
Vladimir Nabokov, Literary Refugee - orcul
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/opinion/vladimir-nabokov-literary-refugee.html
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leggomylibro
This was a fascinating read, I hadn't heard about his thing with Pasternak or
how they thought that the Soviets 'leaked' his novel; nowadays it seems sort
of odd to see exporting culture as something furtive. Did regimes used to try
to _prevent_ their nation's literature from spreading, or am I
misunderstanding something?

"We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able
to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live
people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in
a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of
ages, the history of gradual elaboration of poetical description and
construction, from treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we
awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish
you to gasp not only at what you read, but at the miracle of it's being
readable."

\- _Pale Fire_

~~~
pvg
_Did regimes used to try to prevent their nation 's literature_

The regime did not allow literature it disapproved of and Dr. Zhivago was not
a work they approved of. It was not published until someone contrived to
smuggle it out.

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leggomylibro
Ah, that makes a lot more sense - thanks.

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leephillips
“Nabokov set about perfecting a brand of English that had not existed before
and has not been seen since.” A wonderful essay by a writer who understands
what the Russian Revolution actually overthrew, unlike most Americans, who
only know the Soviet version. Contains a reproduction of Nabokov’s U.S.
immigrant ID card, with the word “without” entered in the space for
nationality.

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tomcam
His was to me the most beautiful English prose of the last four centuries, by
a generous margin. There was never any trace of foreignness in it. I literally
cannot imagine learning another language that fully.

~~~
thaumasiotes
It would happen automatically if you were young enough.

Interestingly, while Nabokov learned to write perfect English, he never was
able to speak it.

~~~
tomcam
> while Nabokov learned to write perfect English, he never was able to speak
> it

Lots of interviews on YouTube suggest otherwise...
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldpj_5JNFoA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldpj_5JNFoA)

~~~
thaumasiotes
[http://www.openculture.com/2012/12/vladimir_nabokov_about_li...](http://www.openculture.com/2012/12/vladimir_nabokov_about_life_literature_and_love.html)

> To avoid speaking like a child in public, Nabokov took great pains to
> prepare his every word. "Throughout my academic ascent in America from lean
> lecturer to Full Professor, I have never delivered to my audience one scrap
> of information not prepared in typescript beforehand and not held under my
> eyes on the bright-lit lectern."

> When it came to giving interviews, Nabokov was horrified by the notion of
> sitting back and having a casual chat with a reporter. "It has been tried at
> least twice in the old days," he writes, "and once a recording machine was
> present, and when the tape was rerun and I had finished laughing, I knew
> that never in my life would I repeat that sort of performance. Nowadays I
> take every precaution to ensure a dignified beat of the mandarin's fan. The
> interviewer's questions have to be sent to me in writing, answered by me in
> writing, and reproduced verbatim. Such are the three absolute conditions."

> So the excerpt above from a 1969 interview with the British journalist James
> Mossman should be understood as a carefully prepared performance.

Note how in the interview you posted, he frequently gets stuck on his prepared
lines, resulting in sequences like or-or-or-or-or-or or the-the-the-the-the.
(Yes, disfluencies are common in all speakers. But those disfluencies are not
typical of English speakers, and reflect a different problem.)

~~~
tomcam
Neat! I hear it now! Thank you. I picked up the hesitancies but wasn’t smart
enough to pick up the cause.

------
GrryDucape
Sometimes one wonders why the Times wanders so far afield, picking up where
the New Yorker and others once thrived. Other times, like this one, the cause
is clear, pure and joyous, a stab in the literary darkness of our times.

~~~
matt4077
The New Yorker is still quite thriving, and is publishing stories that would
also work for the Times (cf Ronan Farrow’s #metoo scoops). The Atlantic has
massively improved and now close to their level (cf Graeme Woods), albeit with
less of a focus on literature.

It feels like these publishers are somewhat converging, doing a rather good
job connecting (paying) excellent writers with the high end of readership,
with not too much deference to the material being a perfect fit for their
respective wheelhouses.

