"Lectures on Literature"

I've been meaning to come up with semi-expansive entry on Vladimir Nabokov's Lectures on Literature, a work edited from his notes on the novels he taught at Cornell University in his course Masterspieces of European Fiction (which Thomas Pynchon took). It's a valuable book for those who are interested in Nabokov as a novelist, and also for those interested in the novels he discusses.

I've been thinking about it recently because of some discussions about whether Ulysses is worth slogging through. While thinking about Nabokov's book, I remembered that a short adaptation of Nabokov's lecture on Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" was filmed, with Christopher Plummer as Nabokov. Even with the makeup he doesn't physically resemble VN that much, but his imitation of Nabokov's voice is spot on, from what I remember of the recordings of Nabokov reading from Lolita. I checked on YouTube, and lo and behold ( ;) ), someone had uploaded it!



The second part is here. A cursory check shows that the introductory remarks in the lecture are cobbled from comments in several lectures. Also, a remark elsewhere by Nabokov about teaching in general shows that he wasn't quite the yuckster he's made out to be here, and as someone who does try to be a yuckster in the classroom every once in a while, it is a role undertaken at one's own risk. (Students laughing at "Gogolian"? C'mon!)

Another YouTube clip, in Spanish, has VN being interviewed in French about Lolita, as well as a short scene of him walking and capturing butterflies, but it's mostly excerpts from Kubrick's film of Lolita dubbed in Spanish. There is, however, a BBC documentary about VN dating from the 1960s, which I would love to see again, and I hope some kind soul will upoad it one day.