Backlisted - The Gift - Vladimir Nabokov

Episode Date: May 15, 2017

Writer and critic Catherine Taylor joins John and Andy to discuss Vladimir Nabokov's parting love letter to Russia and it's literature, The Gift. Also; singing with nightingales and reading Richard Mabey's book about the same bird, David Storey's Booker Prize winning 'Saville', and Bob Dylan's song and dance routine.Timings: (may differ due to adverts)9'22 - The Book of Nightingales by Richard Mabey 14'56 - Saville by David Storey 25'04 - The Gift - Vladimir Nabokov* To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops.* For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm*If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Talking of live events, Andy... Well, no, I've got two live events to discuss. Here's the first one. The first one is I want to bring to your attention

the prestigious Poetry Declamation Composition at Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Kent, where this week, which was won by my son. How amazing! And he read out loud. All the devils are here. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not letting you.

No, no, you can, John, you can force me to deprecate, but not my son's achievement. That's wrong, right? So he learnt by heart and declaimed successfully. Can I guess? Yeah, go on. Was it a Brian Bilston poem? It was.

Oh, the refugees! So he learnt refugees forwards and backwards, which if you go back, everybody, and listen to the William Maxwell podcast, we read it out on that. And he just, not to put too fine a point on it, electrified the staff in particular. And I can't say too much about events

that have happened at the school but it was a tremendous political act for him to learn that poem and deliver it at the school and win the competition so it was so brilliant if Brian is listening to this, thanks Brian it was amazing chip off the old block

he's much better than me I listen back to me doing it on here I ham it up way too much Alex let the poem speak for itself a lot of people loved that reading I think maybe also because it is such a brilliant thing to read through

so that was the first live the first prestigious live the second so the second prestigious live well no it was nothing like that. Really? I went to see Bob Dylan last weekend at the London Palladium. Bob at the London Palladium.

I think it's the fifth time that I've seen Bob Dylan. And as I said on Twitter before, I went, paying 75 to 100 quid to see Bob Dylan is like putting 75 to 100 quid into a fruit machine. Because you do not know what payout you're going to get. But I am very happy to say it was by far and away the most entertaining time I've ever seen Dylan. He was terrific. The band were terrific. And basically

what he does at the moment, he's just recorded five albums worth of songs that were originally made famous, the vast majority of them anyway, by Frank Sinatra. So he's in a kind of crooning mode. So what he does is, he's got three performance modes.

He comes on and he sits behind this piano and if he plays one of his old tunes, it goes, basically it goes, and then, he goes, put me on. And you go, is this Highway 6100? When he gets to the chorus,

you go, is this Highway 6100? Or else then he does something original from the last few albums and they're kind of like more, the peeing blood. And then,

and then, and then you can hear the words a bit more clearly. He's still got some connection with those. But then he gets up from behind the piano. Right,

he gets up from behind the piano. He's wearing some lovely little gaucho outfit. Yeah. Oh, I like design. Don't know why it's not a star

in the sky. Stun me with it. You know what? It's absolutely terrific. Partly because it's Dylan, he's got charisma, you know him, watch anyone else on stage,

this tiny little man with stick arms and legs staggering around the stage. But also because you could see, when you look at the audience at one of those gigs every so often you just think to yourself if somebody

who'd never heard of Bob Dylan walked in off the street now to watch this they'd think what is this? Why are all these people sitting here watching this? This is so peculiar You know what? It was so you know, John and I have talked quite a lot off air about the This is so peculiar. Pensioner growling at the... You know what? It was so...

John and I have talked quite a lot off-air about Dylan winning the Nobel Prize and whether or not he deserves to win the Nobel Prize. He's finally accepted it, hasn't he? He's accepted it, but also, as someone who remorselessly does what they want to do. Yeah. While simultaneously saying,

I'm a song and dance man, I'm doing these kind of... I'm an entertainer. I'm going to sing High Hopes by Frank Sinatra. The most peculiar story. I love his radio show for that reason as well. But that's it. Hasn't he moved to being... He's essentially a curator of the

great American song. Yeah, that's a very good way. That's what his last kind of albums have been about. To which that's a very good one. That's what his last kind of albums have been about. To which he has added a fair number, let's be honest. Have you ever seen him? I've never seen him live. And I went through a big... You know, you go through these sort of jags. It's like, you know, you go through a period

of listening to all the Van Morrison albums you never properly listened to. I had that with Dylan, which is a much... We're not going to do the Mark Ellen line again. No, no, no. There's a much longer, more... But listening to Christian period Dylan, every now and then you find,

and I've discovered not that long ago, really got to grips with Street Legal. Terrific. Oh, it's a wonderful story. Terrific, terrific. I love that story about Dylan. Everyone's got a favourite Bob Dylan story. My favourite Bob Dylan story is the story about him at the last waltz

at the band's famous concert in the 1970s where all manner of famous people were playing. Joni Mitchell did a set, Neil Young did a set, and Dylan was the headliner, effectively. He hasn't played live a great deal prior to this. He comes out, and he is preceded on the stageliner, effectively. He hasn't played live, you know, a great deal prior to this. He comes out, and he is preceded on the stage by Neil Diamond. Now, Robbie Robertson just made an LP with Neil Diamond, so Robertson and Neil Diamond are quite thick.

Neil Diamond throws everything at this performance. If you watch the last horse, he's really giving it some. He's really sweating. He's really crackling rosy with a beautiful noise. To be fair, they're all really sweaty. Yeah, for some reason. And he comes off and he allegedly says to Dylan, you're going to have to go somewhere to beat that, Bob.

