Perhaps the most un-American thing about Vladimir Nabokov was his unwillingness to play at the jazz of talk show gab—even in this nearly prehistoric example. “Off the cuff” was simply not in his vast vocabulary. Whether the interview was to be published or broadcast, VN insisted on receiving the questions in advance and composing careful and crafty responses. (Even his college lectures were fully scripted—so much so that when he was ill and missed a class, his wife could substitute for him and deliver an equally Nabokovian experience.) Here, you can see him sneaking glances at the index cards in his lap as he responds to the interlocutor’s queries with his somewhat canned answers (similar ideas, opinions, and even metaphors echo through other interviews and his tiny output of literary nonfiction.) One comes away from this most impressed by Lionel Trilling’s game effort to inject some sense of spontaneity into the proceedings.
And, of course, by the set dressing. The objects within that space make up a catalog of tastelessness that VN would have viciously lampooned (and in some instances did): The creepy bust just over his shoulder. The cuckoo clock (a wan protoparody of VN’s Swiss future). The Dali-esque pillar in the background. The looming hurricane lamps that divide the frame in a most Hitchcockian manner. It’s possible to imagine that all of the salutary subsequent developments of Canadian culture—Glenn Gould, Marshall McLuhan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, SCTV—came about in reaction to the work of the CBC set dresser responsible for this show.
Things improve after the (oh so self-conscious) move to the couch, but I can’t think Nabokov considered this early experiment with television a success. His method really did not fit the medium and works better as an audio-only experience (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbtvWnvbXTE). He did loosen up (or at least improve his performance) over time, as a clip from a late 1960s documentary shows: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3fsSL4Bw9w. Hang in there through the French intro to get a relatively intimate and relaxed glimpse of the great writer. Though it seems typical of Nabokov’s experience with the medium (and promotional culture in general) that just after citing “inflicted” and “canned music” as things he detests, the editor inflicts some canned jazz on a scene of VN’s Montreaux hotel, a setting the author explicitly prized for its quietude.
The books one might recommend here would fill a large shelf, but for some reason—perhaps their inadvertent focus on the fleshy man rather than his Olympian work—these clips make me want to turn to Stacy Schiff’s remarkable Vera, a portrait of VN’s wife and their partnership.
– Tom Fredrickson is the proprietor of the unparalleled music blog, Lost Wax Method.
