Nabokov: The pencil that needs resharpening, the bladder that has to be drained, the words that I always mispell and always have to look up...

If you have the patience to listen to (and therefore forgive) the old-fashioned, pretentious tone of this video, you will discover something long gone: wisdom.  Pure, burdensome and necessary as water or air.

I can not think of any contemporary writer (American or otherwise) who forces us to remain honest to our principles with such brutality and such grace.