httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldpj_5JNFoA

Every now & then I watch this interview purely for entertainment value.  Nabokov.  My dad gave me one of his books when I was twelve or thirteen, I think, and shortly thereafter I had a dawning-of-comprehension moment, like, this guy [my dad] might actually be pretty smart/have good taste. Which, while not quite a Nabokovian epiphanic moment, actually is a revelation to an adolescent.

I’ve long had the impression that a lot of folks in the HTMLGiant/indie lit crowd don’t care for Nabokov* or at least orient more toward Bukowski/Burroughs/Kafka & what I think of as the “Grits” (i.e. writers whose lifestyles are associated with gritty shit and/or whose writing prioritizes visceral response over sublimity), but I pretty much consider it axiomatic that VN was a genius and maybe the most skilled manipulator of the English language who ever lived.  Also, nobody has ever been more successful at translating synesthesia into art.  (Btw, do you know what “Martian colors” are?  I call that as a title for a book.)
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