Paris Review: Clarence Brown of Princeton has
pointed out striking similarities in your work. He refers to you as “extremely
repetitious” and that in wildly different ways you are in essence saying the
same thing. He speaks of fate being the “muse of Nabokov.” Are you consciously
aware of “repeating yourself,” or to put it another way, that you strive for a
conscious unity to your shelf of books?
Vladimir Nabokov: I do not think I have seen Clarence
Brown's essay, but he may have something there. Derivative writers seem
versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic
originality has only its own self to copy.
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