Vladimir Nabokov: Patriot

Today is the birthday of Vladimir Nabokov. An exile from what he called "the beastly regime engendered by Lenin," Nabokov settled in America after fleeing the Nazis in Germany and France. When asked in 1966 if he considered himself an American, he responded:

"Yes, I do. I am as American as April in Arizona. The flora, the fauna, the air of the Western states are my links with Asiatic and Arctic Russia. Of course, I owe too much to the Russian language and landscape to be emotionally involved in, say, American regional literature, or Indian dances, or pumpkin pie on a spiritual plane; but I do feel a suffusion of warm, lighthearted pride when I show my green USA passport at European frontiers."

How many of today's literary eminences can say the same?