Invitation to a Beheading (Vintage International (Paperback))

Rating:
Summary: Bravo! Nabakov still the reigning champion of comedie noir!
Review: Definitely not for the reader that can only appreciate overt symbolism a la "Lolita". Nabakov offered to take me into his dark and unjust world and I was a very willing participant. Watch out, with his scintillating wordplay, he treats his audience with about as much sympathy as his characters! After cracking the spine of this one, I found it hard to get off my futon for anything but the occasional hummus break! If you like this, I recommend the other pieces of Nabakov's "Invitation" trilogy, "Invitation to a Swap Meet" and "Invitation to a Rib Cook-off"

Rating:
Summary: Rambling and Incoherent
Review: I've read a lot of Nabokov and finished this one while riding on the Moscow Metro. This is not even close to his best work. It may have been the intention of Nabokov to keep the reader guessing about what was and wasn't real, but in the end it didn't really matter. I don't believe what the copy on the back cover says either. Cinnatus doesn't will his executioners out of existance. His head has been removed and in the end it is his spirit moving to this other existance. Apparently when you write copy for book jackets you are not required to actually read the book you are writing about.

Rating:
Summary: Invitation to a Beheading
Review: It's almost impossible to give Nabokov anything LESS than five stars. He has become such a giant in the world of literature, that one ceases to be able to compare his work to other authors, and instead begins to hold them up against Nabokov's other works.

To validate the statements of so many below, "Invitation to a Beheading" is probably not good intro-Nabokov. Some will find the familiarity of his other works more palatable. As well, it may be unwise to tackle this text without a general knowledge of Eastern European politics.

The text is somewhat muddled in places, and I had a hard time deciding whose fault this was...the author's or the editor's. Some sentences were malingering, unclear, and broke up the natural flow of Nabokov's text, which usually reads easily. In the end, I chose sloppy editing and read on.

This text is HIGHLY introspective and symbolic, and I found myself actually applying pen-and-paper to the symbols I encountered, trying to sort out what Nabokov was saying. So saying, this book ended up being more academic reading than pleasure reading, but has nevertheless taken up quick residence on my favorite bookshelf.

Rating:
Summary: Of course Nabokov gets five stars...
Review: It's virtually impossible not to give Nabokov five stars...

Anyhow, Invitation to a Beheading is certainly a tricky book, but Nabokov's work always is. I don't see how it's harder than Lolita (in fact I think Lolita is harder to understand than this book), despite what people read as rampant symbolism.

Now, I'm not a Nabokov scholar, but I've read enough from him about writing to say that I doubt he spent huge amounts of time coming up with symbolic imagery for Invitation to a Beheading...that just wouldn't be his style. Instead, I'd bet that he wrote what he saw in his mind's eye and leaves it to the reader to apply meaning to what's shown...much as Cincinnatus is left to apply meaning to his existence without outside help.

What the theme of this book is isn't entirely clear, although of course the final scene in which Cincinnatus thinks his captors out of existence is a pretty obvious clue to it; I read it as a work about A) the arbitrary nature of assigned meaning and B) the individual's overarching authority over his own reality. It's also worthwhile to note that I read Cincinnatus as being insane and that most of what happens in the book as being delusional (including the end). I don't know if that was Nabokov's intent, but it seems to me that there's an underlying framework of a story that would make rational sense in what we consider the real world, masked by what Cincinnatus sees and experiences.

The insanity theory might be a stretch and I'd go so far as to say it's rather unimportant as it has little to no effect on the theme. The challenge of this book is to read past what's going on and move beyond trying to make rational sense out of a clearly irrational book and find the theme. The world of Nabokov's invention cannot be reconciled with what most of us consider the real world: it's a waste of time to try to reconcile the two, and to do so would be to miss the point.

What is the point, then? Well, partly to confuse us and make us question what we think of as reality and partly to tell us that reality is of our own invention. The real genius of Nabokov lies in his ability to achieve both these goals in one word, so to speak; by totally disorienting his audience, Nabokov in fact makes his point of the arbitrary nature of reality and perception.

