{"id":606,"date":"2008-06-20T10:07:41","date_gmt":"2008-06-20T17:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/06\/nabokov-at-last-to-live\/"},"modified":"2008-06-20T10:12:52","modified_gmt":"2008-06-20T17:12:52","slug":"nabokov-at-last-to-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/06\/20\/nabokov-at-last-to-live\/","title":{"rendered":"Nabokov At Last To Live"},"content":{"rendered":"

from the New York Observer<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Wylie Agency Adds Nabokov Estate To Its Client List<\/h1>\n

BY<\/span>\u00a0LEON NEYFAKH<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

\nGetty Images<\/em><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Less than a month after Dmitri Nabokov announced, following years of indecision, that he would publish his late father Vladimir\u2019s unfinished final novel,\u00a0The Original of Laura<\/em>, he has hired a new literary agent to represent the Nabokov Estate.<\/p>\n

That agent is Andrew Wylie, who is as famous for his expert handling of posthumous work by\u00a0heavyweights\u00a0<\/a>like Saul Bellow, Lionel Trilling and Richard Yates as he is infamous for his tendency to lure high-profile clients away from less powerful agents.<\/p>\n

It is unclear whether\u00a0Nikki Smith<\/a>\u00a0of New Jersey-based agency Smith-Skolnik Literary Management, who has repped the Nabokov Estate since 1986, is still involved, or how far she got in the process of finding a publisher for\u00a0Laura<\/em>\u00a0before Mr. Wylie was brought on board.<\/p>\n

Reached by phone this afternoon, Ms. Smith said, “We are not answering any questions,” and hung up.<\/p>\n

The original manuscript of the book takes the form of 138 index cards\u2014Nabokov wrote all of his first drafts on index cards\u2014each of which contains about 150 words of prose. Before his death in 1977, Nabokov instructed his wife and son to destroy the cards because the book was unfinished, and his son publicly grappled with those instructions for about 15 years before finally deciding that his father wouldn\u2019t be so sore if he went ahead and published it.<\/p>\n

Nabokov scholar and biographer Brian Boyd told\u00a0The Observer\u00a0<\/em>in April that a collection of unpublished letters, a few plays, and a compilation of interview transcripts and book reviews that Nabokov wrote early in his career for\u00a0The New York Sun\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0The New Republic\u00a0<\/em>would eventually see the light of day. Presumably\u2014though we can’t say for sure\u2014Mr. Wylie will eventually handle these projects as well.<\/p>\n

A book of poems, titled\u00a0Verses and Versions<\/em>, will be published by Harcourt-Houghton Mifflin in the fall.<\/p>\n

<\/span>[ click to read full article at Observer.com<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from the New York Observer Wylie Agency Adds Nabokov Estate To Its Client List BY\u00a0LEON NEYFAKH Getty Images Less than a month after Dmitri Nabokov announced, following years of indecision, that he would publish his late father Vladimir\u2019s unfinished final novel,\u00a0The Original of Laura, he has hired a new literary agent to represent the Nabokov […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}