Pelevin and Unfreedom: Poetics, Politics, Metaphysics by Sofya Khagi (review)

of his close friendship with Georgy Gessen, who reviewed films for the émigré newspaper, Rul .́ Parker not only identifies these cinemas (see the maps on pages 33 and 34), but also usefully provides, in the book’s appendix, a list of all the films reviewed by Gessen between 1924 and 1931, when Rul ́ shut down, giving the most palpable sense yet of what Nabokov would have seen in his regular visits to the movies. Nabokov Noir is not uncontroversial. It challenges the long-held view — which Nabokov himself promoted — that he resisted being drawn into contemporary concerns in order that his work remain impervious to elements that could either age or date it, or otherwise compromise its fundamental purpose as art for its own sake. It also confronts, head-on, Nabokov’s insistence that he wrote only for himself, that he didn’t ‘bother about his audience’ — an artist’s ‘best audience is the one he sees in his shaving mirror every morning’, he insisted (Strong Opinions, New York, 1973, p. 18). Instead, Parker reveals a different side to Nabokov’s creative strategy by positioning him within his immediate cultural environment and demonstrating the ways in which he engaged with it in order to reach beyond it. Nabokov Noir offers the first thorough examination of Nabokov’s path to the United States via the film industry. Moreover, Parker’s depiction of intellectual life in émigré Berlin, along with his insightful discussion of lesser-known and, until now, unpublished material, will be of great value to scholars. Original and thought-provoking, Nabokov Noir casts a compelling new light on the pressures and priorities that shaped the trajectory of Nabokov’s career.