Essentially a fictional illustration of the sociologist Erving Goffman's [b:The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life|931984|The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life|Erving Goffman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1400075101s/931984.jpg|2268805], though predating it by 26 years. Following a failed suicide attempt, Smurov appears to suffer from dissassociation - believing himself to be dead, he thinks his life is merely the continuation of his imagination, and he partly adopts a dispassionate outsider's view of himself.

Ever since the shot - that shot which, in my opinion, had been fatal - I had observed myself with curiosity instead of sympathy, and my painful past - before the shot - was now foreign to me... In respect to myself I was now an onlooker.

While his "real" self rents a room, gets a job, and falls in love, his "observer" self evaluates the theatrical presentation of his "real" self to other people, and seeks to find out how they view his "real" self, and how these views differ from person to person, each one essentially creating a new Smurov.

The situation was becoming a curious one. I could already count three versions of Smurov, while the original remained unknown... Just as the scientist does not care whether the color of a wing is pretty or not, or whether its markings are delicate or lurid (but is interested only in its taxonomic characters), I regarded Smurov, without any aesthetic tremor; instead, I found a keen thrill in the classification of Smurovian masks that I had so casually undertaken.

The parallels with Goffman's book just smack an old sociology major over the head - Nabokov even explicitly uses Goffman's idea of "masks" here! And what is Smurov doing if not Goffman's description of dramaturgical analysis: "If we imagine ourselves as directors observing what goes on in the theatre of everyday life, we are doing what Goffman called dramaturgical analysis, the study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance."

I don't know if Goffman knew of The Eye when he wrote his book detailing his great contribution to sociological theory, though The Eye was not translated into English until 1965, nine years after Goffman's work was first published in Scotland, so perhaps not. But he would have known exactly what Nabokov was up to here. ( )

I can't really remember very much about this. It's really short and slightly confusing (deliberately) but didn't make as much of an impression on me as other Nabokov books I've read. ( )

quite fun, densely interesting and provoking ( )

23. The Eye by Vladimir Nabokov
translation: from Russian, by Dmitri Nabokov, with the author, 1965
published: 1930
format: 107-page Paperback
acquired: February
read: Apr 28-29
time reading: 2 hr 36 min, 1.5 min/page
rating: 4
locations: Berlin
about the author April 22 1899 – July 2 1977. Russia born, educated at Trinity College in Cambridge, 1922, later lived in Berlin (1922-1937), the US (1941-1961) and Montreux, Switzerland (1961-1977).

Nabokov‘s 4th novel is short one and this time it was good fun from the opening line. There is a playful sense to it, as the narrator, maybe with a touch of Dostoyevsky‘s instability, does an assortment of seeming ridiculous things, while he obsesses at spying on his closest friends. It has a clever structure. Nothing too profound, but a well crafted little book.

2020
https://www.librarything.com/topic/318836#7145752 ( )

This was quite an original and captivating work by Nabokov. The plot is not complex, but the characters are revealed through their actions and interactions with one another as the narrator takes a backseat. I especially liked the flow of the language and found it to be one of the lasting aspects of the work. There were many passages that were splendid and simply wonderful to read for their complexity and poetic nature.

A great work. One that should be read for anyone that likes Nabokov.

4 stars! ( )