And Bob says, yeah, what have I got to do? Fall asleep? Let's hope that's true, shall we? Let's hope that's true. Anyway, I think we should crack on, shouldn't we? Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast which does what it says on the tin. If that's... Oh, dear.

If that is what's written on the tin, it says, give new life to old books. This tin is sponsored by Unbound. My name's John Mitchinson. I publish books at Unbound, the website which brings authors and readers together to create something special. And I'm Andy Miller and I write books about books, music and miniature golf. You join us in a stuffy Berlin parlour in the 1920s where today we'll be discussing Vladimir Nabokov's The Gift. And with us today to talk all things of a levidusteristic bent, not that, is writer

and critic Catherine Taylor. Hello Catherine. Hello. And Catherine is a judge, as discussed in the 2017 British Book Awards, was formerly Deputy Director of English Pen, is currently writing her first book, The Stirrings, and we should also say, as the person who has suggested Nabokov and the gift, that you are a great champion of literature in translation, aren't you? Thank you for that appellation. It's true, though. I wonder if you could say what is it that inspires you particularly about literature and translation and literature into English? Well, actually, it's probably my background. I grew up in a kind of mixed family from quite a lot of different backgrounds, Mongol, if you like. And we had open bookshelves in our house, nothing was prohibited. And my parents particularly liked

reading all kinds of literature, European literature. And my father was the one who liked the Russian novels. He actually, to put it kindly, absconded from our family when I was about nine. He left all his books behind and his Charles Aznavour records, so it wasn't entirely a win-win situation. But I was able to read Balzac, Maupassant, de Beauvoir, Anne of Bolles, Hermann Hesse, and, of course, Nabokov. I didn't get to be interested in him for a long time, mainly because of the covers of the books.

I brought my father's copy in of The Gift. Absolutely the most shocking. If you're looking for a literary classic, it's very unprepossessing. It's basically, to describe it, I did tweet a picture of it earlier. It's a banana skin. It's a banana skin, an orange peel, a revolver and all set atop a pile of mildewed books and I thought Nabokov was a thriller writer so I basically ignored him for a long time. But going back to the importance of literature in translation I think many people

don't realise that what they're reading is a book in translation. If you think about the origins of translated literature we're all listening or reading them from the word go once upon a time. The fairy tale that comes from the Arabian Knights and fairy tales translated and found by Perrault and the Grimm Brothers. So

in a sense it's kind of found literature that's handed down to us all. Thank you Catherine for championing literature in translation. Yes. Neither of what we've been reading this week is in translation. I don't know, mine might be, arguably. What have you been reading this week? I have been reading this week a book that was originally published in 1993

called The Book of Nightingales by Richard Mabey. And the reason I've been reading it is I went to a concert as well. maybe and the reason I've been reading it is I went to a concert as well I think what perhaps the most remarkable extraordinary concert I've ever been to on Friday night I went with the folk singer Sam Lee and a group of about 20 other people into a middle of a field in Kent Saxmont Hurst I think or something that's what it's called. Anyway, sat around a campfire. Sam sang some very wonderful folk songs, and we ate some very good vegetarian food that was cooked on the fire.

And then we all learned a French carol. And then we wandered off in single file into the woods with no light at all. Gradually, as we went into the woods, we became aware of the beginning, of Nightingale's beginning to sing. And after about half an hour, we found this glade where there were five of them singing simultaneously. And we sat just listening for about an hour.

And then Sam started up with his shrewdly squeezed box. And we ended up singing the French carol that we'd all learned around two about nightingales to the to the nightingales it was just incredible and one of those i mean it really did feel transcendental the experience it was just listening and being able to hear the riffs and the patterns and the different birds singing different kinds of songs but it was like being in the middle of a rain fight didn't feel like being in england and in a way that's sad because that one of the reasons of reading the maybe book is that the nightingale is absolutely in the heart of our kind of mythology the arrival of spring in the woods at night i was so i've been rereading it and of course there's a great tradition of the

famous broadcast in the 20s of beatrice harrison who was Elgar's favourite cellist, playing duets with us. So the idea of singing and playing to Nightingales, just, and it was kind of, it's mad. And I took my youngest boy, 15, who absolutely loved it as well. I mean, the book itself is, if you want a book about Nightingales, the culture of Nightingales and the natural history,

maybe it's pretty good, you know, a bit of memoir. Back in 1993, he was rocking a genre that frankly now some people might think is almost over published. I'm probably not one of them. There's a brilliant bit in it which gives you some of the idea of the particular kind of... I don't know have you heard Nightingales?

I've heard the Nightingales but it's probably not the Nightingales. Yeah, maybe not. This is H.E. Bates. It's a prefab spread. H.E. Bates on the... Maybe says this is the most evocative of all prose descriptions of the song.

It has some kind of electric, suspended quality that has a far deeper beauty than the most passionate of its sweetness. It is a performance made up very often more of silence than utterance, which is totally true, because they stop and then they start. The most remarkable noise. The very silences have a kind of passion in them, made up very often more of silence than utterance, which is totally true, because they stop and then they start,

and the most remarkable noise. The very silences have a kind of passion in them, a sense of breathlessness and restraint, of restraint about to be magically broken. It can be curiously seductive and maddening, the song beginning very often by a sudden low chucking, a kind of plucking of strings, a sort of tuning up, then flaring out in a moment into a crescendo of fire and honey,

and then abruptly cut off again in the very middle of the phrase. And then comes that long, suspended wait for the phrase to be taken up again, the breathless, hushed interval that is so beautiful. And often when it is taken up again, it is not that same phrase at all, but something utterly different, a high, sweet whistling prolonged for the sheer joy of it, or another trill, or the chuck-chuck-chucking, beginning all over again. It's just, yeah, anyway. I should also say that I think there are still places available for later.

