Cornell University is hardly a sexy place. How can it be, when temperatures in the single digits leave us wearing layers upon layers and prevent us from showing any flesh? Yet, one of Cornell’s most famous professors had a storied knack for gracing the pages of Playboy. His name was Vladimir Nabokov, and his most famous works were all conceived in Ithaca. Even his Cornell lectures have been printed in volumes because they are considered the definitive interpretations of the Russian greats.
Despite being dead, Vladimir Nabokov even found himself in the pages of Playboy again this past December. His final work, “The Original of Laura,” (sporting the lovely subtitle, “Dying is Fun”) was released following a lengthy controversy surrounding Nabokov’s dying wish for his manuscripts of the work to be destroyed and his son Dmitri’s pending bankruptcy. Before the book hit the shelves, 5,000 words were previewed in the December issue of Playboy.
(art by Meaghan McSorley)
Geeky Professor to Sex Icon
Nabokov’s path to Playboy was a far cry from that of Hugh Hefner’s bunnies. Nabokov was a Russian émigré, writer, scholar, chessproblem creator and butterfly collector. He came to the United States in 1940 to teach Russian literature. Having already established a name for himself with his Russian language books, he traveled around the country teaching at Stanford, Wellesley and Harvard. In 1948 Nabokov was lured from the banks of the Charles River to the hills of Ithaca to head the Russian Department at Cornell University, though the department never materialized during his tenure. The first course he taught was Russian Literature, which Nabocovered Tolstoy, Gogol, Turgenev and eventually Pushkin. Later on, he taught European Literature, in which he delivered his now-famous lectures on James Joyce’s masterpiece, “Ulysses.”
Despite his scholarly background, Nabokov ranks number 22 in Playboy’s “The 55 Most Important People In Sex,” not far behind Howard Stern, and a little above Farrah Fawcett. Not bad for a dorky Cornell professor who spent most of his days in Goldwin Smith buried under a pile of books.
Nabokov’s relationship with Playboy began with his racy 1959 book, “Lolita.” Conceived in Goldwin Smith Hall, the book was set in a town modeled after Ithaca, and tells the story of a man who pursues, and has excessive sexual relations with, a prepubescent girl. The premise may certainly be regarded as sick and twisted, but it is impossible to deny the brilliance of the beauty and the psychological nuances that Nabokov employs in this work. When reading “Lolita,” it is easy to root for the villain while blaming the innocent. The reader then remembers to be outraged, while, in this author’s opinion, still enjoying some of the most beautiful English prose of all time.
While Nabokov’s work can be mentally exhausting, he manages to incorporate immense playfulness into it. “Lolita,” much like his 1962 work, “Pale Fire,” is rich with jabs at the work of Sigmund Freud. Perhaps no man has ever hated Freud with the passion of Nabokov. In “The Schreber Case,” Freud argues that the only explicitly impossible mental composition is one in which a person is both actively homosexual and paranoid. Of course, in response to this, Nabokov’s protagonist in “Pale Fire” is an actively paranoid homosexual. Using words as his medium, Nabokov takes the reader on a journey through a realm of the mind that Freud deemed impossible.
Through the sexual nature of his work and his condemnation of Freud, Nabokov asserted himself as one of the greatest sex thinkers of all time. Naturally, he landed himself on Playboy’s radar.
(art by Cat Schrage)
The Famous Interview
Nabokov first encountered Playboy in a 1964 interview with Alvin Toffler, shortly after Stanley Kubrick adapted “Lolita” to film. Kubrick said the movie was somewhat of a disappointment due to heavy government censorship, and that it was a rather watered-down version of the book. Nevertheless, its scandal-tinged release was shocking enough to garner the interest of Playboy, as well as the general public.
The interview was as bizarre and lucid as Playboy’s work. Always in control, he sucked everyone around him into the orbit of his rapidly moving brain. In the interview, Nabokov meandered through a wide range of topics, from butterflies to death and the nature of art, and of course, to Cornell.
