NP

[ish mailian]

Here's the link for the complete Kurp piece.

AUGUST 31, 2017
By Patrick Kurp
LARB

VLADIMIR NABOKOV famously demanded that interviewers supply him in
advance with written questions to which he would reply in writing,
dismissing or bending inquiries with the deftness of a good trial
lawyer, indulging or patronizing interviewers as he pleased. Critics
deemed him an autocrat imperiously stage-managing his image, as though
literary interviews weren’t already understood as a species of
theater. Nonetheless, in his final interview, months before his death,
Nabokov explained his reasons for expecting written Q-and-As. When the
interviewer from The Listener flatteringly notes, “this admirable
method ensures there will be no dull patches,” Nabokov replies:

I’m not a dull speaker, I’m a bad speaker, I’m a wretched speaker. The
tape of my unprepared speech differs from my written prose as much as
the worm differs from the perfect insect — or, as I once put it, I
think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak
like a child.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/little-sob-spine-vladimir-nabokov-conversation#!

On Fri, Sep 1, 2017 at 11:57 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> "What I want to produce is really that little sob in the spine of the
> artist-reader." ---Nabokov
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