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MR/CK: probably well-known, since it¹s from Wiki:
The book [TFoE] by Thigpen and Cleckley was rushed into publication and film
rights immediately sold to director Nunnally Johnson in 1957, apparently to
capitalize on public interest in multiple personalities following the
publication of Shirley Jackson's 1954 novel The Birds' Nest,[2] which was
made into the 1957 film Lizzie.
Controversy exists as to the veracity of Thigpen and Cleckley's book. Chris
Costner Sizemore herself has denounced the book as heavily fictionalized.
She wrote her own book, I'm Eve, and a followup book, A Mind Of My Own, to
set the record straight as to her actual experiences and therapy.
------
So, dear source-hunters & huntresses [!], you now have additional potential
books and movies from which to match words (or failing that, their anagrams
or, failing that, their near-anagrams) and seek suggestive allusions in Pale
Fire. The sediments (waxed wing feathers) in those plural Birds¹ singular
Nest must offer endless happy links (VN surely sipped their Soup, and he has
been known to use Bird¹s Opening in Chess: 1. P-KB4 (f4 in modern notation)
dangerously exposing King-Kinbote to Fool¹s Mate via a Queen or Bishop on h4
- the evidence accumulates in inexorably ... ). We pause only to note
(again!) that Nabokov disowned all such fancies published during his
lifetime. I reckon he would have also disowned ³the² correct ³solution²
(assuming such exists) had it been published before he died. Why reduce
debate and book-sales? From the intro to Bend Sinister:
³I am not sincere,¹ I am not provocative.¹ I am neither a didacticist nor
an ALLEGORIZER [my caps] [VN then ridicules claims of of Bend Sinister [I
resist the abbreviation BS!] or ItaB (Invitation to a Beheading)* being
influenced by Kafka and the mediocre Orwell] ... Similarly, the influence of
my epoch on my present book is as negligible as the influence of my books,
or at least of this book, on my epoch. [VN then relents un peu by admitting
the influences of the Soviet and Nazi regimes. Logicians will notice the
subtlety of ³X-on-Y is as negligible as Y-on-X²: once VN has admitted some
influence of Epoch-on-Bend-Sinister, he has allowed for some influence of
Bend-Sinister-on-Epoch.
* Someone on the List recently suggested the influence of Flatland on ItaB.
I have no proof either way, but I see no evidence of VN having read Abbot¹s
classic, or any mathematical works (popular or otherwise) on the higher
dimensions (with the exception perhaps of the fading Eddington¹s senilities.
There were rumours of Euler¹s Letters to a Princess, published in Russian in
St Petersberg, being catalogued in VN¹s father¹s library. Brian Boyd or
Stephen Blackwell might know and judge whether VN ever read Euler?) But, the
suggestion gives me the opportunity to plug my colleague Ian Stewart¹s
update called Flatterland!
http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf198
BTW: I¹m not sure why CK invokes ³films on TV in the 50s?² Although TVs and
their antennae feature flittingly in PF, I would need proof that the
full-length films she cites had reached home TV screens from the movie
houses until much later. We are now so used to multi-channel TV re-runs (my
Sky Movie menu offers exactly 100 choices) we forget how limited the choices
and poor the images were in the 50s. A few hours of ³History of TV/Cinema²
googling seems to indicate (I welcome refutation) how unlikely a TV showing
of TFoE (or Lizzie) would be until the 60s or later. A few factoids: New
Hampshire¹s first licenced TV station came in 1954. Maine was 1953. Conn.
and Mass. were 1948. Further, and key, not until NBC¹s Saturday Night at the
Movies, starting 1961, were the first studio movies shown regularly on TV,
and seldom the big screen hits. The growing clash between the Film Studios
and network TV was not because TV were showing major movies but, rather,
were nevertheless keeping viewers at home with a mix of sports, plays, comic
& quiz shows not often found on the big screen. I¹m not sure how this might
intrude on CK¹s theory. I would have thought that claims of
³multiple-personality² influences in Pale Fire (or TRLOSK etc etc) need no
more than the obvious fact that VN was fascinated with and widely read in
(not to mention, highly sceptical OF!) all facets of normal and ³abnormal²
psychology, plus the equally obvious fact that the ³schizo/MPD² theme in all
its variations and diagnoses** has been a staple of art/literature long
before ³psychobabble² arrived. To rely on a particuar surge of interest in
the 50s (or adjacent epochs, whether via Cinema, TV or books) as a hidden
³clue² to the Shade/Kinbote identity*** seemed unnecessary, and I¹m glad
that she has now RELEGATED TFoE to a SPRINKLING. But I may be able to help
your theory along. Rather than count the number of ³ditches,² look for VN¹s
clinching use of ³did²! CASE-shifted Dissociative Identity Disorder,
cunningly encoded (and this has spooky Proustian resonances) in all those
forms of the PAST DEFINITE!