They only sing for six weeks a year in the UK. And Sam, I think, is doing several more nights. But it was on BBC Radio 4. There was a BBC Radio 4 segment. And also, I think, even on BBC News as well, I think. Because David Sillitoe, the arts correspondent from the BBC, was there. Going back to Bob Dylan, as we must, have you ever read Christopher Ricks'

comparative reading of Not Dark Yet by Bob Dylan from his 1997 album Time Out of Mind and Ode to a Nightingale from Keats' 1877 album I have a whole lot of Keats

a whole lot of coughing going on it was in the back of my mind to bring it out, that essay is sort of a locus classicus of... God, it's so good, though, because... ..of people, when they want to say, what's gone wrong with modern acudio?

How can anybody think that Keith's...? But it's such a brilliant bit of work. It's Rick's, it is absolute best. And also, Dylan is one of those people, and we're going to say this, I'm sure we'll say this about Nabokov, but I'm going to say it about Dylan, that Nabokov is a writer, and Dylan, I think, is a kind of writer and performer at his best, who is doing

like all these brilliant things at once, and the famous phrase, there's the two or three things that you can see, and then there's seven or eight things you don't understand, because the level of what they're doing is so high, and so not engaged with mere mortals like ourselves. I have to say that the great thing about Rick's in that essay is you come out with a deeper feeling for both Dylan and Keats. And I love it. Do you remember that was that debate in the

late 80s, spearheaded by David Hare, which was better, Dylan or Keats? Now there'd just be a Twitter poll and we'd decide it once and for all. So Andy I've been listening to Nightingale's you've been listening to Dylan but what have you been reading? What have I been reading with my eyes?

So a few weeks ago the author David Storey died David Storey author of This Sporting Life and the play Home and several other very famous books and I was reading one of the obituaries of David's story, and this is very similar to what happened to me last year with Barry Hines, actually,

when Barry Hines died. I was reading one of the obituaries of David's story, and it said in passing, and of course, in 1976, David's story won the Booker Prize for his novel Savan. And I was thinking, that's interesting. I've never heard of the novel Savile. I've never heard of it. And so I asked people on Twitter, has anybody read this book that won the Booker Prize in 1976? Or, you know, if I said to you, who won the Booker Prize in 1976 for the novel Savile, would you be able to tell me?

Now, those of you gathered around this table today who are experts and specialists probably would be able to tell me. But actually, I had like one or maybe two people come back to me who said that they'd read it. I completely, completely passed them by. That's the case with many of the early Booker winners, isn't it? So I thought, OK, well, that won the Booker Prize.

In order to win the Booker Prize, it's probably going to be a good piece of work. I'll give it a read. So I read 550 pages of Savile by David Story. And you hadn't read him before. I had never read anything by David Story before. You'd seen the film. Exactly, Catherine, yeah, exactly.

And actually it was very similar to reading that novel by Barry Hines. So that novel is, for people who can't remember, it's called First Signs. That's right. And it was the novel that Hines wrote after a Kestrel for an aide. And it was the novel that Hines wrote after a Kestrel for an aide. And it was a huge flop. So I grew up in South Yorkshire and I have never read that. Kestrel for an aide. No, I have read that book, but I haven't read the first science.

And fundamentally Saville was like a much better version of first science. They fundamentally have the same plot, which is autobiographical lad grows up in poverty in mining village becomes first communist then teacher then moves to london to become writer i mean that's sort of the plot but but but the prose in savel is very very um good and i'm just going to read you one paragraph so you can get a feel for it. And he's talking about, he's looking at the village where he grew up. The village had a worn out look. From the centre, it looked like the suburb of a town. New houses sprawled

across the slope of the adjoining hill and reached up to the overgrown grounds of the manor. Over half a century of soot appeared to draw the buildings, the people, the roads, the entire village into the ground. The worn patches of ashes between the terraces gashed by children digging and worn into deep troughs by the passage of lorries. Very little of the brightness that he remembered as a child remained. So much had been absorbed, dragged down, denuded. Occasionally on an evening when he walked out of the place, he would gaze back at it from an adjoining hill and see, in the deepening haze,

the faint configuration of the village as it might have been, the smooth sweep of the hill with the manor, the church, the cluster of houses at the base. The light would deepen. The simple, elemental lines of the place would be confirmed. Then light sprang up and across the slopes and in the deep declivities would be outlined once more the amorphous shape of buildings and the careless assemblage of factory pits and sheds and the image almost in a breath

would be wiped away so it's a very kind of beautiful writing right very languorous as well and in a sense what was so interesting about it was there's something very timeless about that prose I think but also reading the novel as a whole it is exactly the sort of I can't imagine this novel being written now

it was like a real time capsule of that just like Barry Hines of that early 70s, very male, very left-wing. You would have called it kitchen sink 15 years earlier. Indeed, it has many of the same elements of this sporting life because clearly this sporting life is autobiographical as well. And also his novel Flight Into Camden,

which I think was published earlier, which actually has a female protagonist who does something similar to Savile. She leaves home, she leaves her northern home, and she moves in with a married man, much to the horror of her parents in London. And it's quite Laurentian, actually. I don't know whether you got that from this one.

