Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on this day in 1899.

Lolita, the book that made him famous, is the account of a road trip (among other things) in which the commonplaces of American life are exquisitely rendered through a European (Nabokovian) sensibility.

"We passed and repassed," begins a paragraph on page 157, "through the whole gamut of American roadside restaurants, from the lowly Eat with its deer head ... impaled guest checks, life savers, sunglasses, adman visions of celestial sundaes..."

In 1969, in preparation for the greatest journey of the 20th century, Esquire magazine asked famous writers what they would like the first man on the moon to say. Nabokov responded: "I want a lump in his throat to obstruct the wisecrack."


photo: Library of Congress