http://harpers.org/archive/2008/12/hbc-90004073
Holiday Treats: Distant machine-gun rattle
By Wyatt Mason
In 1997, I sent Guy Davenport a cassette of some cool recordings. Most of them he’d already heard. Pound, Eliot, Yeats and others, reading their poetry. One he’d not heard, though. Walt Whitman, descanting.
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If you’re in the mood for more charm, the weirdest wonderfulest thing I’ve come upon is this choreographed feast of oddity, featuring Vladimir Nabokov and Lionel Trilling (and interlocutor Pierre Berton), discussing Lolita. The whole thing plays like Feydeau, Nabokov reading his answers off the cards he shuffles not so discreetly in his lap, the trio rising apropos of nothing but a pre-arranged plan to do so and shifting from table to sofa, where Nabokov wolfs a cup of tea, and awkward banter continues (and leads to a sublime, and not at all awkward, closing minute, when VN goes rogue and stops reading).
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-wcB4RPasE&eurl=http://harpers.org/archive/2008/12/hbc-90004073&feature=player_embedded