Yes, Lawrence has gone. Why do you think the books haven't lasted in a way? I mean, I would say that The Sporting Life lasts because the movie is sort of a classic. And rather in the same way, I think that people don't probably read Alan Sillitoe or Barry Hines that much. I was reading something about this book. Sam Jordison at The Guardian wrote about it

because they did it in one of their Booker features. And he said, very interesting, which I didn't have no idea about this, that when it won the Booker Prize in 1976, there was some feeling around it that there was a need for the Booker to acknowledge the literary output of the left, even though it was something that was already old news by the mid-'70s. But that's also the male left, isn't it?

Yeah, it's very... So I would guess that, in a way, that's why it's a very particular, very singular kind of writing. Also, there is... I don't want to... You know, the thing is, I'm slightly wary of saying this because I don't want to diminish... I really enjoyed the book. It's a very good book. And I think you'd like Flight into Camden as well.

Well, I have Ben Myers, Dan Rhodes, a couple of other people really recommending Passmore as well as... Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we might end up doing David's story on Backlisted in the future. I can see that we might do that. He feels like somebody who's been lost.

But in this book as well there's some really let's call it what it is some really sexist stuff that the protagonist comes out with which you think first of all no one would write that now. And it's the same with Fighting to Come. But which you think, well, first of all, no-one would write that now. And it's the same with Fighting to Come. Right. But also you're thinking, is that story?

The writing is beautiful, but it's... Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a particular kind of, I have to say it, Northern sexism, and it runs throughout all those books. You can cut that from the recording. I'm allowed to say it because I'm from the North. Let's move on. But before I do,

this is obviously the part of the show where we take you quietly on one side and talk to you gently about a project that's dear to our heart. This week, the unbound ad slot is filled by Paul Bassett-Davies with his brilliant, darkly comic

novel, Dead Writers in Rehab. We thought particularly appropriate for this podcast as Dead Writers is mostly what we deal in. I hope you enjoy it. Hello, my name is Paul Bassett-Davies and my new book is called Dead Writers in Rehab. The book is about what it says on the cover, which is Dead Writers in Rehab.

One of the reasons I chose that title is because when you write a book, people often ask you what it's about. They say, what's it about? And then you either have to have a very nice little kind of elevator pitch prepared or you sort of jibber and stutter and waffle. And they glaze it, their eyes glaze over

and you've lost it. So I thought I could say to people, it's called Dead Writers in Rehab. And if they ask me what it's about, I say, do you know the film Snakes on a Plane? And they go, yes. And I say, do you know what that's about? And they go, yes. Ah. And I say, okay, do you get it?

And they go, yes. So is your book about snakes? Ah, I say, OK, do you get it? And they go, yes, so is your book about snakes? And then if they say that, I figure that I'm probably not speaking to my demographic, as they say, and I kind of leave it at that. When literary reprobate Foster James wakes up in a strange country house, he assumes he's been consigned to rehab yet again by his dwindling band of friends and growing collection of ex-wives.

But when he gets punched in the face by Ernest Hemingway, he soon realises there's something a bit different about this place. Is Foster dead? Has his less-than-saintly existence finally caught up with him? After a hostile group therapy session with Hunter S. Thompson, Colette, William Burroughs and Coleridge, it seems pretty likely. But he still feels alive, especially after he gets laid by Dorothy Parker. When he discovers that the two enigmatic doctors who run the institution are being torn apart by a thwarted love affair, he and the other writers must work together to save something that, for once, is bigger than their own gigantic egos.

I knew several people who attended AA and NA meetings simply in order to meet producers, agents and publishers. This practice was particularly widespread in Los Angeles and the more fashionable parts of London. These people had to exaggerate their modest or non-existent indulgences and claim to be in the grip of powerful and debilitating addictions. Often they got carried away, especially the actors, and constructed a series of lurid fictional melodramas into which their depravity had supposedly plunged them. These inventions became increasingly susceptible to being exposed as they grew wilder and more improbable. The fakers

encountered other problems too. Sometimes they'd be in a restaurant enjoying the single glass of wine to which they were accustomed when they'd be accosted by a fellow member of AA, and have to pretend they'd just fallen off the wagon. This lie then required them to appear at the next meeting to deliver a tearful confession, and pledge their renewed determination to fight the good fight all over again, one day at a time. All this could get exhausting for them, and the stress of maintaining such elaborate deceptions frequently drove them to drink or drugs and they became genuine victims of the addictions which in the beginning they'd merely been feigning. I think people can't afford not to read this book because we all want to know what happens when we die. I have come up with my hypothesis which is at least as plausible as any other so why not check

it out? Dead Writers in Rehab is published by Unbound and available in all good bookshops or direct from the Unbound website. We'll be back in just a sec. So back to the discussion in hand, The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov. Andy, should we sort of give Catherine a kind of a weigh-in here? The book was published in...

The book was written in 1936, is that right? Yes. It was written between 1935 and 1937. Right. And we should say, before I ask Catherine the traditional ballistic question about her choice of book, we should say that The Gift is Nabokov's final novel in Russian and I want to say

totally up the top before we start talking about it in earnest that this is probably for me the closest thing to a bona fide masterpiece that we've discussed on Batlisted but it's also the most challenging book that we have discussed on Batlisted and although it has many

many pleasures I would not want to mislead our listener into thinking that it's a beach read. You know, he is a master storyteller, but the way he tells the story may make you work quite hard. I mean, I think I would say

generally, absolutely, that it's a challenge. But I also think Nabokov, Nabokov is a challenge as well, not only is he a challenging and just profound writer, he's also, the influence that he's had I think on contemporary fiction, I think everywhere you look from

Updike to Amos to Bellow, you know Nabokov is the, to use another of our favourite phrases, he's the writer's writer par excellence. Well, I was really excited when Catherine said that she wanted to choose this book. So thank you, Catherine. It was, well, we'll come on to this.

