Strong Opinions. New York, 1973 This assortment of twenty-two "interviews," eleven letters, nine articles, and five lepidopteral papers covers Nabokov's views on every facet of his multiple careers. As a result of his stringent rules for granting interviews, many of those printed in this volume borrow questions from one another, and contain responses that seem, by the last interview, familiar to the reader. Frequently visited topics are his writing process, his nationality, his politics, and Lolita's conception and reception. The "interviews" span a decade, 1962-72, and include the published and unpublished answers to questions by known journalists and "anonymous" questioners that had been prepared for print, radio, and television. Though all the interviews have the look of transcripts, only a few actually reprint complete published interviews; some of the others had been published only in part or with inaccuracies; others were never published or their fate is unknown. Nabokov contextualizes each interview with a short preface, revealing that most of them are not, strictly speaking, interviews at all. The first one (June 5, 1962), for example, is a series of questions and answers typed from notes Nabokov took after "three or four journalists" interviewed him upon his arrival in New York, and number 19, October 1971, is a selection of "topics and themes" discussed with Kurt Hoffmann. Nabokov "abridged or stylized" his responses in "interview" number 20, previously unpublished, for inclusion in this volume. All the articles and letters included, except one - "On Hodasevich," originally published in Sovremennye zapiski (Paris), LIX (July 1939) - are in their original English, and had been published previously, though some alterations were made to "Reply to My Critics."
Vladimir Nabokov with butterfly net, Menton, Switzerland, 1971 Vladimir Nabokov Jane Howard Penelope Gilliatt Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Nabokov |