poukledden

Via Reddit, I came across this gem of an interview with the cantankerous Gore Vidal:

Literary Lion.

Probably my favorite bit is how cheerfully he insults the New York Times, all while being interviewed by the New York Times.


p.s. it just struck me, after posting this, that I can understand the bite to his answers, because don't the questions strike you as a bit grade school in some ways? I kept expecting the interviewer to ask him what his favorite color was...

If you want a truly amazing experience, get yourself the audiobook version of Lolita, read by Jeremy Irons.

I'm still speechless. The full emotional impact of the book hits you like a sledgehammer when he reads it. He captures the full complexity of Humbert in all his misery and evil and final, painful awareness. There's that one point near the end of the book, after the murder, when Humbert remembers a day soon after Lolita had run from him. He was in Colorado still, and looking out over a small mountain town. The men all gone, off to work, a town of just women and children, and he's listening to the sound, trying to figure out what is missing. It's children that he hears, out playing and whatever, and he realizes that what he can't hear is her, Lolita -- can never hear, because he stole her childhood from her. I wish I had a physical copy of the book, because it's a beautiful passage, one of those stark moments when someone who has commited a vile crime truly realizes what they have done. And when Irons reads it, you feel it like a gut punch, and weep for Dolly and all she had ripped from her, and you weep for Humbert, too, because of what he could have been.

via Alternative Reel. What the subject line sez. Definitely depressing, definitely a reminder of the brilliance of the book, and shared in no small part because of the pictures of various editions of the book over the years.