Nabokov strikes me as an author who
lives in the world of his novels. He is capable of functioning within the world
we all live in, but when I read about him he seems arrogant. I tend to not want
to like him as a person, but then I almost feel sorry for him by the negative
way he was portrayed in the biography. He talked about his flaws as the
misfortune of his Russian heritage writing for English speaking readers, but it
is only a flaw when he is asked if there is something he could improve upon; at
any other time, he is happy of his heritage and he even admitted to enjoying
his life in America. He was obviously, knowing his popularity, a great writer,
but he seemed to live in a world that he was the center of. He thought other
authors weren’t as good as him, even when most other people thought they were
some of the best. He teased and made fun of people who were different from him,
but saw nothing wrong with the way he was; at least that’s how he acted. His
relationship with Wilson seemed competitive, but Nabokov was constantly looking
for approval in Wilson, which never really happened. His inability to maintain
stable relationships is perhaps why he was so meticulous in writing and being a
self-taught lepidopterist. I think what he lacks with real people he puts into
his characters. He is incapable with connecting with people unless he writes
about them in some way or another. He romanticizes about anywhere he isn’t; he
seems to never be satisfied. He talks about the 30s as if he would have been
more popular and better liked if he had been successful then; if he had started
out in America or speaking English first he may have been capable to connect to
his readers more, so he believed. I think it was also this romantic notion he
had about other times and places within those times that kept him slightly
satisfied in his writing—he was able to bring any time or place he wanted to
life, just as he wanted it. However, most of what we believe we know is based
purely on the interpretation of a biographer, which brings in the element of
bias. If my bias toward Nabokov is the same as the biographer then I may not
notice the bias as much as I would toward a biographer who has a different
bias. But a lot of what was said within the biography seems to be supported in
the interview. Nabokov had to be so controlling he couldn’t just walk into an
interview and talk about himself. He had to be in control of what questions he
answered and those questions had to be answered exactly how he wanted, which
bring me right back to the belief that he lived in a different world. Of course
the biographer can do so much to capture the real Nabokov, but it seems like
that is an impossible feat. Perhaps Nabokov turned himself into one of his
characters or he turned the world into his own, which was why he had to write
out the answers ahead of him to his interviews. But, I find it hard to believe
that Nabokov was as cocky and arrogant as he seems when he writes beautiful and
flowerily literature; if seems as if he finds the most joy in writing this
careful, controlled way.
