'The Simplicity and Kindness of Americans'

On May 27, 1940, Vladimir Nabokov and his family arrived in New York City aboard the SS Champlain. For the third time in twenty years, he had fled one country and sought refuge in another. He and Véra and six-year-old Dmitri had secured passage to the U.S. thanks to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, given in appreciation of Nabokov’s father’s championing of Jews in pre-revolutionary Russia. They arrived with $600 and stay in New York with a relative. Nabokov meets Sergey Rachmaninoff, who had twice sent him money to Europe, and he receives a small grant from the Russian Literary Fund. The Nabokovs have no jobs and Vladimir had not yet sold a story or poem in the U.S. 

Less than a month later, on June 23, an interview with Nabokov was published in the Russian émigré newspaper Novoe Russkoe Slovo (New Russian Word). The interviewer, Nikolay All, notes Nabokov’s delight in the “wonderful straightforwardness and kindness” he encounters in America. The novelist replies:

 

“As early as the steamship dock, I  was startled by the customs officers. When they opened my suitcase and saw two pairs of boxing gloves, two officers put them on and began boxing. A third customs man was intrigued by my butterfly collection and even suggested that I name one species ‘Captain.’ When the boxing and the chat about butterflies were over, the customs officers told me to close my suitcase and be on my way. Doesn’t that show the simplicity and kindness of Americans?”

 

On adjusting to his new life in the New World, Nabokov says:

 

“One time I walked into a barber’s. After a few words with me he said, ‘I can see right away you that you’re an Englishman who’s just come to America and you work in newspapers.’—‘How did you reach that conclusion?’ I asked, surprised at his penetration. ‘Because you speak with an English accent, you haven’t yet managed to wear down your European shoes, and because you have the large forehead  and head of someone who works in the press.’

 

“‘You’re a veritable Sherlock Holmes,’ I flattered the barber.

 

“Who’s Sherlock Holmes?’”

 

Nabokov would remain an American patriot for the rest of his life, even after returning to Europe in 1960. He was delighted in the nineteen-sixties when his friend William F. Buckley Jr. gave him a button saying “Fuck Communism.”

 

[The interview is collected in Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor (eds. Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy, 2019.)]