I thought, what a lovely excuse to reread The Gift, but we'll discuss that. I had never read it. And I have to say, it is 400 pages. It's good. It's an improving read, you have to say. It makes you feel pride. I'm burning away here. Relief and pride at the end of it. So Catherine, where did you first

encounter this book, or Nabokov, or both? I encountered it as a pretentious teenager growing up in Sheffield in the 1980s, with my Astrakhan hat with a peacock feather in it and my, seriously, habit of smoking Sobrani

black Russian cigarettes out of my bedroom window. This book was on our bookshelves at home and it was one of the books that my father left behind when he disappeared in a much more prosaic way than the father in the book who disappears on his expedition to Central Asia. And at first I ignored it because it looked like a crime thriller. And then I... So wrong.

Then I saw the film of Lolita. I must have been about 15 on television, the Kubrick film. And I thought, ooh, that's the... The book of this was written by the guy who wrote that book that's on our shelf. And then I started to read it. I didn't understand a word of it.

But I was completely entranced by it because it I brought my Russian doll it's a book within a book within a book and it's also a book that you can really read at any stage of your life it's really like a stage set and I think when you're young you are the starring role in the play of your own life and then as you creep towards middle age you realise that you're actually just a bit part and you're probably not even on the cast list. But throughout this book, you are. Maybe, John, could you come on carrying a spear?

Absolutely. Happy to do that. But it's actually imbued with this sense of possibility and we read about this émigré in Berlin which was actually the biggest centre for Russian émigrés in the 1920s who'd fled the Bolshevik revolution and this circle of émigrés and about Theodore

who is trying to find his way as an artist as a writer, initially a very bad poetry and how he develops Well that's one of the things that happens in the book, right? That his poetry improves It is, but it's also a very bad poetry and how he develops. Well, that's one of the things that happens in the book, right? That's right. That his poetry improves. It is.

That's one of the things. But it's also a book about nostalgia and it's also a pseudo-biography because that is actually what Nabokov, or Nabokov, I'm going to say Nabokov,

excelled at through most of his writing and in many ways. Yeah. Obviously, it's the last novel he wrote in Russian and that was very explicit intent of his.

But it prefigures some of the novels that people might perhaps know better, such as Lolita and Ada or Ada, which he wrote in American or English. Well, I just want to say something, a couple of things here. Nabokov thought it was one of his masterpieces. That's the first thing. But didn't he think everything he wrote was the masterpiece? Yeah, he thought everything he wrote had merit. And he referred to it as a novel of, and remember with Nabokov,

no word is ever lightly chosen, a novel of love and literature. That's right. And this is a book about, like all the best Nabokov books, arguably, is a book about books, a book about the transition of life to art, to literature, to the page. I just want to say that Nabokov is one of my favourite writers and has been for quite a long time. And I read Pale Fire when I was 20, and I credit reading Pale Fire with the book that introduced me, that expanded my mind enough to start thinking about literature rather than books

the art of literature so I own Nabokov a great deal I also find Nabokov a very funny writer a lot of the time and I know that I have ripped him off a lot in what I do in terms of the authorial voice and so

coming to this Catherine I was so excited because I was thinking oh great I get to re-read The Gift and then, because I've read everything by Nabokov So you've read? So I thought, I very recently Oh, this is an easy one, yeah. A couple of years ago I read Speak Memory, which I'd never read before

and then last year I read Ada or Arda which I'd never read before and with Ada or Arda which is the one I've been building up to, I thought that's it it's taken me from the age of 20 to the age of 48, but I've done it. I've read everything by Navikov. And so when you said we were going to read the gift, I was like, oh, great, we're going to read it. I can reread the gift. Fantastic. I haven't read it for years.

And then when I started reading it, I was thinking, I've never read this. And then, no, no, no, it gets worse. So I was reading the gift with huge pleasure. I mean, I must say, you know, what a treat to suddenly stumble upon a book that you thought you'd read but hadn't. So I was learning all this new, this wonderfully dense Nabokov stuff. And then I was thinking, well, I should reread Invitation to a Beheading because that was written in the same period that he was writing The Gift.

He broke off from The Gift to write Invitation to a Beheading. I'll wait for it. I never read it. So now I'm looking at all the Nabokov books was writing the gift, he broke off from the gift to write Invitations to a Beheading. And wait for it. I never read it. So now I'm looking at all the Nabokov books on the shelf thinking, oh, I'll make sure it dismay, and thinking, well, that might be quite nice to go back. I think what I'm going to modify and say is, I think I'm right in saying I've read everything Nabokov wrote in English,

and a significant proportion of the things that he wrote in Russian Which I think were about seven novels that he wrote in Russian, am I right? Including the Lutsen Defence which I think ranks with The Gift as one of the Russian masterpieces Yeah, it's nine in Russian You see, I haven't read them all either

It's nine in Russian and eight novels in English plus of course Speak Memory and lots of short stories. So he writes in the introduction about how this is not an autobiographical novel, but of course it is, because he is living in Berlin in the 20s himself. His father has been assassinated

as an enemy of the state by Russian agents. I'm wondering whether we should read a blurb to help people fix this in their own minds, or whether we should read a blurb to help people fix this in their own minds or whether we should read an extract I think the blurb is quite what's your blurb like? it's not bad actually the blurb on this one here we go

so this is the blurb to the current Penguin edition of The Gift Theodore is an aspiring young writer living in the closed world of Russian émigré in 1920s Berlin who dreams of the great book he will someday write this is the story of Theodore's aspiring young writer living in the closed world of Russian emigre in 1920s Berlin, who dreams of the great book he will someday write. This is the story of Theodore's all-engulfing passion for writing,

his attempt to be a success, his yearning for his native land, and his relationship with the elusive Zina, a tale of remembrance, secrets, family, time, art, lost keys, and butterfly catchers that is infused with love. Nabokov's last novel written in Russian, The Gift, weaves together past and present, dreams and reality in a warm, joyful evocation of young artistic ambition. I take my hat off to whoever wrote that.