** [Wiki] The controversial nature of the dissociation hypothesis is shown
quite clearly by the manner in which the American Psychiatric Association's
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has addressed,
and re-addressed, the categorization over the years.
The second edition of the DSM referred to this diagnostic profile as
multiple personality disorder. The third edition grouped MPD in with the
other four major dissociative disorders. The current edition, the DSM-IV-TR,
categorizes the disorder as dissociative identity disorder (DID). The ICD-10
(International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health
Problems) continues to list the condition as multiple personality disorder.
*** CK ³writes off² Kinbote as a near-anagram of the Russian for ³nobody.²
But so is Botkin. Clearly these ³clues² are aimed at a tiny number of
readers. Yet, open to your mass ³target² Anglohone TV-viewing public, we
have the other main character named SHADE. Without dictionaries or
crossword-mangling, this name would suggest someone SUBORDINATE
(subumbrate!) to his annotator, and more likely to PRE-DECEASE (shades as
spirits) the crafty Kinbote. The point is that ALL the PF interpretations
I¹ve read (so far) share the same problem I find in yours. In the PROFUSION
of so-called ³clues,² each ³solution² seems free to cherry-pick, that is
brush aside any mis-matches, either by ignoring them, or by declaring them
³non-clues!²
Do let the explorations continue. It took 300 years to resolve Fermat¹s Last
³Theorem.²
BTW: I MAY know something Alexey doesn¹t know. Lenin was one of the first to
use the term ³cherry-pick² in relation to criticizing some distortions in
Tsarist production statistics. I¹ll need to dig out a column I wrote 20
years ago for chapter and verse (I saw only the English translation of
Lenin¹s report)). Unless, of course, Alexey already knows!
CTaH
On 02/03/2009 16:18, "Carolyn Kunin" <chaiselongue@EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
> Dear Matthew,
>
> Three Faces really is the sprinkling on top and is not necessary to my
> interpretation, whereas Dorian Gray, Jekyll & Hyde are really more important.
> It seems to have been a redundancy as is the Hogg work.
>
> The way I got to Three Faces by the way was not through the word "ditch" but
> through my belief that Nabokov wanted PF to be solvable by anyone who had a tv
> and would have seen the films that were shown on tv in the fifties. I did
> myself remember seeing those three films on tv. I further concluded that VN
> wished his non-scholarly reader to go to the texts and read those three works.
> Which is what I did and which is when those word clues jumped out at me. In
> other words, the word clues act as confirmation to the reader that Nabokov
> intended him to read these particular works.
>
> Hogg is different - - that was clearly a clue for the more scholarly reader.
> But the more sophisticated clue-words "cresset" and "parahelion" still work as
> confirmation in the same way. If any other puzzle was ever constructed like
> this, i.e. with pre--planned confirmations, I'm not aware of it.
>
> Carolyn
>
>
> On Mar 2, 2009, at 6:30 AM, Matthew Roth wrote:
>
> The next issue of the Nabokov Online Journal will include an article by
> Tiffany DeRewal and me that lays out our version of a Shade-Kinbote multiple
> personality theory. We don't talk about TFoE, but I've always been interested
> in that possible link. At the very least, its popularity in the 50s makes
> clear that a lot of people were thinking about split personalities at that
> time. And we know, from notes in the Berg Archive, that Nabokov in the late
> 1950s was reading DJ West's Psychical Research Today and paid particular
> attention to several multiple personality case studies therein.
>
> That said, I don't think Carolyn's idea of "word links," especially with a
> word as mundane as "ditch," gets us very far. There would have to be a whole
> host of stronger associations between PF and TFoE before I'd be willing to
> sprinkle that one on top.
