Ada Is Not Autobiographical

Ada turned out to be even more of a challenge than the longer Team of Rivals we tackled last month! Although Ada is not excessively long, it is packed with word play, foreign languages, and references to persons, places, and things encompassing the vast range of esoterica that is the expression of the brilliant author, Vladimir Nabokov.

I was expecting to learn that Vladimir Nabokov had some kind of perverted past that caused him to write such stories as Lolita and Ada. When Dennis introduced the book on Monday, we learned instead that Nabokov was married in his early 20s and had a lifelong close marriage. Nothing remarkable from his life has been conclusively tied to the Lolita or Ada plots. Nabokov did occasionally joke that his wife was really his sister, after Ada was written.

Another important aspect of Nabokov's history was that the popularity of Lolita, published in 1955, made him rich. At our meeting, after hearing this, Nora suggested that perhaps in writing Ada, Nabokov was trying to capitalize on the popularity of Lolita by using some of the same ingredients in the hopes of achieving another great success.

Ada is considered as science fiction by some people, because of the theme of the alternative world, Terra. And wasn't there Exterra, too? I couldn't find it leafing through the book. That book is so full of capital letters, it's hard to scan it looking for a word!

In another astute comment, one of our fascinating members suggested that the characters in Ada were archetypical and representative of the passions they illustrated, rather than meant to be real. (Great thought, I apologize for neglecting to write down who said it and then forgetting - how about creating a comment below to claim it?)

This book had a compelling love story plot that was somewhat hard to follow because of all the references to outside topics and the skipping around of the time line. Patty suggested that the book needed an editor. I suggested that the book was so erudite and complex that no one was smart enough to edit it besides Nabokov and apparently his wife, who helped him edit. The website Dennis mentioned in the posting from May 19th (Some Hints for Ada) has much detail about every chapter and line of Ada, but even it is unfinished. There is so much to Ada, it is nearly impossible for anyone to cover it all!
-submitted by Claudia

Nabokov Bibliography

Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
Bend Sinister
The Defense
Despair
The Enchanter
The Eye
The Gift
Glory
Invitation to a Beheading
King, Queen, Knave
Laughter in the Dark
Lectures on Don Quixote
Lectures on Literature
Lectures on Russian Literature
Lolita
Lolita: A Screenplay
Look at the Harlequins!
The Man from the USSR & Other Plays
Mary
Nikolai Gogol
Pale Fire
Pnin
Poems and Problems
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
Speak Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (aka Conclusive Evidence)
Stikhi
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov
Strong Opinions
Transparent Things
The Waltz Invention
trans. The Song of Igor’s Campaign: An Epic of the Twelfth Century
trans. Three Russian Poets

Some hints for Ada

Part of the fun of reading Ada is figuring out all the wordplay, puns, literary allusions, double and triple entendres, and all the rest, purely on your own. But if you really need some help, you might take a look at AdaOnline, which has the first 26 chapters annotated. I must say, though, that every time you figure out one of Vlad's little puzzles, it is a satisfying thrill.