Ada or Ardor--A Family Chronicle
ISBN: 9780679725220 
This book was one in a stack of books received as a “bargain”. A hardback for around fifty cents, the quick explanation of the work being about an “alternate earth” seemed interesting enough to warrant two quarters. Upon reading the book after approximately 40 or so pages, it was evident that there was an un-advertised large amount of sex in this book–we are taking epic levels. Not only was this sex a present theme, but it was FORBIDDEN, torrid, incestuous sex. It was then that the relevance of the author struck me–Vladimir Nabokov. Oh yeah, that was the guy who wrote Lolita.
Honestly, this book was more of a struggle to read than it was a pleasure. Evidently, Nabokov wrote it at the age of 70 full of hot, forbidden desires, and an ample thesaurus mixed in with a lifetime of accruing phrases from other languages which are sprinkled liberally throughout the book. When the word “hot” here is used, what is meant is more like “temperature” and not “this is sexy”. Rather, most of the descriptions are disturbing in one way or another. It is not that they lack for being well-written. Indeed, the fact that the description are well-written are part of what adds to the disturbance because one must inquire, sooner or later, as to why one would write so floridly about coitus unless they had an agenda to try to also inspire some forbidden corridor of lust in the reader.
Indeed, if someone is looking for a lusty read, this book has it in spades. Somebody, somewhere, is gonna be jumping someone else’s bones between suicides, misfortune, taboo, and family upheaval. Incest is one of the biggest themes in the book.
It is a strange thing to say of such a book, but the parts I enjoyed most were the musings on time itself. You see, the book is written a little like a waking dream or a nightmare depending on how you want to view it, on a type of alternate Earth. Certainly this alternate Earth usually sounds Demonic on a good day. Fortunately, the main character’s father is nicknamed “Demon” and so one supposes it has the correct paternal lineage represented. Nearly the last section of the book enters this discourse on time and it is there that I think we best understand what Nabokov was trying to do with this work–he is trying to account for his own years and his aging and shows a deep understanding of what time implies and how to measure it and what, in fact, the measuring stick might be. When one is old, one cannot help but remember when one is young–and conversely when one is young one is most often enamored of becoming older. This thesis and antithesis is always at work in the process of living and it is upon this platform that we can see that Nabokov finally allows Van “Veen” who is related to the “De Vere” family to return to his first love at the age of 50 which just so happens to be “his sister”. “Return to your first love,” in the Biblical sense, is clearly not what is happening here, but at the same time it is evident that the passion that is fueled in this relationship creates by the end of this novel some unified kind of beast that destroys both individuals and quite often all those that are around them.
The book does eventually balance all this “forbidden desire” out as the two are eventually too old to worry anymore about the “passionate” aspects of their relationship and find what we hope, as readers, are simple joys. Of course, the entirety of the work is somewhat like a manuscript about the family that has a House of Leaves writing style present. Footnotes, memories. Time smears. Edits. The story is told from the perspective of Ada and Van, and we are never sure how much to trust what they have to say. They are clearly, after all, blinded by passions that they should not be indulging.
At some points of the book, one has to re-read to make sure they understood what the hell is happening. This is not a book that has a solid sentence structure such as “She jumped off a cliff.”. Rather, there are a myriad of phrases and expressions that hint at the eventual outcome and then those phrases conclude something that, if you were reading along and did not happen to translate the French, you might miss. Nabokov has something to prove with this work, and a large portion of what he has to prove is that he hopes to be in the halls of academia being analyzed as a great literature author. Part of what passes for this kind of literature is a certain amount of obtuseness. In other words, if you read Joyce, one had better be ready for all manner of language study along with words that are being used in curious ways. The same is true of Nabokov. While some may find such “Deep dives” rewarding, an average reader with average demands on their time will not find themselves able to fully immerse themselves in the meaning of the work. It is written this way purposefully, one concludes, since the treatise on time is itself meant to be a kind of meditation on passion and perhaps a confessional.
The book would have done as well without dwelling upon the incest theme and perhaps the work might have been more powerful for it since the eventual outcome would have been gained by uniting things that are not as “similar” as blood-related family. Part of the novel is about how this forbidden desire is what informs the love, although one wonders whether it is simply not all lust running its course.
When the backlog of the work is examined, it becomes clear that sex was a “big deal” to Nabokov, and most especially forbidden sex. While that is an easy road to make a career off of, (prostitutes do it all the time) it does feel as though the “easy button” is being hit. Humanity, generally, has desires, and not a few of those are forbidden. It does not, however, make those desires all the more desirable. It usually turns out that those desires have terrible consequence and we see a few of them in this book. The ending is often debated as to whether the two ultimately commit suicide, but I think this is wishful thinking. The worst punishment for the two of them in a way is unity, and that is where the book ends. It also loops in on itself describing itself as the memoir of Van that we are made privy to at the very beginning. Is it a happy ending? I suppose in the sense that the sensation of desire is present, one could describe it as happy. However, one cannot help feel a bit “dirty” and like there are many “unfinished karmic actions” these two have stirred up. At one point, the older Ada even mentions that if she were to go to hell, she would expect to find Van there as a kind of comfort. I suspect that hell might not function the way Ada has idealized. I suspect that the soul grows quite heavy that indulges its own forbidden desire–such as Van’s. Really, I suspect Nabokov knows this, and so hopes that a type of book that could be fictional is the best place to hide a confessional so that perhaps he can travel a little lighter. Of course, he still wants to be famous and no one can argue he has a gift with words. Nobody can say he does not have talent for crafting a story. What they can say, however, is, “Did you really need to write so much about incest?”
