Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0001097, Mon, 15 Apr 1996 14:16:36 -0700

Subject
VNDIALOG:S1
Date
Body
EDITOR'S NOTE. NABOKV-L is launching its Harington/Slavitt VNDIALOG with
David R. Slavitt's account of his 1958 interview with the notorious author
of LOLITA. It will be immediately followed by his opening comments on his
initial exposure to VN's work. The following posting will be Donald
Harington's account.
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MEETING VN

I was at Newsweek as a trainee, or on trial, really, in
1958, and I had written one or two pieces for the magazine
that I don't at all remember. What I do recall was that an
editor there handed me a novel and told me to read it and
either write a review or a memo about why we should ignore
the book. I took it home, read it, and, in the light of
what I'd learned in university classes about the art of
fiction, explained in my memorandum why Exodus was not worth
space in our book review section.
I was . . . twenty-three. What did I know?
The editor gave me another chance a few months later.
In November, it must have been. He had figured out an
interesting feature story I might try. The assignment: "Go
on up to Ithaca, talk to the people in the town, and to the
people at Cornell, and see what they think of that Nabokov
fellow. Do they admire him? Do they think he's a dirty old
man who plays with himself in the shower? There could be a
piece there. Give it a shot."
Inelegant, I thought, but not altogether hopeless. I'd
be dealing, however roughly, with a writer I admired. From
Leon Uris, it was surely a step up. I also had the
impression that this was it, my make-or-break chance. If I
performed satisfactorily, I'd be hired. And if not, not.
I had never been to Ithaca before. I flew up from New
York on one of those old DC-3s, wandered around the
bookstores, talked to customers and clerks, and then, on
campus, to a few people I could grab on their way to the
library or some academic appointment. I found,
unsurprisingly, that this was not some small town in the
Bible belt but, rather, an ivy-league bastion off in the
lake country -- like Princeton, say, but farther away.
Nobody was shocked or distressed by VN's dirty book, or no
one I could find.
By mid- afternoon, I'd begun to worry. What would I
have to write? Ithacans unshocked by professor's racy novel
. . . wasn't a grabby angle. I got Nabokov's telephone
number from the university administration, called, explained
who I was and, more or less what I was doing in town, and
got invited to tea. I was, on the one hand, a bit nervous.
But I reassured myself that if he taught at Cornell, he
would be accustomed to making some allowances. I was a
Yalie and was therefore unlikely to be the dumbest kid he'd
seen all year. Besides, publicity is publicity, and it
sells books. He'd be smart enough to be helpful.
(In the course of seven years at the magazine, I later
learned that while this cooperative spirit is reasonable to
suppose, one can't always rely on reasonableness. Some
people, even some smart people and excellent writers, are
nuts.)
Nabokov wasn't nuts. He was most cordial, made me
feel welcome at once. The house they were living in was an
informal ranch house, somewhat messy as I remember. Nabokov
explained that the house was borrowed. (I now know that
this was the home of Lauriston Sharp whose cat the Nabokovs
were looking after.) Vera fetched tea and joined us. I
sat in a kind of day room, or sun room with a large picture
window, near the corner chair with an ottoman in front of it
that was clearly VN's preferred place.
I don't remember the details, of course. In later
years, I'd have had a tape recorder, but in '58, one used a
pencil and pad and one's memory. I do recall being tested,
in the kind of transaction Brian Boyd describes with VN and
Herb Gold. VN would make an allusion and then wait to see
if there was a reaction. I'd read Pnin, and at least some
of Lolita, and my reactions were evidently good enough to
let him suppose he had a willing and therefore perhaps
useful audience. He talked books -- Pasternak, of course,
because Dr. Zhivago was on the best seller list and its
author had been awarded the Nobel Prize only a couple of
weeks before. VN said that it was better in the French
translation, that he suspected Pasternak's wife had written
much of it, and that it was "poshlost!" He asked me, I
think, if I knew what that word meant, and I suggested,
"kitsch," which was acceptable.
He told me that Lolita had been a great trial for him,
that his dealings with Girodias had been distressing, but
that American publishers had been far worse. I think I my
memory is accurate about his comment, off the record, that
Simon and Schuster had expressed a willingness to publish
the book if he would only change Lolita to a young boy! (I
assumed, and still assume, that this was a joke, but what
makes it funnier and sadder is that it isn't altogether
impossible. His trusting me with a confidence seemed very
flattering -- but then, I was just starting out and had no
way of realizing that experienced interviewees often use
such tactics -- if, indeed, it was a tactic.) It was during
this conversation that he referred to Hemingway's Old Man
And the Fish.
Finally, knowing that my job was on the line, I told
him in slightly less inelegant terms, what my editor's
assignment had been. He thought for a moment, and then told
me that, the week before, when the American children come
around begging for candy, he had opened the door . . . "And
you must remember," he pointed out, "that we are borrowing
this place. Very few people know I live here. But at the
door, I saw a young girl, eleven or so, in a tennis dress
and a tennis racket and with a sign around her neck that
said 'LOLITA.' I was shocked!"
I thanked him. I recognized what at Newsweek they
called a kicker, or the way to get out of a story. Nabokov
had supplied it for me, and all I had to do was copy out the
words. I flew back to New York, did that, and got hired
on as an assistant editor.

David R. Slavitt-- Phone: (215) 382-3994; fax: (215) 382- 8837