Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov

Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution. Sick minds identified the notion of a Terra planet with that of another world and this "Other World" got confused not only with the "Next World" but with the Real World in us and beyond us. Our enchanters, our demons, are noble iridescent creatures with translucent talons and mightily beating wings; but in the eighteen-sixties the New Believers urged one to imagine a sphere where our splendid friends had been utterly degraded, had become nothing but vicious monsters, disgusting devils, with the black scrota of carnivora and the fangs of serpents, revilers and tormentors of female souls; while on the other side of the cosmic lane a rainbow mist of angelic spirits, inhabitants of sweet Terra, restored all the stalest but still potent myths of old creeds, with rearrangement for melodeon of all the cacophonies of all the divinities and divines ever spawned in the marshes of this our sufficient world.

When he is a young boy, Van Veen falls hopelessly in love with his cousin, Ada. Except she's not actually his cousin, but the daughter of his own father, who had a tempestuous affair with his wife's sister, which makes Ada, of course, his sister. This is a fact discovered at some point by both parties in a long life of stormy coming together and breaking up, but if it ever matters, it doesn't matter for long. (One thing you could never say about old Vladimir is that he shies away from taboo, especially sexual taboos--the love affair between Ada and Van seems, perhaps in a small respect, a response to those who felt a little too squeamish about Lolita.) Ada, or Ardor tells the story of how Van and Ada are driven apart by jealousies, affairs, duels, and the romantic attentions of Ada's sister Lucette upon Van--a more palatable relationship, maybe, being just his cousin--but we also quickly understand that the novel is being written by Van at an old age, and the interpolations that appear "written in Ada's hand" signify a happy ending for the sexy siblings.

I've heard people describe Ada, or Ardor as a "love it or hate it" novel. That's too strong, maybe, but I certainly hated it more than I loved it. In Ada Nabokov indulges more heavily in his beloved wordplay than in any other novel of his I've read, and it often felt to me like one long punny joke, but one you have to know English, Russian, and French to understand. So I have to admit a lot of what was supposed to be funny was lost on me, and the stuff that was supposed to be funny that I did understand, I didn't think was very funny.

What I did like was the setup. Ada takes place in an alternate universe where Russian and French advances on North America were never fully repelled, and so much of the western continent is a Russian province called "Estoty" and the east a French province called "Canady," while "America" extends throughout what we call the Americas. In this world, electricity has been outlawed after a vague disaster, and what technology remains is powered instead, somehow, by water. But the most interesting part is that some people on this world have come to believe in an alternate Earth they called "Terra," making their Earth "Antiterra," and these beliefs sweep through the world like a powerful cult tradition, seen mostly as a delusion or fringe belief, but which enforces a sense that the world the characters live in is a kind of pale shadow or reflection of some deeper, truer existence. It's interesting to think about how we might lie at the bottom of the subconscious of the characters we read.

I liked many other things. I liked "The Texture of Time," a treatise of Van's about time which I understand some people find difficult or ancillary, but which for me were a welcome break from the barrage of silly punning and banter. I liked the character of Lucette, whose love for Van--who only loves Ada--drives her to the point of suicide. But overall, I found this one kind of a tedious experience.