Zadistically So: Christina Colquhoun recalls a lecture at the Royal Society of Literature by a palely fired Nabokovian

All these various waves about how to pronounce Nabokov remind me of a lecture I went to last year held by the Royal Society of Literature in London. I should have written to the List at the time [NABOKOV-L], but I thought the lecture was so god-awful that I hesitated in spitting too much unnecessary rancour out into cyberspace. The, in my opinion, truly overrated Zadie Smith had decided to talk about Pnin. Her preamble opened with: 'There are many ways of pronouncing Nabokov...' Hmm. Funny. I thought there was only one. 'And I have chosen...' She listed some 'alternatives' and proceeded rather haughtily to inform the audience that she had chosen 'Naba-cough'. Ms Smith then read out from a prepared bunch of papers for forty minutes in a mind-numbing monotone. By her own admission Ms Smith is not a Russian speaker nor does she have knowledge of any foreign language, which showed up as a substantial impediment to her 'approach' to Nabokov (this may seem obvious, but I hadn't realised quite how much it really means).