In it, he recalled Cornell lovingly, claiming that his most vivid memories of Cornell were of giving exams in Goldwin Smith. Following the success of “Lolita,” Nabokov gave up teaching and spent the rest of his life writing. He remembered the average Cornell students as “the great fraternity of C-minus, backbone of the nation.” He said he was fascinated by the students at work on an exam, “The shaking of a cramped wrist, the failing ink, the deodorant that breaks down. When I catch eyes directed at me, they are forthwith raised to the ceiling in pious meditation.”
At other points in the interview, the insane brilliance of the man is illuminated in its full glory. Recalling the naming of his characters, he explained the importance of verbal cadence to the flow of a novel. He explained, “For my nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the most limpid and luminous letters is ‘L’. The suffix ‘-ita’ has a lot of Latin tenderness, and this I required, too.”
Nabokov also shared insights on the writing process with Playboy. He developed his works through the use of note cards, which he would arrange and rearrange, slowly forming the backbone of his work. He compared his writing style to that of building a bird’s nest, and claimed that his notes made up a “kaleidoscopic arrangement of broken impressions.” He further added that he prefers writing standing upright at a lectern but old age often forced him into a chair.
In by far the most bizarre moment of the Playboy interview, Toffler asked Nabokov if he believed in God. Nabokov cryptically responded, “To be quite candid—and what I am going to say now is something I never said before, and I hope it provokes a salutary little chill—I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.”
A Playboy Legacy
The 1964 interview began a relationship between Nabokov and Playboy that continues to this day. They were a natural pair; both benefited from shocking the public, and the only thing more shocking than the two of them individually was the two of them together. Nabokov was so pleased with the experience of expressing his ideas in Playboy that he pre-released his 1969 book, “Ada,” in the magazine.
(art by Meaghan McSorley)
When word got out that Dmitri, Nabokov’s son, had decided to sell the rights to his father’s final but incomplete work last year, Hugh Hefner immediately offered to pre-release the book in Playboy, believing it to be a fitting end to Nabokov’s shocking career. Plus, in an age where accessing free porn takes little effort, Playboy has seen years of declining sales. Featuring Nabokov’s final work would no doubt bring public attention back to Hefner’s magazine and boost sales. And indeed it did; the pre-release was the literary event of the year.
Right before his death in 1977, Nabokov wrote a draft of “The Original of Laura” which spanned 138 index cards. It tells the tale of an overweight academic in a horrific marriage to a philandering woman. Nabokov’s dying wish was to have the unfinished work destroyed. His wife, Véra, could not bring herself to destroy it, and upon her death, the note cards came into Dmitri’s possession. For years he was pressured to release the uncompleted work.
Many have claimed Dmitri’s need for money ultimately resulted in the draft’s publication. He hired the famed literary poacher Andrew Wylie to sell his father‘s work. The Guardian quoted the late Patricia Kavanagh, who called Wylie, “a card-carrying shit.” Kavanagh, a literary agent herself, had clients stolen by Wylie. Wylie, known by many in the business as “The Jackal,” personally brags that he once signed Benazir Bhutto just to impress Salman Rushdie. Wylie had a reputation for going to any length to sign a great writer, which often involved stealing them from other agents.
According to The New York Times, to get the rights, Hefner relied on his literary editor Amy Grace Loyd, who won Dmitri over with a clever reference to a famous scene in “Ada” when she sent orchids to him and his agent. Playboy also got the rights to publish “The Original of Laura” because The New Yorker did not pursue them and also because Playboy gave Dmitri a large undisclosed amount of money.
While the pre-release gathered much attention, the book itself has been given mixed reviews by most literary reviewers, which is not surprising considering the book is largely unfinished. For many, featuring “The Original of Laura” in Playboy was a perfect ending to Nabokov’s career. Playboy often bills itself as America’s most intelligent smut magazine and Nabokov was certainly one of America’s most intelligent smut authors.
