Flavorwire » Vladimir Nabokov

Fascinating Interviews Cultural Icons Conducted with Themselves

Alison Nastasi — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:29 +0000

In an interview with himself — which you can read more about past the jump — The Doors frontman Jim Morrison noted that the self-interview is the “essence of creativity.” After compiling a series of fascinating conversations that some of the world’s biggest cultural icons had with themselves, we wholeheartedly agree. Does the idea of a self-interview seem too self-absorbed or controlling? Possibly — but we found that the format allowed for a lot of self-deprecating humor, artistic expression, and compelling self-reflection. In each case there seems to be a clear method to the madness. Past the break, watch and read as artists, writers, and musicians share their most personal thoughts on their career, search for answers to difficult questions, and charm us with their eccentricities. Did we miss your favorite self-interview? Feel free to leave your picks in the comments below.

Karl Lagerfeld

Fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld conducted a quirky and charming interview with himself for online luxury retailer Net-a-Porter. In the short video, the Chanel powerhouse covers a variety of questions with his “twin,” revealing that he’s never happy with himself. He also cracks the whip on the secrets of success and shares his disgust for the term “muse.” We totally believe him when he says that being himself is not that difficult, and enjoyed his inclusion of a cliché stranded-on-a-desert-island question. Don’t ask him how to be chic, though. The designer says there are peasants in rags that do it without trying, and if you have to ask there’s a problem. +1 K.L.

The 10 Most Iconic Accessories of Famous Authors

Emily Temple — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:04:26 +0000

Authors are a strange, particular bunch, with often weird habits and distinctive manners of dress. Marcel Proust, apparently, was so fond of his velveteen gloves that he wore them to bed (perhaps to preserve his smooth smooth hands), and countless authors have affected capes, walking sticks, and various other accoutrements worthy of acclaim. Some, however, have become icons in their own right, inextricably linked to their authors (and thus all the easier for turning into Halloween costumes). We love a good pipe, so we’ve collected some of the most iconic author accessories of all time — click through to see our picks, and let us know if we’ve missed your favorite writerly hat, hair clip, or affectation in the comments.

Vladimir Nabokov’s butterfly net

“Literature and butterflies,” Nabokov famously said, “are the two sweetest passions known to man.” It’s well known that Nabokov was an avid lepidopterist who would take his net out to the countryside to snag the insects to add to his collection. In fact, just last year, some of his professional ideas about butterfly evolution, long scoffed at as the ideas of an amateur by scientists, were vindicated. Now that’s what we call a man of many talents.

15 Famous Authors’ Beautiful Estates

Emily Temple — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:00:31 +0000

“Decidedly, I’m a better landscape gardener than a novelist,” Edith Wharton once declared. Indeed, Wharton, whose birthday we celebrate today, was as much a designer and tastemaker during her life as she was a writer. In fact, her first published book, The Decoration of Houses, was a design manual, and so many of her novels glow with beautiful descriptions of design, atmosphere, and costume that could only have come from a knowledgeable hand.

Wharton built her estate, The Mount, in 1902, and if you ask us, its rolling green gardens certainly do her claim justice. So, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of her birth, we’ve collected fifteen gorgeous authors’ homes and estates — though none, perhaps, are as gorgeous as hers. Click through to check out our list, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your own favorite writers’ homes in the comments.

Edith Wharton’s estate, The Mount, Lenox, Massachusetts

The 25 Greatest Epigraphs in Literature

Emily Temple — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:30:42 +0000

The epigraph is a funny literary convention: excerpting lines of someone else’s work — or quotes, adages, lines of verse, lyrics, snippets of conversation, etc — to put before your own. The effect varies: often the epigraph serves as a sort of thematic gatekeeper, or simply sets the mood for the prose to come, sometimes it gives the reader a glimpse into the author’s intentions or inspirations, or it may serve as a joke or warning. They may seem a trivial part of the work they come attached to, but we think, if done properly, they can be very illuminating. In case you couldn’t tell, we’ve been thinking about the convention quite a bit lately, partly due to the numerous hours we’ve spent perusing one of our new favorite Tumblrs, Epigraphic, which collects the fragments. Some are funny, some are poignant, some are strange, but all of them are wonderful in their own way. Click through to read 25 of our all-time favorite epigraphs in literature, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your own favorites in the comments!

