Browsing on YouTube the other day, I happened on an interview with Vladimir Nabokov from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's programme Close-Up, recorded after the publication of Lolita in 1955. And because I love Nabokov, I settled down to watch.

Maybe every style creates a miniature cult of personality. But this is a new form of homage which the modern allows us - to waste our time with archive footage.

The interview begins with Nabokov seated behind a desk, flanked by the interviewer and a sweet looking man. The sweet looking man, it turns out, is the legendary intellectual Lionel Trilling.

.............

 

A. Bouazza.