Lila Azam Zanganeh: The Enchanter - Nabakov And Happiness (Allen Lane)

Lila Azam Zanganeh sounds like something out of Nabokov. In fact, everything about her is a bit Nabokovian. Of Iranian descent, French schooled, she taught literature, cinema and Romance languages at Harvard University. She even presents herself as a creation of her hero: Fancy ablaze, forefinger gliding on the Rosetta Stone Software page, it is none other than I, your narrator, snared in Humbert's maze of images, his crackling love song, while lace of hem creeps down a Venus thigh.She's beautiful enough, to go by the picture on the blurb, and almost young enough to be Lolita reincarnated. It gives a book an odd sensation, when you can't help but feel that the writer herself is fictional. She discovered her icon, this semi-mythological creature, when she first followed in his footsteps from old Europe to America. Stretching languorouslyshe ploughed through the strange sentences of Page 1of Ada. Lila was a convert, a zealous one. Zanganeh's book glories in the title The Enchanter: Nabokov And Happiness. Its working title was Light Of My Life, which is less arresting but more honest and accurate. She admits this in her foreword. It might appear unsettling at first to celebrate happiness according to Vladimir Nabokov, a writer so often associated with moral and sexual malaise.She goes on to explain what she really means. Nabokov as a writer of rapture, of marvelling, of delight in the exquisite detail, the transcendent moment. Perhaps this is as close as any of us will come to true happiness, as opposed to contentedness or satisfaction both arguably obstacles to transcendence or rapture. Unfortunately the publishers have taken the title more literally. They play with typefaces throughout, sticking in horrible cursive and faux art nouveau fonts for no apparent reason. The first letter of every chapter gets the sickly curlicue treatment. Then there are uncredited fanciful drawings, including a Map of Happiness. It's all a bit florid, more at home in a gift book you would buy for your auntie from Cheap Rosetta Stone Software a greetings card shop. Zanganeh herself isn't guilt-free of this Hallmark approach. She treats us to cute preludes before each chapter: The Crunch of Happiness. Where the Writer Uses Scintillating Words, and the Reader Swallows them One at a Time.If you can fight your way through this jungle of Copperplate and calligraphy, doodles and overtures, there are some worthwhile and fascinating things in The Enchanter. Of these, Zanganeh's own bons mots are of variable merit. She attempts to echo her master's writing style: an ambitious and perilous strategy not just because Nabokov is such a great writer, but because he's such a singular one and sometimes falls foul of it. You often have to re-read sentences of Nabokov helped by a dictionary to get their gist. But you will eventually, and be glad you did. There are whole paragraphs here when I had no idea what Zanganeh meant: Somehow it is as though I've visited the ancestral park, on the other side of a sentence, in the white sea beyond the black signposts of sense.Actually, I kind of get that, but it's not beautiful enough, nor adds to what she wants to say. Every now and then, though, Zanganeh does pull off a magical little phrase or reveals something special. The Enchanter is somewhere between a biography and a love-letter. And while it would indeed make rather a nice prezzie for a literary auntie, or has the feel of something to be read in a scented bath, it will still make you want to read more of Nabokov himself, which is a good thing. The Rosetta Stone American English Enchanter: Nabokov And Happiness Lila Azam Zanganeh Allen Lane, 20