Nabokov on LOLITA; an Attempted Pynchon Documentary; and other scrapings from the tube of you

Here are two excerpts from an old Canadian TV program featuring Vladimir Nabokov and Lionel Trilling discussing Vlad the Inscriber's best-known work. Too bad the first clip begins in medias res, but it's interesting to see and hear this pair chatting up Lolita.

 

 

 

 

On a tangentially related note (Pynchon's parabolic trajectory probably intersected the hermetic Nabokovian circle during their mutual Cornell days), the entire documentary Thomas Pynchon: A Journey into the Mind of P can also be viewed on the Tube.

The doc is not quite as terrible as its title, which suggests a urinary rewriting of Wallace Stevens' "The Snow Man" ("One must have a mind of pee..."), but it didn't show me anything new.

 

 

 

And now for something completely different, here's an 18-second film of James Joyce, apparently photographed on two different days in 1920s Paris. Look for the child dressed as an Indian who runs behind him near the end of the second shot--a touch of Bunuelian irrationality.

 

 

 

 

And finally, here's a very short silent film of the elderly Claude Monet painting, talking, and chain-smoking in his garden at Giverny.