All these various waves about how to pronounce Nabokov remind me of a lecture I went to last year held by the Royal Society of Literature in London. I should have written to the List at the time, but I thought the lecture was so god-awful that I hesitated in spitting too much unnecessary rancour out into cyberspace. The, in my opinion, truly overrated Zadie Smith had decided to talk about Pnin. Her preamble opened with: “There are many ways of pronouncing Nabokov…” Hmm. Funny. I thought there was only one. “And I have chosen…” She listed some ‘alternatives’ and proceeded rather haughtily to inform the audience that she had chosen ‘Naba-cough’. Ms Smith then read out from a prepared bunch of papers for 40 minutes in a mind-numbing monotone. By her own admission Ms Smith is not a Russian speaker nor does she have knowledge of any foreign language which showed up as a substantial impediment to her ‘approach’ to Nabokov (this may seem obvious, but I hadn’t realised quite how much it really means).

 

Suffice to say that her lecture seemed to contain such statements as to cast doubt on whether she really understood some of the ‘basics’ of Nabokov.

 

I know I was not alone as the first person to raise his hand in the Q&A session at the end started:

 

“You know, I couldn’t have disagreed with you more if you’d said that Nabokov was a Spanish pilot.”

 

After a couple of further questioners who disagreed with her Ms Smith did cave in and admit that she was “so not an expert on Nabokov”. One wonders then what she was doing there and why she was charging an entrance fee…

 

Sincerely

TA Colquhoun