>
>
>
> Matt Roth
Search archive with Google:
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Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
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Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
The book [TFoE] by Thigpen and Cleckley was rushed into publication and film
rights immediately sold to director Nunnally Johnson in 1957, apparently to
capitalize on public interest in multiple personalities following the
publication of Shirley Jackson's 1954 novel The Birds' Nest,[2] which was
made into the 1957 film Lizzie.
Controversy exists as to the veracity of Thigpen and Cleckley's book. Chris
Costner Sizemore herself has denounced the book as heavily fictionalized.
She wrote her own book, I'm Eve, and a followup book, A Mind Of My Own, to
set the record straight as to her actual experiences and therapy.
------
So, dear source-hunters & huntresses [!], you now have additional potential
books and movies from which to match words (or failing that, their anagrams
or, failing that, their near-anagrams) and seek suggestive allusions in Pale
Fire. The sediments (waxed wing feathers) in those plural Birds¹ singular
Nest must offer endless happy links (VN surely sipped their Soup, and he has
been known to use Bird¹s Opening in Chess: 1. P-KB4 (f4 in modern notation)
dangerously exposing King-Kinbote to Fool¹s Mate via a Queen or Bishop on h4
- the evidence accumulates in inexorably ... ). We pause only to note
(again!) that Nabokov disowned all such fancies published during his
lifetime. I reckon he would have also disowned ³the² correct ³solution²
(assuming such exists) had it been published before he died. Why reduce
debate and book-sales? From the intro to Bend Sinister:
³I am not sincere,¹ I am not provocative.¹ I am neither a didacticist nor
an ALLEGORIZER [my caps] [VN then ridicules claims of of Bend Sinister [I
resist the abbreviation BS!] or ItaB (Invitation to a Beheading)* being
influenced by Kafka and the mediocre Orwell] ... Similarly, the influence of
my epoch on my present book is as negligible as the influence of my books,
or at least of this book, on my epoch. [VN then relents un peu by admitting
the influences of the Soviet and Nazi regimes. Logicians will notice the
subtlety of ³X-on-Y is as negligible as Y-on-X²: once VN has admitted some
influence of Epoch-on-Bend-Sinister, he has allowed for some influence of
Bend-Sinister-on-Epoch.
* Someone on the List recently suggested the influence of Flatland on ItaB.
I have no proof either way, but I see no evidence of VN having read Abbot¹s
classic, or any mathematical works (popular or otherwise) on the higher
dimensions (with the exception perhaps of the fading Eddington¹s senilities.
There were rumours of Euler¹s Letters to a Princess, published in Russian in
St Petersberg, being catalogued in VN¹s father¹s library. Brian Boyd or
Stephen Blackwell might know and judge whether VN ever read Euler?) But, the
suggestion gives me the opportunity to plug my colleague Ian Stewart¹s
update called Flatterland!
http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf198
BTW: I¹m not sure why CK invokes ³films on TV in the 50s?² Although TVs and
their antennae feature flittingly in PF, I would need proof that the
full-length films she cites had reached home TV screens from the movie
houses until much later. We are now so used to multi-channel TV re-runs (my
Sky Movie menu offers exactly 100 choices) we forget how limited the choices
and poor the images were in the 50s. A few hours of ³History of TV/Cinema²
googling seems to indicate (I welcome refutation) how unlikely a TV showing
of TFoE (or Lizzie) would be until the 60s or later. A few factoids: New
Hampshire¹s first licenced TV station came in 1954. Maine was 1953. Conn.
and Mass. were 1948. Further, and key, not until NBC¹s Saturday Night at the
Movies, starting 1961, were the first studio movies shown regularly on TV,
and seldom the big screen hits. The growing clash between the Film Studios
and network TV was not because TV were showing major movies but, rather,
were nevertheless keeping viewers at home with a mix of sports, plays, comic
& quiz shows not often found on the big screen. I¹m not sure how this might
intrude on CK¹s theory. I would have thought that claims of
³multiple-personality² influences in Pale Fire (or TRLOSK etc etc) need no
more than the obvious fact that VN was fascinated with and widely read in
(not to mention, highly sceptical OF!) all facets of normal and ³abnormal²
psychology, plus the equally obvious fact that the ³schizo/MPD² theme in all
its variations and diagnoses** has been a staple of art/literature long
before ³psychobabble² arrived. To rely on a particuar surge of interest in
the 50s (or adjacent epochs, whether via Cinema, TV or books) as a hidden
³clue² to the Shade/Kinbote identity*** seemed unnecessary, and I¹m glad
that she has now RELEGATED TFoE to a SPRINKLING. But I may be able to help
your theory along. Rather than count the number of ³ditches,² look for VN¹s
clinching use of ³did²! CASE-shifted Dissociative Identity Disorder,
cunningly encoded (and this has spooky Proustian resonances) in all those
forms of the PAST DEFINITE!
