Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0004369, Tue, 7 Sep 1999 12:02:02 -0700

Subject
The GREAT ZEMBLAN TOOL HOAX
Date
Body
EDITOR's NOTE. NABOKV-L thanks Andy Lamey <ALamey@nationalpost.com> for
permission to run his _National Post_ article below. I, the editor of
NABOKV-L, have excerpted the introductory remarks below from additional
material kindly supplied by Lamey. NABOKV-L apologizes to Lamey and its
reader for the formatting below which is a by-product of technical
limitations here.

_The National Post_ <www.nationalpost.com> is a new daily Canadian
newspaper (launched in October) with a circulation of 285,000. Journalist
Andy Lamey covers the humanities - most often literature, history and
philosophy - for its discovery page, devoted to academia. An account of
how he came to do the story follows:

Salon magazine ran a very short item on ZEMBLA Editor Jeff Edmunds'
elaborate hoax on VN's unfinished and unpublished last novel _THE ORIGINAL
Of LAURA_, known in the Nabokov trade as TOOL. I called Edmunds, who gave
me the internet location for the essay which I read and faxed to Michael
Wood of Princeton, who spoke of it very highly. He suggested Boyd would be
another good person to speak to. In the course of developing the story I
spoke further with Jef Edmunds, Brian Boyd, and Dmitri Nabokov, all of
whom provided their own takes on the hoax. The story follows:
-----------------------------
-------------------------------------
HEADLINE * Mimicking the master of
deception: Vladimir Nabokov might have appreciated how a Pennsylvania
librarian was able to mislead academia > by Andy Lamey SOURCE > National
Post July 3, 1999
--------------------------------

At first glance,
Jeff Edmunds doesn't seem like a master of fraud. Instead > of hours spent
practising forgery or running from authorities, he lives a > quiet life in
Pennsylvania working in a library as a cataloguing > specialist. In his
off hours, his idea of a good time is logging on to the > Web site he
edits called Zembla, devoted to his favourite writer, > Vladimir Nabokov.
But as Edmunds himself is the first to admit: "I'm not a trustworthy >
person." Some of the world's leading Nabokov experts would agree. Last >
fall, Edmunds fooled them into accepting a piece of his writing as an >
authentic, unpublished work by the world-renowned novelist. The success >
of his deception was all the more noteworthy because Nabokov, the author >
of Lolita and other famous works, is renowned for his supremely polished >
and precise style. Unlike Hemingway, who has spawned an entire industry >
of imitators, Nabokov was widely considered to be inimitable. Peter
Lubin, a Nabokov critic, published a fake interview with Nabokov in
1970, but, until Jeff Edmunds entered the scene, nobody had successfully >
passed off his own writing as the work of the master. The fraud shook >
the rarified world of Nabokov studies. Critics were baffled by how >
Edmunds, a self-described "frustrated writer," was able to so perfectly >
mimic one of the 20th century's most distinctive literary voices.
Yet, in so doing, Edmunds managed to provide a real-world illustration of
a deeply Nabokovian idea -- that much of what passes for truth is, in
fact, fiction. If Edmunds were a character in a novel, literary critics >
would call him an unreliable narrator. He enjoys misleading journalists >
who come calling about his little joke, and happily spins out wild tales >
about his motives. E-mails sent at the time of the prank, pieced together
with the testimony of all the parties involved, provide a more reliable
outline of events.