Sounds heady, I bet, but don't let that turn you away from this book. Despite its oddity, it's very readable and with a bit of sensitivity it's a clear window into Nabokov's archetypal (the archetypes are of his own invention, of course) style and his complete genius.

Rating:
Summary: Very, very strange
Review: Most peculiar - I hurtled through this book without ever sorting out what it really was about: a strange experience, in that it didn't bore me despite it being obscure. Is it an allegory of Soviet society? Is it an allegory of alienation of a particular person from the rest of society (gays?, or more likely, it being Nabokov, men with passions for girls - there is an ethereal girl in the book). Is it Nabokov doing a Kafka (although he may have been using some consciousness-enhancing substance while writing)? Or are we not really meant to know?

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps not the best intro to Nabokov
Review: This is the first of Nabokov's books that I've read and was rather unimpressed by it. I understand that Nabokov has what might be described as a "cult" of followers, and perhaps some of his other novels are better for the first-time reader than "Invitation." I was put off by his strange plot twists and overt symbolism. I will not deny that Nabokov is a fine writer, and I've since read and enjoyed several of his short stories. But as an introduction to "Nab," this is perhaps not his best, and as far as dystopian novels go, I'd choose Orwell's "1984" over "Invitation" any day.

Rating:
Summary: You thought you had it bad.
Review: Where else but between the pages of Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading could one find a story so well written and so exceptionally powerful that you beg for more. The story follows a lonely isolated man who responds to the name of Cinncinatus. He is charged for a crime rarely described and sentenced to death for it. And what more is reason does not exist in this world, it's inhabbited by irrasional, and rather frustrating characters. The characters are odd, granted, but they are described with such passion, and such enthusiasm that they truly come alive. This is an art I love about Nabokov (as well as the other Russian authors Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, etc). However there are some weak points to this story, One is the repitition of descriptions, and Two is the vague details of some events. I got confused at some points in the book (however I am only 17 and this is the first non short story I read by nabokov). All in all the book is fascinating, and a defenite read. -sorry for the spelling errors-

Rating:
Summary: It's a dang good book by-golly.
Review: Whoever it was that wrote the encyclopedia entry at the top of this page either didn't read the book or didn't understand Nabakov. Invitation to a Beheading is one of the most gorgeous books I've ever read. To drop it under the label "anti-utopian" and try to resolve the ambiguities at the end in a poorly aimed summary doesn't even hint at the richness of the book. Thank goodness Nabakov dedicated his life to writing literature instead of lousey encyclopedia entries. Leaving the political and entering the artistic, the world Nabakov lived in after all, Invitation to a Beheading is one of the finest metaphores on the artistic condition I've ever read. Yes, Kafka is mild in comparision, and, as Nabakov always asserted, there's no connection anyway. --Dane Larsen

Rating:
Summary: Imaginative, but not among Nabokov's highest works
Review: Written serially for a Russian expatriate magazine in Berlin, Vladimir Nabokov's novel INVITATION TO A BEHEADING feels like a mere diversion, an imaginative exercise, but not a book that should be placed among Nabokov's finest works.

The story of a prisoner, Cincinnatus C., and his incarceration in a surreal, dreamlike world, INVITATION TO A BEHEADING bears so much resemblance to Franz Kafka's THE TRIAL that one doubts Nabokov's assertion that he had never ever heard of Kafka before embarking on this novel. Ironically, INVITATION feels just as unsuccessful as THE TRIAL because it also reads clumsily, although this may have to do with each novel's translation.

Nabokov also does not show his true talents on this work. Absent is the cleverness and acidic humor of his English novels. I'm inclined to believe that the translation by his son, Dmitri Nabokov, is not to blame for this, as Vladimir Nabokov was careful to check the accuracy of translations of his works.

Although the novel is incredibly slow for much of the book, it does recover at the end, with the vividly portrayed maelstrom of Cincinnatus' awakening.

Not the best novel of Nabokov's to begin with, in spite of its ubiquity in mall bookstores. Try LOLITA instead. PALE FIRE is perhaps his best work, but requires knowledge of his style's history before one tackles it.