I think it's tremendous. They must have read the entire book. I think it's a very good book, but it doesn't quite give you the flavour. Because there's nothing ever straightforward with Nabokov. That's why I find the book so... Or is there?

But that's the brilliant thing about it. If you think you're going to get just a straightforward story of Russian emigres in Berlin in the 1920s, you ain't. But each of the chapters, I think it's important, each of the chapters... There are five chapters. There are five chapters, and each of them...

He says also in the introduction, doesn't he, that the heroine of the book isn't Zina. Well, he says this again. We should share this before we ask Catherine to read something. It's the last novel I ever wrote, says Nabokov, or shall ever write in Russian. Its heroine is not Zina, but Russian literature. The plot of chapter one centres in Fyodor's poems.

Chapter two is a surge towards Pushkin in Fyodor's literary progress and contains his attempt to describe his father's zoological explorations. Chapter three shifts to Gogol, but its real hub is the love poem dedicated to Zina Fyodor's book on Chernievski a spiral within a sonnet takes care of chapter 4 and takes care of the rest of us The last chapter combines all the preceding themes

and adumbrates the book Fyodor dreams of writing someday The Gift I wonder how far the imagination of the reader will follow the young lovers after they have been dismissed. It's so good. He's so mischievous, isn't he? He is mischievous but don't you feel, you know,

amongst many other things, his lepidoptery being something I'm sure we'll talk about, but the other thing was he loved chess. He loved setting chess problems and I can't help feeling that each of his novels is like a kind of, it is, it's like your Russian dolls, it is like a chess problem. I'm going to write a book about a young writer.

The form with which he does this, I mean, the first chapter, it's an imagined review of his first collection of poems, which is just a really, really remarkably perspective-shifting way of looking at the work. I find the thing, you know, the kaleidoscopic quality of Nabokov's writing is I find myself going back and re-reading and all the way through I'm revising, revising

my sense of what... Yes, indeed. You think you're on one path and then you... Are they also because you think there's an omniscient narrator in this? But actually, that Fyodor suddenly starts speaking in the first person. Then at some point in the book, he starts speaking in the voice of his father.

And what also you were saying about the publication, it's really fascinating on literary criticism. And it's so withering. And it's so funny. I mean, there's a passage about a critic who skim reads, which I've never done, can I just say? Skim reads a book. You can't skim read this book.

But he skim reads all the books he has for review. He basically changes the plot and the outcome according to how he sees the book, and he just writes these reviews. There's a brilliant image where Navikov is referring to critics who were talking about Gogol, is it, or Pushkin, who said that their criticism lit a fuse which would blow themselves up 20 years later. They're incorrect. I mean the portrait of that kind of the

infighting and the sort of you know the world of people swapping criticisms. And also self-publishing actually because he does self-publish initially and then there are only 45 copies of this book and he wonders he wonders who's bought them and he would actually give anything even for a bad review at this point so that somebody could acknowledge the book's place in the world it's that toss away there were no reviews in fact there were no reviews of this because he's he's thought it the really it's such a brilliant way of doing it imagine your best possible criticism you know the best most informed critic that you could have of your own book It's such a brilliant way of doing it. Imagine your best possible critic, the best, most informed critic that you could have of your own book.

He is the clever... He is, hands down, the cleverest writer. It's first of all in his genius, right? The genius of creating the book. But also is in the delight in that genius, which could be irritating, and perhaps does irritate some people, and could be a barrier to enjoyment, but it's so clever and so playful and so inspiring. I find him inspiring to read.

And he's also very inclusive. He actually invites the reader to join him in this game. It's not something that's shutting the reader out. In fact, that actually is really in the passage that I'm going to give you. Yeah, well, let's hear it. Collapsed on the rug by his couch were yesterday's paper and an Emma Gray edition of Dead Souls. None of this did he see for the moment, but it was all there.

A small society of objects schooled to become invisible, and in this finding their purpose, which they could only fulfil through the constancy of their miscellaneousness. His euphoria was all-pervading, a pulsating mist that suddenly began to speak with a human voice. Nothing in the world could be better than these moments. Love only what is fanciful and rare, what from the distance of a dream steals through,

what knaves condemn to death and fools can't bear, to fiction be as your country true. Now is our time. Stray dogs and cripples are alone awake. Mild is the summer night. A car speeds by. Forever that last car has taken the last banker out of sight. Near that streetlight, veined lime leaves masquerade in chrysophase with a translucent gleam. Beyond that gate lies Baghdad's crooked shade, and yon star sheds on Polkavo its beam. Oh, swear to me. From the hall came the jangling peal of the

telephone. By tacit consent, Theodore attended to it when the others were out. And what if I don't get up now? The ringing went on and on with brief pauses to catch its breath. It did not wish to die. It had to be killed. Unable to hold out, with a curse, Theodore gained the hall phantom fast. A Russian voice asked irrisibly who was speaking. Theodore recognised it instantly. It was an unknown person, by the whim of chance a fellow countryman, who already the day before had got the wrong number, and now again, because of the similarity of the numbers, had blundered into the wrong connection. For Christ's sake, go away, said Theodore, and hung up with disgusted haste. He visited the bathroom for a moment, drank a cup of cold coffee in the kitchen,

and dashed back into bed. What shall I call you? Half-Nemezine? There's a half-shimmer in your surname, too. In dark Berlin, it is so strange to me to roam, oh, my half-fantasy, with you. A bench stands under the translucent tree. Shivers and sobs reanimate you there, and all life's wonder in your gaze I see,

and see the pale fair radiance of your hair. In honour of your lips when they kiss mine, I might devise a metaphor sometime. Tibetan mountain snows, their glancing shine, and a hot spring near flowers touched with rhyme. Our poor nocturnal property, that wet asphaltic gloss, that fence and that streetlight, upon the ace of fancy that is set to win a world of beauty from the night. Those are not clouds, but star-high mountain spurs, not lamplit blinds, but camp light on a tent. Oh, swear to me that while the heartblood stirs, you'll be true to what we shall invent.