** [Wiki] The controversial nature of the dissociation hypothesis is shown
quite clearly by the manner in which the American Psychiatric Association's
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has addressed,
and re-addressed, the categorization over the years.
The second edition of the DSM referred to this diagnostic profile as
multiple personality disorder. The third edition grouped MPD in with the
other four major dissociative disorders. The current edition, the DSM-IV-TR,
categorizes the disorder as dissociative identity disorder (DID). The ICD-10
(International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health
Problems) continues to list the condition as multiple personality disorder.
*** CK ³writes off² Kinbote as a near-anagram of the Russian for ³nobody.²
But so is Botkin. Clearly these ³clues² are aimed at a tiny number of
readers. Yet, open to your mass ³target² Anglohone TV-viewing public, we
have the other main character named SHADE. Without dictionaries or
crossword-mangling, this name would suggest someone SUBORDINATE
(subumbrate!) to his annotator, and more likely to PRE-DECEASE (shades as
spirits) the crafty Kinbote. The point is that ALL the PF interpretations
I¹ve read (so far) share the same problem I find in yours. In the PROFUSION
of so-called ³clues,² each ³solution² seems free to cherry-pick, that is
brush aside any mis-matches, either by ignoring them, or by declaring them
³non-clues!²
Do let the explorations continue. It took 300 years to resolve Fermat¹s Last
³Theorem.²
BTW: I MAY know something Alexey doesn¹t know. Lenin was one of the first to
use the term ³cherry-pick² in relation to criticizing some distortions in
Tsarist production statistics. I¹ll need to dig out a column I wrote 20
years ago for chapter and verse (I saw only the English translation of
Lenin¹s report)). Unless, of course, Alexey already knows!
CTaH
On 02/03/2009 16:18, "Carolyn Kunin" <chaiselongue@EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
> Dear Matthew,
>
> Three Faces really is the sprinkling on top and is not necessary to my
> interpretation, whereas Dorian Gray, Jekyll & Hyde are really more important.
> It seems to have been a redundancy as is the Hogg work.
>
> The way I got to Three Faces by the way was not through the word "ditch" but
> through my belief that Nabokov wanted PF to be solvable by anyone who had a tv
> and would have seen the films that were shown on tv in the fifties. I did
> myself remember seeing those three films on tv. I further concluded that VN
> wished his non-scholarly reader to go to the texts and read those three works.
> Which is what I did and which is when those word clues jumped out at me. In
> other words, the word clues act as confirmation to the reader that Nabokov
> intended him to read these particular works.
>
> Hogg is different - - that was clearly a clue for the more scholarly reader.
> But the more sophisticated clue-words "cresset" and "parahelion" still work as
> confirmation in the same way. If any other puzzle was ever constructed like
> this, i.e. with pre--planned confirmations, I'm not aware of it.
>
> Carolyn
>
>
> On Mar 2, 2009, at 6:30 AM, Matthew Roth wrote:
>
> The next issue of the Nabokov Online Journal will include an article by
> Tiffany DeRewal and me that lays out our version of a Shade-Kinbote multiple
> personality theory. We don't talk about TFoE, but I've always been interested
> in that possible link. At the very least, its popularity in the 50s makes
> clear that a lot of people were thinking about split personalities at that
> time. And we know, from notes in the Berg Archive, that Nabokov in the late
> 1950s was reading DJ West's Psychical Research Today and paid particular
> attention to several multiple personality case studies therein.
>
> That said, I don't think Carolyn's idea of "word links," especially with a
> word as mundane as "ditch," gets us very far. There would have to be a whole
> host of stronger associations between PF and TFoE before I'd be willing to
> sprinkle that one on top.
>
>
>
> Matt Roth
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/