Tuesday 22 November 2011

Symbiosis: Vladmir Nabokov

To read previous posts in this series, click here.


I latched onto Nabokov my second year of college. I was skipping classes, then, shacking up in a wicker chair next to the poetry section of a local used bookstore, spending my hard-earned tuition money on as many raddy literary classics as I could my dirty hands on. One day my hands found Lolita. I groped the cover, opened to the first page and ran my eyes up and down the first paragraph. My face turned hot. My pulse rang heavy. O the words, they flowed like milk! O the syllables, they dripped, like honey! I licked my lips and took a big, deep breath before leaning in for more.

Writing is such a full-fledged artform, to do it right one has to be a multi-instrumentalist. There's language, character, structure. There's rhythm, scheme and rhyme. Nabokov is that someone-special who can play all of the instruments in the band--and play them well. He's the one who taught me that fearlessness (along with respect for craft) produces the most memorable work; that writing can and should be an experiment.




To view a recently re-surfaced video interview/ footage of Nobakov (dating back to 1965) click here

To read further text from the interview click here.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Jamie,
    this is wponderful, as Nabokov has always been my fav. writer, his very long sentences made me dizzy but I wanted to keep reading. The first time I read him, it was his story "A Russian Beauty", I was totally smitten! I saved money to buy his "Ultima Thule" and later I collected a lot of his books, I hope all, in English and Dutch translations. Lolita is the one I didn't want to read because of the theme lol.

    I never saw any footage of him, so thank you very much! :)

    Ina Schroders-Zeeders

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  2. wponderful okay, that should be wonderful :)

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  3. ps 2: I should have said Thank you Cora! :)

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