The grim slide

In Michael Dirda's fine and heartfelt overview of the work of James Salter, in the new issue of what Rodger Cunningham dubbed the New York Review of Each Other's Books, that amid James Salter's journalism is an interview with Vladimir Nabokov for People magazine.  Salter interviews Nabokov for People.  This sounds like an alternative universe, but it's only the past, another country where they did things differently.