----- Original Message -----

From: jansymello

To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU

Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 6:44 PM

Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] QUERY: Mournful Monsters

Nabokov's interview. BBC Television,1962 with Peter Duval-Smith and Christopher Burstall ( printed in Strong Opinions)

Last paragraph: Q: It sometimes seems to me that in your novels - in Laughter in the Dark for instance - there is a strain of perversity amounting to cruelty. 

VN: I don't know. Maybe. Some of my characters are, no doubt, pretty beastly, but I really don't care, they are outside my inner self like the mournful monsters of a cathedral façade - demons placed there merely to show that they have been booted out. Actually, I'm a mild old gentleman who loathes cruelty.

 

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