance, and the shudderings
of the still unclothed thought clamouring for them on this side
of the abyss
Sebastian's
real life--or anybody's, for that matter--refuses to yield up
a verbal equivalent. Still, the narrator manages a kind of fraternal
fusion with his subject on the book's final page, which suggests
a fluid and very Nabokovian view of identity itself. For this
reason, and for the splendors of its prose, The Real Life of Sebastian
Knight is a necessary read. It's also safe to say that it's the
very best novel ever written on a bidet. --James Marcus
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