When we are not sure, we are alive. — Graham Greene
(from Reality Hunger by David Shields)

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. — G.K. Chesterson
(from Coraline by Neil Gaiman)

What do you mean where does the music come from? Where does the music ever come from? The guy says to the girl Something is on my mind and the girl says Really? What is it? and somebody in the orchestra hits a note and they sing. That’s where the music comes from. — Morrie Ryskind on the set of a Marx Brothers movie
(from Adverbs by Daniel Handler)

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me? — Paradise Lost, X, 743-45
(from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley)

You are all a lost generation. — Gertrude Stein in conversation
(from The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway)

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. — Juan Ramón Jiménez
(from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury)

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. — Charles Lamb
(from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee)

In the desert there is no sign that says, Thou shalt not eat stones. — Sufi proverb
(from The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood)

Vengeance is mine; I will repay. — Deuteronomy 32:35
(from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy)

An oak is a tree. A rose is a flower. A deer is an animal. A sparrow is a bird. Russia is our fatherland. Death is inevitable. — P. Smirnovski, A Textbook of Russian Grammar
(from The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov)

Honesty’s the best policy. — Miguel de Cervantes
Liars prosper. — Anonymous
(from On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King)

The motions of Grace, the hardness of the heart; external circumstances. — Pascal, Pensée 507
(from Rabbit, Run by John Updike)

NOTICE
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance.
(from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain)

The reader should realize himself that it could not have happened otherwise, and that to give him any other name was quite out of the question. — Nikolai Gogol, “The Overcoat”
(from The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)

“What?” — Richard M. Nixon
(from book four of Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon)

… and so who are you, after all?

– I am part of the power which forever wills evil and forever works good. — Goethe’s Faust
(from The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov)

Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. – John 12:24
(from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!” — Thomas Parke D’Invilliers
(from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

No one knows how to love anybody’s trouble. — Frank Stanford
(from Look! Look! Feathers by Mike Young)

I enquire now as to the genesis of a philologist and assert the following:
1. A young man cannot possibly know what Greeks and Romans are.
2. He does not know whether he is suited for finding out about them. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen

Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes. — Plato, Republic, Book II
(from The Secret History by Donna Tartt)

There, where one burns books… one, in the end, burns men. — Heinrich Heine
(from People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks)

We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed. — Frank Bidart, “Borges and I”
(from The Pale King by David Foster Wallace)

Behind every great fortune there is a crime. — Balzac
(from The Godfather by Mario Puzo)

Never again will a single story be told as though it’s the only one. — John Berger
(from The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy)

Passage home? Never. — The Odyssey, Book 5, Homer (trans. Robert Fagles)
(from Lit by Mary Karr)

The 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults In History

Emily Temple — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 18:00:23 +0000

[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we're revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published June 19, 2011.] Sigh. Authors just don’t insult each other like they used to. Sure, Martin Amis raised some eyebrows when he claimed he would need brain damage to write children’s books, and recent Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan made waves when she disparaged the work that someone had plagiarized, but those kinds of accidental, lukewarm zingers are nothing when compared to the sick burns of yore. It stands to reason, of course, that writers would be able to come up with some of the best insults around, given their natural affinity for a certain turn of phrase and all. And it also makes sense that the people they would choose to unleash their verbal battle-axes upon would be each other, since watching someone doing the same thing you’re doing — only badly — is one of the most frustrating feelings we know. So we forgive our dear authors for their spite. Plus, their insults are just so fun to read. Click through for our countdown of the thirty harshest author-on-author burns in history, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your favorites in the comments!

30. Gustave Flaubert on George Sand

“A great cow full of ink.”

29. Robert Louis Stevenson on Walt Whitman

“…like a large shaggy dog just unchained scouring the beaches of the world and baying at the moon.”

28. Friedrich Nietzsche on Dante Alighieri

“A hyena that wrote poetry on tombs.”

27. Harold Bloom on J.K. Rowling (2000)

“How to read ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’? Why, very quickly, to begin with, and perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do.”

26. Vladimir Nabokov on Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Dostoevky’s lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity — all this is difficult to admire.”

Weird Writing Habits of Famous Authors

Kathleen Massara — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 18:00:37 +0000

[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we'll spend the next two weekends revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published July 13, 2011.] It’s an old topic but it always manages to be interesting — what did the authors we love do in order to write what they did? Beyond the jobs they held, what habits did they have that made writing possible? We take a look at 10 modern authors who had unusual approaches to writing; some due to the limits they would impose on themselves, others due to what they would wear or how they would attempt to channel greatness. Regardless of their methods, they have all produced work of lasting value. We might learn a thing or two from them if we’re willing to get out of our comfort zone and see the craft as just that — a skill to be exercised, not a bolt of ideas that comes if you wait long enough. So read on, dear readers, and tell us in the comments section who we missed.

