It could have been drab phonetics. But when Vladimir Nabokov,in between chasing butterflies,wrote Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap,at three,on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. language metamorphosed into a 12-year-old girl sunning on the lawn. After Lolita,there was Laura too hardly-seen,much-talked-about Laura. Before his death in 1977,Nabokov was writing his last novel,typically with a pencil on index cards. He made his wife Vera and son Dmitri promise that they would destroy the draft if he left it unfinished. Thankfully,they did not keep their word. After being locked away in a Swiss bank vault for over three decades,privy only to a few eyes and giving rise to heated arguments over whether the 138 index cards should be burnt or saved,the novel,now called The Original of Laura,will finally be published by Alfred A. Knopf on November 17. Nabokov will be speaking again; it is being called the publishing event of the year. The only hitch is that nobody knows the correct order of the index cards. So the publishers have come up with an ingenious idea. The book will contain photographic reproductions of Nabokovs handwritten cards,followed by transcriptions of the cards contents. The cards will have perforated edges so that you can just tear them,arrange and re-arrange until you get the plot,or a plot you seem fit. That would be the most literal act of deconstructing and reconstructing a novel. The American columnist Ron Rosenbaum went to the Random House building to look at an early,unbound copy it is shown to outsiders only after they have been sworn to secrecy,like initiates in a Dan Brown novel. He wrote in The Slate: a numinous aura surrounded the object I beheld on the 21st floor as if it were a newly discovered Dead Sea Scroll . ever since I learned about the existence and perilous fate of The Original of Laura,I wondered whether,even in its fragmentary state,it might disclose clues about the nature of a true object of wonder,mystery and intricacy: the mind of Vladimir Nabokov,perhaps seen for the first time in the process of creation,giving us a glimpse of the alchemy with which he transformed pencil lead to gold. Meanwhile,if you see Nabokovian scholars walking with the next issue of the Playboy,dont be surprised. The magazine that hits the stands on November 10 will have a 5,000-word excerpt of The Original of Laura. After you have gazed at the bunny,go ahead and grab the book ($35). Shuffle the index cards. There is one in six billion trillion possibilities that you would get what Nabokov intended. It would be the literary poker of all times.
