Review: 'The Luzhin Defense' by Vladimir Nabokov

Reading a Nabokov novel is like trying to solve a puzzle. Reading any novel is like trying to solve a puzzle to a certain extent: one must try to untangle the different layers of meaning, some unintentional, some so intentional they examine themselves, some so seemingly meaningless they become profound. Who is this omniscient narrator? How much of this is autobiographical? What's the message here? In a Nabokov novel, you assume the narrator to be omniscient, because that's what you're used to, but then you realise that this narrator is fallible and misunderstands the story he/she is trying tell, has ignored a detail that will become significant later on.

I must admit at this point that 'The Luzhin Defense' (spelling is Americanised as such on my copy) is only the third Nabokov novel I have read, the other two being 'Lolita' and 'Pale Fire', and I base all the above generalisations on these books. Perhaps, this being an earlier work, I thought, there might not be this kind of cryptic playfulness, and though there certainly isn't the same kind of fallible active narrator, there is still the hint of a wry smile to the storytelling, a hidden logic that only becomes clear at the end.

The book is about chess. A chess prodigy, Luzhin, has a nervous breakdown brought on by the mental strain of playing a tournament against his rival, the Italian, Tureti. His wife attempts to nurse him back to health by removing every trace of the game from his life, but it's an impossible task. 

Chess is ripe for metaphor. Many a sport has been described as resembling a game of chess at one time or another. Chess is the paradigm of abstract game strategy and logical thinking. Life is like chess, in its goal-directedness, its strict rules, its patterns, its limitations, its frustrating logical deadends. And this is what Nabokov is suggesting; or rather this is what Luzhin comes to believe in the story. The feeling that life is like chess overwhelms him. He sees chess in everything, in the interplay of shadows on the parlour floor, in the diagonal between two opposing urns on pedestals, in a telegraph pole a knight's move away from a lime tree. He cannot tell metaphor from reality anymore. 

Our lives are quests for meaning, attempts to work out the answers to the eternal questions. What would happen if we began to see those quests as games, similar to chess? What happens when we know there's no way we can win?