Truman Capote

Capote would supposedly write supine, with a glass of sherry in one hand and a pencil in another. In a 1957 Paris Review interview with Pati Hill, Capote explains: “I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis. No, I don’t use a typewriter. Not in the beginning. I write my first version in longhand (pencil). Then I do a complete revision, also in longhand.”

The 20 Most Iconic Book Covers Ever

Emily Temple — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 16:00:22 +0000

[Editor's note: While your Flavorwire editors take a much-needed holiday break, we'll spend the next two weekends revisiting some of our most popular features of the year. This post was originally published September 3, 2011.] We recently read an article over at We Made This in which Nick Hornby writes that ”the days of the iconic jacket illustration, the image that forever becomes associated with a much-loved novel, are nearly gone. The stakes are too high now.” If this is true, it’s just another way that advertising is ruining our lives, since one of the things we love best about the book as art object and experience is the way well-designed covers complement and enhance your reading, and the way they figure in your mind when you remember a book. To remember the good old days, and give a little nudge to the new, we’ve compiled a list of the 20 most iconic book covers ever (in our minds), all examples of amazing book cover design. Click through to see the cover art we chose, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your favorites in the comments.

Catch 22, Joseph Heller, 1961. Cover design by Paul Bacon. As a designer, Bacon was known for pioneering the “Big Book Look,” characterized by the title and author’s name in large, strong print, accompanied by a small conceptual illustration.

Critically Acclaimed Authors Who Never Win Prizes

Emily Temple — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:30:18 +0000

This week marks the release of Anita Desai’s newest book, The Artist of Disappearance, a set of three beautiful novellas revolving around the shifting tides of Indian culture in past and present. We love Desai’s work, and we know critics love her too — but we noticed that, somehow, she is continually overlooked when it comes to major prizes. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride, as it were, she has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize without yet snapping up a win. Perplexed, we decided to take a look at other authors who have been robbed of prizes that we (and often, hordes of fans) think should be rightfully theirs. Click through to read our list of critically acclaimed authors who never win prizes — or never win that one particular prize — and let us know who else you think has been totally shafted in the comments.

Anita Desai

The wonderful Anita Desai is one of the few writers to have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times without ever actually winning it. From what we can see, frequent shortlisters usually end up with the prize at some point, but in our opinion, Desai has been robbed up until this point, and we’re anxiously for her much-deserved Booker waiting. Here’s hoping that The Artist Of Disappearance is our winner!

15 Gorgeous Book Cover Redesigns

Emily Temple — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:30:52 +0000

This week, the always excellent Everyman’s Library released a gorgeous new printing of Phillip Pullman’s epic fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials. Not only is it a beautiful edition, but it’s the first time that the three books have been published in one volume, so it is quite a neat little package. Inspired by Pullman’s wonderfully evocative new cover, we’ve collected a few other utterly gorgeous book cover redesigns for your viewing pleasure. Many of these are full backlist redesigns — after all, there’s something magical about a set of books designed to be together — but all of them are, we think, rather glorious. Click through to feast your eyes on these redesigned books, and let us know if we’re missed any of your favorites in the comments!

40 Inspiring Quotes About Reading from Writers

Emily Temple — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 20:33:12 +0000

NaNoWriMo may be over and our schedules may be filling up with holiday parties and family visits, but despite all that, December is one of our favorite months to curl up and read. If you need a little extra inspiration in this most hectic of months, however, never fear. To spur you on, we’ve collected a few inspiring quotes about reading by some people who read quite a lot — the authors themselves. Click through to read forty of our favorite quotes from writers about books and reading, and let us know if we’ve missed any of your own favorite inspirational declarations in the comments!

“When I get a little money, I buy books. If any is left, I buy food and clothes.” — Erasmus

“We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.” — Philip Pullman

“If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one’s chances of survival increase with each book one reads.” — Sherman Alexie

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.” — Joyce Carol Oates

“You should never read just for “enjoyment.” Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends’ insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick “hard books.” Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god’s sake, don’t let me ever hear you say, “I can’t read fiction. I only have time for the truth.” Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of “literature”? That means fiction, too, stupid.” — John Waters

“There is no friend as loyal as a book.” – Ernest Hemingway

“What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.” — Anne Lamott

“I am simply a ‘book drunkard.’ Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.” — L.M. Montgomery

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” — Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler)

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.” – Franz Kafka