(intercostal neuralgia. his ailments, like his language, so precise.)

In the wake of recent speculation over Lolita's genesis, Rake's Progress digs up a 1962 BBC Television interview with Nabokov. An excerpt I've grown very fond of in the past 24 hours:

What was the genesis of Lolita?

She was born a long time ago, it must have been in 1939,
in Paris; the first little throb of Lolita went through
me in Paris in '39, or perhaps early in '40, at a time when I
was laid up with a fierce attack of intercostal neuralgia which
is a very painful complaint--rather like the fabulous stitch
in Adam's side. As far as I can recall the first shiver of
inspiration was somehow prompted in a rather mysterious way by
a newspaper story, I think it was in Paris Soir, about
an ape in the Paris Zoo, who after months of coaxing by
scientists produced finally the first drawing ever charcoaled
by an animal, and this sketch, reproduced in the paper,
showed the bars of the poor creature's cage.