And I think it's that last line that actually is enticing the reader into the collaboration. It's collaboration. That's such a brilliant way of describing it, because he is the least, you know, the sort of reductive idea that a writer has a story to tell and wants to express it so that other people will understand. Nabokov finds, I mean, he's so not that writer. He just finds all these completely different ways of producing a story,

which is, like I say, it's that point you never, your perspective is always changing. You're always being challenged. And yet, it's all carried through. I mean, he's just the most, he is just one of the most remarkable, most remarkable prose writers ever, ever, ever. He really is.

I think he really is. He was a show-off, wasn't he? He was a control freak. He was a show-off. And like Dylan, iconoclastic. God, he gave good interview. I mean, the control freak, you know, people probably know you have to send questions in writing. You know, people probably know you had to send questions in writing and then he would...

I've got a thing here from an interview that he gave to... I think this is the New Yorker, to whom he contributed, of course. And William Maxwell was his editor from 1955. And one of the few writers that he had nice things to say. Here you go. So, would it be fair to say, says the journalist, would it be fair to say that you see life as a very funny but cruel joke? Your term life is used in a sense which I cannot apply to a manifold shimmer.

Whose life? What life? Life does not exist without a possessive epithet. Lenin's life differs from, say, James Joyce's, as much as a handful of gravel does from a blue diamond, although both men were exiles in Switzerland and both wrote a vast number of words. Or take the destinies of Oscar Wilde and Lewis Carroll, one flaunting a flamboyant perversion, him, and getting caught, and the other hiding his humble but much more evil little secret behind the emulsions of the developing room and ending up by being the greatest children's story writer of all time i'm not responsible for those real life farces my own life has been incomparably happier and

healthier than that of jengis khan who is said to have fathered the first nabok a petty tartar prince in the 12th century who married a Russian damsel in an era of intensely artistic Russian culture. As to the lives of my characters, not all are grotesque and not all are tragic. Fyodor in The Gift is blessed

with a faithful love and an early recognition of his genius. John Shade in Pale Fire leads an intense inner existence, far removed from what you call a joke. You must be confusing me with Dostoevsky. Yeah, I mean,

he had no self-esteem problems, did he? Only with high self-esteem. I love it. There's only one school, the school of talent. Also, some of the best. I just have to read this Ian Forster bit from The Paris. Oh, it's good, though. Go on.

Ian Forster speaks of his... The interviewer says, Ian Forster speaks of his major characters sometimes taking over and dictating the course of his novels. Has this ever been a problem for you, or are you in complete command? This response. I'm going to print this out and have it on my wall. My knowledge of Mr Forster's work is limited to one novel, which I dislike.

And anyway, it was not he who fathered that trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand. It is as old as the quills. And we don't know which novel it was that he disliked. Although, of course, one sympathises with his people if they try to wriggle out of that trip to India or wherever he takes them. My characters are galley slaves.

My characters are galley slaves. That's so good. That's up there with Hitchcock's Act as a Cattle. It's just my characters are galley slaves. And that's true. He's very polite about the Kubrick film, but he obviously was cross enough to get

published his script, which he felt was much better. Well, we've all had a go at declaiming Nabokov. Sadly, my son isn't here to declaim and win the prize. But we have a clip here of... I've never heard his voice before. Here we go. Let here of... I've never heard his voice before. Ah, here we go.

Let me now read my last poem of tonight. Brilliant! Which is a short little thing written by Humbert Humbert. One of our favourite characters.

And it comes from the novel Lolita, and it was written after Lolita's disappearance Wanted wanted Dolores Hayes hair brown lips scarlet age,300 days. Profession, none or starlet. Where are you hiding, Dolores Hayes? Why are you hiding, darling? I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze. I cannot get out, said the starling.

Where are you riding, Dolores Hayes? What make is the magic carpet? Is a cream cougar the present craze? And where are you parked, my carpet? Unbelievable. I would say, listen, if listeners enjoyed that, that is from an hour-long reading that is available online on YouTube in the 92nd Street Y in New York

from, I think, 64 or 65. I started skipping through it to try and find things that we could use here on the podcast today. I ended up listening to the whole thing. It's just magical. Of course, like many great writers, not all great writers, but many great writers,

Nabokov loves an audience, loves to be able to animate the stuff on the page as well. You can hear it there in the reading. The immense self-confidence. I was saying before the podcast, he reminds me of Dr Johnson in that absolute surety of his opinions about things. And as you were saying, Catherine, the kind of originality, he was an iconoclast.

