On the Original of Lolita: A Screenplay
It all started with Hollywood asking me to work on the screenplay. I was hunting butterflies in Arizona at the time. The sum offered me was considerable, but the idea of tampering with my own work caused me only revulsion, so after weeks of meditation I turned the offer down.
Four months passed. In December 1959, we were at Lugano in one of those wet spells you get in Europe every so often. I had long since stopped thinking about the film, but one night I suddenly had an illumination, perhaps a little diabolical, but certainly very compelling. I had the feeling that I was watching a color film of Lolita, and very soon I perceived a way to do the script. That very week by sheer coincidence I received a cable from Hollywood asking me to reconsider my decision. I did.
I moved out to Hollywood in March 1960, and had no trouble projecting Lolita on my own mental screen, using a sound track of my own writing. The germ which produced the book was still alive in my mind.
On reading and identifying
When I teach I always advise my students never to identify with characters. I tell them to stand aloof, so that they may feel the intrinsic merit of the artist. If they must identify, let them do so not with characters but with art.
Was Pale Fire difficult to write?
It was maddening. The structure of the book was something new. First, I had to create a New England poet who was a follower of Robert Frost. Then I had to evoke some kind of inspiration to produce a good poem, and I hope I did.
* “After a Series of Improbabilities…Meet Mr. Nabokov, Author of Lolita,” Daily Colonist [Victoria, B.C.], The Islander (magazine section), July 15, 1962, 15. Unsigned. VN was present in New York for the premiere of the Kubrick Lolita film.