Subject
Fw: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3391 PALE FIRE
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EDNOTE. Henceforth I shall delete postings devoted solely to arguments about
"why are we reading PALE FIRE" which are tending to swamp the discussion.
-------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 7:24 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3391
>
> pynchon-l-digest Friday, July 11 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3391
>
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 04:00:39 EDT
> From: Eulenspiegel7646@aol.com
> Subject: Boycott the Pale Fire discussion
>
> - --part1_1d0.d835299.2c3fc8a7_boundary
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
> In a message dated 7/9/2003 9:36:37 PM Pacific Standard Time,
> quail@libyrinth.com writes:
>
>
> > To believe that we have to labor to make arbitrary connections to
> > Pynchon in order to please a vocal minority is misguided.
>
>
>
> The "minority" might be vocal, but the vast majority are just boycotting
the
> PF reading, which, I reiterate, does not belong on this list. Those
saying
> there is no need to relate the PF reading to Pynchon are wrong, just like
> Republicans who insist that the missing WMDs have no bearing on the
invasion &
> destruction of Iraq.
> If you can't make a case for the relevance of a work by Nabokov being
> formally read & discussed on this Pynchon-list, beyond the possibility
that the young
> Tom Pynchon may or may not have audited or taken his class at Cornell
(which,
> in itself, does not rate a reading), you do not have a case for a reading
of
> PF.
> I maintain that there is no reason to have a formal discussion of Pale
Fire
> on the Pynchon List. I remember a few years ago, some twits wanted to
have a
> reading & discussion of Something by David Foster Wallace. It died a
deserved
> death.
> There is a Nabokov List. It is a moderated list. What a shame! Maybe
the
> lack of opportunity to flame someone who disagrees with them is too hard
for
> them to bear. If they really are interested in Pale Fire, let them go to
the
> Nabokov List. No, they are only interested in having their little
circle-jerk.
> Go to it! I for one will take no part in this folly. I enjoy using my
> delete key.
> From: Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask@sun3.oulu.fi>
> Subject: NPPF - VN & GR
>
> Still awaiting my copy of PF, and, consequently,
> unable to participate in the NPPF discussions.
>
> Meanwhile, I hope you don't mind the following
> recollection tangential to the Cornell messages.
>
> When in the early 90s I was having dinner in Helsinki
> with him and David Cowart [and Pauline von Bonsdorff
> and Jari Kauppinen, let it be added], the leading
> Finnish Nabokovian Pekka Tammi told us that Nabokov
> did intend to read Gravity's Rainbow, but did not
> manage to do that before his death in 1977.
>
>
>
> Heikki
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 05:12:24 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Malignd <malignd@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
>
> <<Further, I don't think the picture you present below
> quitematches with what we come to know about Kinbote
> or his state of mind as he takes flight, Shade's poem
> in hand, and composes his Foreword and Commentary to
> it. >>
>
> There is also the matter of where Kinbote is, holed up
> outside an amusement park. His having access to
> Boswell's Life of Johnson is unlikely, as is his
> having such a quote committed to memory.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 09:33:04 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: RE: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-pynchon-l@waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l@waste.org] On
> > Behalf Of Malignd
> > Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 8:12 AM
> > To: pynchon-l@waste.org
> > Subject: Re: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
> >
> > <<Further, I don't think the picture you present below
> > quitematches with what we come to know about Kinbote
> > or his state of mind as he takes flight, Shade's poem
> > in hand, and composes his Foreword and Commentary to
> > it. >>
> >
> > There is also the matter of where Kinbote is, holed up
> > outside an amusement park. His having access to
> > Boswell's Life of Johnson is unlikely, as is his
> > having such a quote committed to memory.
>
> C. 172 (p. 154): "In a black pocketbook that I fortunately have with me I
> find, jotted down, here and there, among various extracts that had
happened
> to please me (a footnote from Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson[...])"
>
> It's not direct evidence linking the epigraph to Kinbote, but it allows
for
> the possibility. It may be that this is the *only* part of Life of
Johnson
> that Kinbote possesses -- why he has it is another question.
>
>
> > >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 09:40:20 -0400
> From: Terrance <lycidas2@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF -- Why care about Zoyd
>
> >
> > N talks about it and takes quite a dim view of it.
> >
> > " . . . there it the comparatively lowly kind [of reading] which turns
> > for support to the simple emotions and is of a of a definitely personal
> > nature. (There are various subvarieties here, in this first section of
> > emotional reading.) A situation in a book is intensely felt because it
> > reminds us of something that happened to us or to someone we know or
> > knew. Or, again, a reader treasures a book mainly because it evokes a
> > country, a landscape, a mode of living which he nostalgically recalls as
> > part of his own past. Or, and this is the worst thing a reader can do,
> > he identifies himself with a character in the book. The lowly variety is
> > not the kind of imagination I would like readers to use."
> >
> > Lectures on Literature, p. 4.
>
> While only immature readers ever really identify with any character,
> losing all sense of distance and hence all chance of an artistic
> experience, our emotional reaction to every event concerning [Zoyd]
> tends to become like his own. When he feels paranoid, anxious,
> frustrated, don't WE feel analogous emotions? Our postmodern awareness
> that such mediated "feelings" are not identical with those we feel in
> our own lives in similar circumstances has tended to blind us to the
> fact that aesthetic form can be built out of patterned emotions as well
> as out of other materials. It is absurd to pretend that because our
> emotions and desires in responding to fiction are in a very real sense
> disinterested, they do not or should not exist.
>
>
>
> Again, one device for inducing a parallel emotional response between the
> deficient hero/heroine/narrator/character ... and the dear reader is
> Inside View.