He was quite prepared to say that he thought that the best English novelist of the first half of the 20th century was H.G. Wells. You can sort of hear the gasps in the room. He doesn't like Dostoevsky. He doesn't like Faulkner. He quite likes Ulysses. Yeah. He quite likes Joyce. He doesn't like Finnegan's Way. No, he doesn't like Dostoevsky. He doesn't like Faulkner. He quite likes Ulysses. He quite likes Joyce. He doesn't like Finnegan's Way. No, he doesn't like Finnegan's Way. But that's because he wanted to be

the lexicographer, if you like. So I just want to talk quickly about the contradiction of his own description of himself, perhaps. He's written that at 15 I visualised myself as a world famous author of 70 with a massive wavy white hair uh but he also wrote that if he hadn't had to

flee russia after the revolution he would actually have been a lepidopterist but he wouldn't have written novels i don't know how much of this is another nabokovian yeah sort of ruse yeah or ruse but but he was very good lepidopterist, wasn't he? He was, he was. And he writes about, in this book as well, naturalism, the natural world, with absolutely... He humanises insects and moths and butterflies with a...

It's stunning, isn't it? In chapter two, when he, as you say, becomes his father, Fyodor becomes his father for a while, the stuff about butterflies, the amount of... I mean, if you like stuff in your novels, I have to say I'm all for stuff, you learn a hell of a lot about butterflies reading The Gift. It's an inventory, isn't it?

Also, I think we need to mention the nostalgia element and the childhood element. And he writes about children in a lot of his books. Of course, there's Lolita's famous example. It's no surprise that he translated Alice in Wonderland from Russian to English because his books are larger than life, his

characters are larger than life, and his children are particularly precocious. If you think about the incestuous cousins in Ador or Arda, Theodore mentions his own childhood in the big house in Russia with his little sister Tanya. Those sort of intimacies and children alone without adult supervision. I think he also talks a lot about losing parents.

Zina has lost her father. Theodore has lost his father. And about that bond, the filial bond, the platonic love and also the romantic love and I think they all come together in this book. And also the way in which we sort of have to give the ending away

the gift is a very good argument about why you should finish books because if you don't read the last two or three pages you can't really understand what you've been reading but once you've read them it should all click into place and you might feel that you want to start again I mean I certainly did

you said the thing about it being taxing that the chapter four it's chapter four I think which is the book within a book which is a biography of another Russian a real writer Chenevsky i think real russian writer one of lenin's favorite writers and that does it does tax you a little bit because you're

you're there's an assumed knowledge of his work and of russian literature but you're also always with nabokov as you're reading and you're you're flexing your muscles you're learning that's why when i sort of mean about improving that's what i well you just come away with and from nab from Nabokov with knowing a lot more about the world. There's nobody who can pin things with a phrase. I quoted from his introductory lecture on Russian literature that he gave to his students in the beginning of the year of reading dangerously. And it seems appropriate to mention that here. He talks about readers, what a reader is.

And he says the gifted reader is a universal figure, not subject to spatial or temporal laws. It is he, the good, the excellent reader, who has saved the artist again and again from being destroyed by emperors, dictators, priests, Puritans, Philistines, political moralists, policemen, post-martyrs and prigs. Let me define this admirable reader. He does not belong to any specific nation or class. No director of conscience and no book club can manage his soul. His approach to a work of fiction is not governed by those juvenile emotions

that make the mediocre reader identify himself with this or that character and skip descriptions. The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book. I mean, that's hilarious and pompous and true. Yeah, hilarious, pompous and true. That's pretty good summing up um Catherine do you

want to Catherine please I think we should sum up by hearing the end of the book as they walked down the street he felt a quick tremor along his spine and again that emotional constraint but now in a different languorous form it was a 20 minute slow walk to the house and the air the darkness and the honeyed scent of blooming lindens caused a sucking ache at the base of the chest. This scent evernessed in the stretch from linden to linden, being replaced there by a black freshness, and then again beneath the next canopy, an oppressive and heady cloud would accumulate, and Zina would say, tensing her nostrils, ah, smell it, and again the darkness would be drained of savour, and again would be heavy with honey. Will it really happen tonight? Will it really happen now?

The weight and the threat of bliss. When I walk with you like this, ever so slowly, and hold you by the shoulder, everything slightly sways, my head hums, and I feel like dragging my feet, my left slipper falls off my heel, we crawl, dawdle, dwindle in a mist, now we are almost all melted, and one day we shall recall all this,

the lindens and the shadow on the wall and a poodle's unclipped claws tapping over the flagstones of the night and the star, the star, and here is the square and the dark church with the yellow light of its clock and here on the corner, the house. Goodbye, my book.

Like mortal eyes, imagined ones must close someday. A Nagin from his knees will rise, but his creator strolls away. And yet the ear cannot right now part with the music and allow the tale to fade. The chords of fate itself continue to vibrate, and no obstruction for the sage exists where I have put the end. The shadows of my world extend beyond the skyline of the page. Blue as tomorrow's morning haze. Nor does this terminate the phrase. I would just like to say, Catherine, that I am so grateful to you for having made me not re-read,

but read this book. I found it one of the most moving experiences that I've had while we've been doing that. I feel a little tearful reading that last passage. It's just, that's why I'm keen to say to people, look, you know, this will make you work, but what you get for work is the reward, the gift, in fact. It's a great, that's the gift, yeah, the gift of the book.

It's a great, great, great novel, I think. And I love this James Salter this wonderful he met Nabokov and didn't interview him because you're not allowed to interview him but met him in a bar where he said Nabokov was marvellously polite and they shared a mint julep together but this is what he said

I just love this like certain cathedrals this is Salter or even cities he seems to me he seems greater to me now at an unbridgeable distance than he did at the time. Then he seemed simply human and nothing like my father. And that is the note I think on which we should probably draw to a close. A huge thanks to our guest Catherine Taylor and our producer Matt Hall.

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