Sunday, September 27, 2009

Vladimir Nabokov Used Cue Cards

. . . reports the back-page essay in the New York Times Book Review, when he gave TV interviews. But fans of "Firing Line" already know this. Nabokov, a friend and neighbor of WFB's in Switzerland, refused invitations to appear on "Firing Line" on the grounds that everything he said in public had to be written first, and he was such a slow writer that an hour's worth of answers would take too much time from his fiction.

Peter Robinson tells this story in his collection of transcriptions of the best of "Firing Line." Bill got other writers: Borges, Norman Mailer, James Dickey. Borges, an odd bird, was less odd in person: his interview with Bill, humane and wise, strikes me as better than all but a handful of his stories. I have seen a clip of the Mailer interview, like one of those sports highlights where a quarterback gets sacked or a catcher spiked by a runner sliding home. I saw the James Dickey interview when it was broadcast; Dickey had the virtues and vices of a Southern literary man, fluency and emptiness.

I have seen two "best of" "Firing Line" tapes — one in 1999, shown at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York at the valedictory party for the show, the other in 2005 at our 50th-anniversary party in DC. Are they available on YouTube? The Allen Ginsberg bit is available by itself; the Jesse Jackson bit is equally funny.

Talking, as the Times essayist said, is not the same skill as writing. Dr. Johnson, whose tricentennial we celebrate this year, could do both. And like Bill, he talked for victory.

09/27 11:44 PMShare