Okay, so this didn’t bring the chills that Virginia Woolf did, but it amused the hell out of me. It’s Vladimir Nabokov being exactly as one would have imagined him being. (And do please note that I love him dearly, and Lolita is one of my favorite books of all time.) Oh–and don’t let the French intro drive you off. Nabokov speaks in English in this video.
PS: Raise your hand if you laughed out loud at the “moment of truth” bit.
dude sure has a *lot* of index cards…
He’s actually not at all what I expected him to be like, and now I am trying to figure out how he was different in my head. Love Vera’s hair, by the way.
One of my all time favorites is “Speak, Memory.” Parts of it are embedded in my own memory.
thanks for sharing that. i muttered those first lines of “Lolita” along with him. They are etched in my memory-as are the first lines of “Rebecca” and so many other favorite books.
I marvel at his use of the English language, knowing that it is a second language to him. he uses the language so well-every word he speaks is poetry.
You know – I think that’s pretty much the way I always imagined him. It doesn’t surprise me at all that he doesn’t like music forced upon him!
Now that I know he kept a notebook devoted to listing things he detested, I love him even more.