What are your current projects as a writer and your interests as a reader? And your pastimes and hobbies?
I’m writing a new novel. I read what comes to hand. My greatest enjoyment is lepidoptery. I’m back from Cortina d’Ampezzo, an enchanting valley, where I had a very successful hunt. Another, more recent, hobby is genealogy, appropriate to a robust old age. I learned with pleasure that I have a burning drop of Italian blood: one of my direct ancestors is none other than Can Grande della Scala, Lord of Verona, who welcomed Dante in exile: his coat of arms (two big dogs gracefully holding a staircase) adorns the Decameron.
What do you accept and what do you reject of today’s civilization?
Modern Western civilization is incomparably more refined, more humane, more artistic in its literature than its counterparts in Russia and in China today. All that I expect from the state—from the servant of the state—is individual freedom. I hate and despise any form of cruelty.
Which of your characters do you like most?
Lolita, Pnin, and the father of the protagonist in The Gift—in that order.
* “Nabokov tra i cigni de Montreux” (“Nabokov Among the Swans of Montreux”), Epoca, Oct. 7, 1973, 104–12.