In September, Edmunds posted an essay on his
Nabokov site * (http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/nsintro.htm)
> purportedly written by a Swiss professor named Michel Desommelier. It >
was titled " _The Original of Laura_:' A First Look at Nabokov's Last >
Novel." Nabokov is known to have left _The Original of Laura_ >
incomplete before his 1977 death in Switzerland. It has never been >
published. The > non-existent Desommelier, however (sommelier is a French
term for "wine > waiter"), gave an elaborate account of how a nurse
obtained some > passages from the book when Nabokov was on his deathbed.
Woven into the > essay were fabricated "excerpts" from the novel itself.
In the first > phony passage, Edmunds had The Original of Laura start in
mid-sentence > with a scholarly riff on the origin and nature of art: ".
. . in ochre, > rust and black, a vast procession of bison, stags,
stallions and boars, > joined by the odd rhinoceros or mammoth, and
alongside these, fantastical > hybrids: centaurs and bird-headed men,
unicorns and antlered shamans. > "It is impossible to know with certainty
what thoughts raged in our > ancestors' minds as they drafted, with their
fingers, with charred sticks, > with pigments of clay, juniper berries,
and pulverized tree bark, these > haunting menageries. We are nonetheless
justified in making guesses based > on this or that subtle shiver of
informed intuition: an artist's > imagination is often proven more
visionarily accurate than the scientist's > reasoned conjecture. "Where,
then, do I begin?" > > After each bogus excerpt, Edmunds switched back
into the voice of > Desommelier and offered critical comments. After the
lines above, Edmunds' > fictional critic said the new work clearly
"expands upon the themes of > Lolita: love and loss, life and its
relationship to art." > > Elsewhere, Edmunds-as-Desommelier lavished
praise on the writings of > Edmunds-as-Nabokov: "This is a superb passage,
equalling or exceeding in > quality the descriptive precision [of]
anything Nabokov ever wrote." > > > The essay remained online as September
rolled into October. Then the > small and tight-knit world of Nabokov
scholars got wind of it. > Edmunds says: "That's when the proverbial
you-know-what hit the fan." "I'm a bit reluctant to say this, but I
guess I'd better," sighs Brian > Boyd, admitting that he was taken in by
the hoax. Boyd is an English > professor at the University of Auckland in
New Zealand and author of the > two-volume biography Vladimir Nabokov
(Princeton University Press, Vol. I. > $26.75, Vol II. $27.95). He is
also considered by many to be the world's > leading expert on Nabokov.
Last October, Boyd received a frantic phone > call from Dmitri Nabokov,
the author's son and executor of Nabokov's > literary estate. Dmitri had
been told about -- but had not seen -- the > essay. Boyd found it online,
read it, and faxed a copy to Dmitri. > > Boyd then fired off a strongly
worded e-mail to Edmunds, saying the essay > violated copyright law and
the "legal and moral right" of Dmitri Nabokov > to determine if, where and
when The Original of Laura would be published. > Edmund's essay started
off with several genuine references to Boyd's own > biography, including
an account of Nabokov's last days in a Swiss hotel > room. Fact begins to
fade into fiction when Desommelier writes that one > of Nabokov's nurses
expressed an interest in Nabokov's work (true) * and > was named Suzanne
Eggerickx (false). Nabokov wrote on index cards (true): > Eggerickx took
some that were by the side of the bed (false). Edmunds > then inserts a
novelistic touch: The essay describes Nabokov in a > delirious state,
reciting passages from his novel over and over again > while Eggerickx
(gifted with shorthand skills) transcribes his monologues > to pass the
time, "able to correct her drafts to such an extent that the > final text
was wholly consistent with the patient's narration" (all > false). "It
really wounded me," says Boyd of the essay's image of a > "helpless, dying
man" being taken advantage of by his nurse in his > weakest hour. His
heart so went out to Nabokov, Boyd says, he thought > about justice first
and authenticity second. The same day that Boyd's > e-mail arrived,
Edmunds received a message from Stephen Parker of the University of
Kansas, founder of the Nabokov Society. "[He] said that Dmitri wanted
to telephone me so would I please send him my phone number," Edmunds
says. "This I immediately did, adding 'Please mention to Dmitri that the
offending materials . . . were a hoax.'" Dmitri Nabokov called the
next day. "I talked to Jeff and I said that I admired his
craftsmanship, but that I thought it might be best to remove it, to admit
that it was a prank, because when, for example, the Russians get a hold
of something like that, they go wild and start printing right and left,"
Nabokov recalls from his home in Lausanne, Switzerland. Dmitri Nabokov
> says that he entertained only a "momentary doubt" before realizing the
> essay was a hoax. According to Edmunds, however, Nabokov's first >
reaction was to try to locate Eggerickx and Desommelier in Switzerland. >
An e-mail sent to Edmunds at the time from an associate of Nabokov >
supports Edmunds' claim. When Nabokov received the essay, it arrived >
with Edmunds' declaration that it was a hoax. Yet "[Nabokov] still wants >
to track down the names you mentioned," the e-mail reads. (According >
to Parker, Edmunds, and others, Dmitri Nabokov's frequent experience with
literary
> pirates has left him with a "conspiratorial mind," one which would have
> found the actions of Eggerickx and Desommelier all too plausible.) In >
short, it was only after speaking with Edmunds himself that Nabokov's >
son was completely convinced that the excerpts were not the writer's own.

One of Vladimir Nabokov's central themes is the porous boundary
between > art and life, says Michael Wood, an English professor at
Princeton > University and author of The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and
the Risks of > Fiction (Random House, $20.00). Much of Nabokov's writing,
Wood says, > upholds the idea that "a lot of things in real life are
fiction." > > Boyd makes a similar point in an essay posted on Zembla,
where he notes > "how fascinated [Nabokov] was by deception in nature,
especially in > mimicry, and how much he liked to find in his art
equivalents for the sly > playfulness he sensed behind things." Nabokov
particularly enjoyed > aping and satirizing the authoritative voice of
academia. An entire novel, > Pale Fire, is made up of an unbalanced
literary scholar's deranged > editorial commentary on a 999-line poem. And
one of the fiercest debates > in Nabokov scholarship is how to determine
which character within the > fictional world of Pale Fire is the "real"
author of the poem and the > commentary. Edmunds' prank is not the first
time that Nabokov's notion > of "the artfulness of life" has escaped from
his books into the real > world. In the original version of Lolita,
Nabokov penned a fake, > scholarly foreword under the name "John Ray Jr.,
PhD." According to Wood, > Nabokov's academic impersonation was so good,
that at least one British > publisher mistook Ray for a real person and
later replaced his foreword > with a more up-to-date one. The Ray
foreword has also resulted in a > long tradition of Nabokov scholars
believing real critics are as fictional > as John Ray Jr. "I thought that
a guy called Conrad Brenner, who wrote > the introduction to [Nabokov's
novel] The Real Life of Sebastian Knight > -- I was sure that was Nabokov
in disguise, but, it turns out, I was > wrong," Wood chuckles. Given all
of this, it is tempting to see a > Nabokovian logic at work in Edmunds'
prank. Edmunds' final description of his motive, however, is "pure
fun, rather > than being philosophical or making any statement." He says
the dummy > Nabokov passages originated as part of a novel manuscript he
wrote that > was too influenced by Nabokov to succeed on its own terms.
"I culled > through the 80 or 100 pages and chose what I thought to be the
best, the > ones that would be the most difficult to tell apart from
Nabokov's > prose," Edmunds says. After being forced to remove his essay
from Zembla, > Edmunds posted it at
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/desomm.htm. He has given the >
address to friends and is happy to publish it here, where it is clear it >
is a hoax. Could something similar happen again? "Oh yes," says >
Princeton's Wood. Or, at least, we can only hope. "I think the >
possibility of certain kinds of spoofs, and certain kinds of parodies, is
actually good for literature," Wood says. "It keeps people thinking. If
it was science it would be a matter of fraud . . . but in a certain
sense, the idea of impersonation, in literature, is part of the
imaginative life of the thing."