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to say that Invitation to a Beheading is in many ways
akin to the film comedies we've been talking about?
I can't make the comparison between a visual impression
and my scribble on index cards, which I always see first
included quite a number of scenes that I had discarded from the
novel but still preserved in my desk. You mention one of those
scenes in The Annotated Lolita-- Humbert's arrival in
Ramsdale at the charred ruins of the McCoo house. My complete
screenplay of Lolita, all deletions and emendations
restored, will be published by McGraw-Hill in the near future;
I want it out before the musical version.
The musical version?
You look disapproving. It's in the best of hands: Alan Jay
Lemer will do the adaptation and lyrics, John Barry the music,
with settings by Boris Aronson.
I notice that you didn't include W. C. Fields among
your favorites.
For some reason his films did not play in Europe and I
never saw any in the States, either.
Well, Fields' comedy is more eminently American
than the others, less exportable, I suppose. To move from
movies to stills, I've noticed that photography is seen
negatively (no pun intended, no pun!) in books such as
Lolita and Invitation to a Beheading. Are you making
a by now traditional distinction between mechanical process and
artistic inspiration?
No, I do not make that distinction. The mechanical process
can exist in a ludicrous daub, and artistic inspiration can be
found in a photographer's choice of landscape and in his manner
of seeing it.
You once told me that you were born a landscape
painter. Which artists have meant the most to you?