Like many people in class, I found myself particularly struck by Nabokov's short, almost snippy answers throughout the interviews. This is not only because they are completely justified based on the occasional rudeness and stupidity of the questions, but also because they make me believe his long answers more. I often distrust famous writers in interviews; they're writers, after all, and my inner cynic can't resist the urge to assume they're fictionalizing themselves in the interest of "looking good." Nabokov doesn't seem to care about this, casting off questions one moment and answering them at great length the next. Of course this is a fictionalization of him as well, but it's a fictionalization that, from what I can tell, is coming from a much more genuine, trustworthy place.
I found this to be especially true on page 79, when Nabokov answers the question on lepidoptera. Though he's the same brutally honest person we've come to know so far ("Not the ability to repair a radio set; quite stubby fingers can do that."), it is explicitly clear that he cares about this subject a great deal, bringing into the answer his interest in butterflies, and even nodding to Lolita in his criticism of Webster's definition of "nymphet." It's quite different from most of his answers, entirely absent of criticism for the interviewer and a fair bit lengthier than the others, but it's still believable in the context of the Nabokov that Nabokov has invented for this interview. It does not give the sense that he's dropping his invented persona, but it does pull back the curtain a bit, revealing that while this persona is not entirely real, it is based in reality.
(And once again, I apologize for the lateness of this post.)
