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Nabokov on Being an American "I'm as American as April in Arizona."

by Nick Horton

Vladimir Nabokov 1973

From an interview with Vladimir Nabokov in the Paris Review. He was asked, “Do you feel American?”

“Yes, I do. I am as American as April in Arizona. The flora, the fauna, the air of the western states, are my links with Asiatic and Arctic Russia. Of course, I owe too much to the Russian language and landscape to be emotionally involved in, say, American regional literature, or Indian dances, or pumpkin pie on a spiritual plane; but I do feel a suffusion of warm, lighthearted pride when I show my green USA passport at European frontiers. Crude criticism of American affairs offends and distresses me. In home politics I am strongly antisegregationist. In foreign policy, I am definitely on the government’s side. And when in doubt, I always follow the simple method of choosing that line of conduct which may be the most displeasing to the Reds and the Russells”

Now go lift something heavy,
Nick Horton

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: america, interviews, Nabokov, quotes

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