**And the function of the editor? Has one ever had literary advice to offer?
By «editor» I suppose you mean proofreader. Among these I have known limpid creatures of limitless tact and tenderness who would discuss with me a semicolon as if it were a point of honor — which, indeed, a point of art often is. But I have also come across a few pompous avuncular brutes who would attempt to «make suggestions» which I countered with a thunderous «stet!»
Are you a lepidopterist, stalking your victims? If so, doesn't your laughter startle them?
On the contrary, it lulls them into the state of torpid security which an insect experiences when mimicking a dead leaf. Though by no means an avid reader of reviews dealing with my own stuff, I happen to remember the essay a young lady who attempted to find entomological symbols in my fiction. The essay might have been amusing had she known something about Lepidoptera. Alas, she revealed complete ignorance and the muddle of terms she employed proved to be only jarring and absurd.
How would you define your alienation from the so-called «White Russian» refugees?
Well, historically I am a «White Russian» myself, since all Russians who left Russia as my family did in the first years of the Bolshevist tyranny because of their opposition to it were and remained «White Russians» in the large sense. But these refugees were split into as many social fractions and political factions as the entire nation had been before the Bolshevist coup. I do not mix with «black-hundred» White Russians and do not mix with the so-called «bolshevizans», that is «pinks». On the other hand, I have friends among intellectual Constitutional Monarchists as well as among intellectual Social Revolutionaries. My father was an old-fashioned liberal, and I do not mind being labeled an old-fashioned liberal too.
How would you define your alienation from presentday Russia?
As a deep distrust of the phony thaw now advertised. As a constant awareness of unredeemable iniquities. As a complete indifference to all that moves a patriotic Sovetski man of today. As the keen satisfaction of having discerned as early as 1918 (nineteen eighteen) the meshchantsvo (petty bourgeois smugness, Philistine essence) of Leninism.
**How do you now regard the poets Blok and Mandelshtam and others who were writing in the days before you left Russia?
I read them in my boyhood, more than a half-century ago. Ever since that time I have remained passionately fond of Blok's lyrics. His long pieces are weak, and the famous The Twelve is dreadful, self-consciously couched in a phony «primitive» tone, with a pink cardboard Jesus Christ glued on at the end. As to Mandelshtam, I also knew him by heart, but he gave me a less fervent pleasure. Today, through the prism of a tragic fate, his poetry seems greater than it actually is. I note incidentally that professors of literature still assign these two poets to different schools. There is only one schooclass="underline" that of talent.
I know your work has been read and is attacked in the Soviet Union. How would you feel about a Soviet edition of your work?
Oh, they are welcome to my work. As a matter of fact, the Editions Victor are bringing out my Invitation to a Beheading in a reprint of the original Russian of 1935, and a New York publisher (Phaedra) is printing my Russian translation of Lolita. I am sure the Soviet Government will be happy to admit officially a novel that seems to contain a prophecy of Hitler's regime, and a novel that is thought to condemn bitterly the American system of motels.
Have you ever had contact with Soviet citizens? Of what sort?
1 have practically no contact with them though I did once agree, in the early thirties or late twenties, to meet — out of sheer curiosity — an agent from Bolshevist Russia who was trying hard to get emigre writers and artists to return to the fold. He had a double name, Tarasov something, and had written a novelette entitled Chocolate, and I thought I might have some sport with him. I asked him would I be permitted lo write freely and would I be able to leave Russia if I did not like it there. He said that I would be so busy liking it there that I would have no time to dream of going abroad again. I would, he said, be perfectly free to choose any of the many themes Soviet Russia bountifully allows a writer to use, such as farms, factories* forests in Pakistan — oh, lots of fascinating subjects. I said farms, et cetera, bored me, and my wretched seducer soon gave up. He had better luck with the composer Prokofiev.
Do you consider yourself an American?
Yes, I do. I am as American as April in Arizona. The flora, the fauna, the air of the Western states are my links with Asiatic and Arctic Russia. Of course, I owe too much to the Russian language and landscape to be emotionally involved in, say, American regional literature, or Indian dances, or pumpkin pie on a spiritual plane; but I do feel a suffusion of warm, lighthearted pride when I show my green USA passport at European frontiers. Crude criticism of American affairs offends and distresses me. In home politics I am strongly antisegregationist. In foreign policy, I am definitely on the government's side. And when in doubt, I always follow the simple method of choosing that line of conduct which may be the most displeasing to the Reds and the Russells.
Is there a community of which you consider yourself a part?
Not really. I can mentally collect quite a large number of individuals whom I am fond of but they would form a very disparate and discordant group if gathered in real life, on a real island. Otherwise, I would say that I am fairly comfortable in the company of American intellectuals who have read my books.
** What is your opinion of the academic world as a milieu for the creative writer? Could you speak specifically of the value or detriment of your teaching at Cornell?
A first-rate college library with a comfortable campus around it is a fine milieu for a writer. There is of course the problem of educating the young. I remember how once, between terms, not at Cornell, a student brought a transistor set with him into the reading room. He managed to state that 1) he was playing «classical» music; that 2) he was doing it «softly»; and that 3) «there were not many readers around in summer». I was there, a oneman multitude.
Would you describe your relationship with the contemporary literary community? With Edmund Wilson, Mary McCarthy, your magazine editors and book publishers?
The only time I ever collaborated with any writer was when 1 translated with Edmund Wilson Pushkin's Mozart and Salieri for the New Republic twenty-five years ago, a rather paradoxical recollection in view of his making such a fool of himself last year when he had the audacity of questioning my understanding of Eugene Onegin. Mary McCarthy, on the other hand, has been very kind to me recently in the same New Republic, although I do think she added quite a bit of her own angelica to the pale fire of Kinbote's plum pudding. I prefer not to mention here my relationship with Girodias. I have answered in Evergreenhis scurvy article in the Qlympia anthology. Otherwise, I am on excellent terms with all my publishers. My warm friendship with Catharine White and Bill Maxwell of The New Yorker is something the most arrogant author cannot evoke without gratitude and delight.
Could you say something of your work habits? Do you write to a preplanned chart? Do you jump from one section to another, or do you move from the beginning through to the end?
The pattern of the thing precedes the thing. I fill in the gaps of the crossword at any spot I happen to choose. These bits I write on index cards until the novel is done. My schedule is flexible but I am rather particular about my instruments: lined Bristol cards and well-sharpened, not too hard, pencils capped with erasers.