The November issue of Playboy de-robed cartoon character Marge Simpson, the first time the magazine has featured an animated model. In the next issue (December, set to hit newsstands in early November), the magazine will return to an old standard: Nabokov.
Don't worry, there will still be plenty of girls and not much clothing. But "Laura" is the one in this issue recieving all the media buzz; excerpts from Vladimir Nabokov's unfinished and previously unpublished novel, The Original of Laura, will appear in Playboy. According to various reviews, The Original of Laura centers around a corpulent scholar who is obsessively infatuated with his slender, promiscuous wife, who in turn resembles a young woman he was previously was in love with. As in much of Nabokov's writing, the themes of mortality, obsession, self-definition and self-erasure take prominence. This novel was still unfinished when Nabokov died on July 2, 1977. As Nabokov had given instructions that any unfinished work should be destroyed upon his death, his son Dmitri and wife Vera long deliberated as to the incomplete manuscript's fate. This spring, Dmitri announced that the text would be published, and soon Playboy revealed that they would have first serial rights. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
Though perhaps initially surprising, the pairing makes sense. Besides the infamously sexual novel Lolita, many of Nabokov's novels--Pale Fire, Pnin, Ada, or Ardor--deal with themes of sexuality, whether focusing on desire, repression, confusion, or passion. In fact, Nabokov granted Playboy an extensive interview in 1964, and in 1969, Playboy excerpted Nabokov's novel Ada, or Ardor. Playboy even named the writer no. 22 on their list of the most important people in sex from the past 55 years.
So good news, guys! At least for the next month, you have a respectable excuse...even if you're really just checking out the cover girl, Joanna Krupa...
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