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.
Hi Jamie,
ReplyDeletethis 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
wponderful okay, that should be wonderful :)
ReplyDeleteps 2: I should have said Thank you Cora! :)
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