Our critics discuss Nabokov's The Original of Laura.

Our critics discuss Nabokov's The Original of Laura.

Our critics discuss Nabokov's The Original of Laura.

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Dec. 21 2009 9:35 AM

The Audio Book Club on Vladimir Nabokov

Our critics discuss The Original of Laura.

To listen to the Slate Audio Book Club discussion of Vladimir Nabokov's The Original of Laura, click the arrow on the player below.

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This month, the Audio Book Club discusses Vladimir Nabokov's unfinished last work, The Original of Laura. The word unfinished is key here: Nabokov left behind not a completed draft but a collection of 138 note cards, some in order, some not. And the clubbers equate the experience of reading Laura with listening to studio riffs.

Slate's Audio Book Club now comes to you on the third Monday of every month. Our selection for January is Mary Karr's Lit. Look for our discussion on iTunes or on the Slatehome page on Monday, Jan. 18. Also, please become a fan of the Audio Book Club on Facebook.

You can also listen to any of our previous club meetings through our iTunes feed or by clicking on the links below. To download the MP3 file, right-click (Windows) or hold down the Control key while you click (Mac), and then use the "save" or "download" command to save the audio file to your hard drive.

Questions? Comments? Write to us at podcasts@slate.com. (E-mailers may be quoted by name unless they request otherwise.)

Meghan O’Rourke is Slate’s culture critic and an advisory editor. She was previously an editor at the New Yorker. The Long Goodbye, a memoir about her mother’s death, is now out in paperback.

Troy Patterson is Slate’s writer at large and a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine.

Katie Roiphe, professor at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, is the author of Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages and In Praise of Messy Lives.