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 The "interviews" span a decade, 1962-72, and include the published and unpublished answers to questions by known journalists and "anonymous" questioners that had been prepared for print, radio, and television.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 Nabokov "abridged or stylized" his responses in "interview" number 20, previously unpublished, for inclusion in this volume.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."

The items listed below pertain to Nabokov's life and career and are the contents of the exhibition at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, on view from April 23 through August 21, 1999. This checklist, primarily of items from the Library's Nabokov Archive, is included here to provide a sense of the rich holdings in this special collection.

Vladimir Nabokov with butterfly net, Menton, Switzerland, 1971
Photographer unknown
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
Strong Opinions
New York: McGraw-Hill, [1973]
Berg Collection

Jane Howard
"Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita, Languages, Butterflies: Master of Versatility"
Interview with Vladimir Nabokov in: Life magazine, January 25, 1965
Berg Collection

Penelope Gilliatt
Interview with Vladimir Nabokov, for American Vogue, 1966
Typescript with Nabokov's holograph corrections, with copy of the article torn from Vogue, December 1966
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
Corrections to Penelope Gilliatt's article for American Vogue, December 1966
Holograph notes, dated September 16, 1966
Berg Collection

Vladimir Nabokov
"Favorite Hates"
Holograph notes, ca. 1973
Berg Collection

- Discusions

- Print version