>
> Of course if Inside View induces a reduction of emotional distance it
> has the tendency to reduce moral and intellectual distance as well. The
> notion that America is Cope-Land is one of Zoyd's (and his generation's)
> most tragic flaws.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
>
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 06:55:52 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Malignd <malignd@yahoo.com>
> Subject: RE: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
>
> <<C. 172 (p. 154): "In a black pocketbook that I
> fortunately have with me I find, jotted down, here and
> there, among various extracts that had happened
> to please me (a footnote from Boswell's Life of Dr.
> Johnson[...])">>
>
> I stand corrected.
>
>
>
>>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:06:23 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
>
> >>> And is it Nabokov's epigraph, or Kinbote's?
>
> For it to be Kinbote's would require him to have more of a sense of humor
and
> self-awareness than his Intro and Commentary suggesthe has. I think that
> becomes evident when you examine the content of the epigraph.
>
> David Morris
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
> http://sbc.yahoo.com
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:16:04 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Boycott the Pale Fire discussion
>
>>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:08:23 -0400
> From: "davemarc" <davemarc@panix.com>
> Subject: Vera's Veracity
>
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
>
> - ------=_NextPart_000_0011_01C34794.5CA428E0
> Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
> Has there ever been verification that Pynchon even took a course from =
> Nabokov? I thought there had been some research debunking the Vera =
> anecdote.
>
> d.
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:18:35 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: RE: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
>
> On Behalf Of jbor:
> > Further, I don't think the picture you present below quite
> > matches with what we come to know about Kinbote or his state of mind as
he
> > takes flight, Shade's poem in hand, and composes his Foreword and
> > Commentary
> > to it. And the specific quote he chooses, if indeed we assume Kinbote
did
> > choose it, isn't particularly flattering to either Johnson or Boswell
(nor
> > thus to himself or Shade), nor does it correlate much to the whole
debacle
> > as he perceives or imagines it. For one thing, Kinbote believes himself
to
> > be of equal or greater stature than Shade in the general scheme of
things,
> > and would cast Shade as his own Boswell (or panegyrist), if but he
could,
> > rather than vice versa. In fact, he overtly eschews the role of Shade's
> > biographer (eg. see "Commentary: Line 71").
> >
> > All that said, it's a possibility of course, and worth considering. I
just
> > think that it allows Kinbote greater self-awareness and a healthier
sense
> > of
> > humour than the rest of the novel would actually warrant.
> >
> > NB also Kinbote's remarks about Judge Goldsworth's cat (see "Commentary:
> > Lines 47-48"). These don't relate to the Epigraph, nor do they betray a
> > consciousness of it, at all. The shooting of Shade, like Judge
> > Goldsworth's
> > cat, resonates only very superficially with the novel's Epigraph imo.
> >
> > best
>
>
> Casting Shade as Kinbote's Boswell (or panegyrist): this is an interesting
> dimension to Kinbote, the mirror of the commentator dutifully gathering
and
> reporting information on his subject; Kinbote wants to gather and report
his
> own information as well, and hang it in Shade's mirror. He sees his role
as
> collaborative rather than merely responsive. This all goes to the idea of
> synthesis: of poem and commentary into an atomic text. But it also serves
a
> larger process in PF, the act of creating connections and meaning from the
> discovered world. As Shade creates meaning through the writing of the
poem
> - -- a process that structures the entire commentary (to the extent that
> Kinbote allows it) -- by taking parts of his world and his memory and
> putting them into verse, so too Kinbote creates meaning for himself by
> supplying Shade and the hypothetical reader with his own world and
memories.
> Zembla too is created as the novel moves along, again for both Shade and
> reader. John Shade is for Kinbote one more discovered aspect of the world
> that can be used in order to create meaning.
>
> We see Kinbote attempt to perform this magic trick many times. Taking
parts
> of the poem and creating his own memories. Taking Shade as a neighbor and
> creating his own place in that other's life. Taking the poem itself and
> making himself its commentator. It could be that everything in Kinbote's
> possession becomes in some manner a part of the text, and that would
include
> the "footnote from Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson" (154). If we want to
> contend that Kinbote invents the events of the story, this epigraph might
> supply not its reflection, but the germ of its origination: "the
despicable
> state of a young gentleman of good family" who runs about town shooting, a
> member of that town who will specifically not be shot, the
interrelationship
> of subject and commentator, even the subtle but deliberate interweaving of
> cat references throughout the text.
>
> As sort of an aside -- and due only to the pressure to produce (or at
least
> forecast) a Pynchon correlation now as opposed to when it's the right time
> - -- a possible reason or explanation for Kinbote's frenetic creation of
> meaning, patterns, and correlations, is paranoia; one might contend that
the
> creation of Zembla works in the *reverse* of how it might initially seem
to
> a reader: that Zembla is made by Kinbote in order to fill in the gaps
> created by his own paranoia, a system of meaning applied to his world and
> himself in order to account for and somehow understand the "reality" he
> perceives himself immersed in, and in order to make arbitrary connections
> between himself and both the world and its history. We will see many
> examples of both Kinbote's paranoia and of his (or the narrator's I should
> say) creation of patterns that satisfy it.
>
> akaJasperFidget
>
>>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:21:15 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Malignd <malignd@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
>
> <<For it to be Kinbote's would require him to have
> more of a sense of humor and self-awareness than his
> Intro and Commentary suggest he has. I think that
> becomes evident when you examine the content of the
> epigraph.>>
>
> I think this is wrong.
>
> I had forgotten (and was corrected by Jaspar) that
> Kinbote had access to at least some part of Boswell's
> Johnson; I don't think that can be assumed of no
> consequence.
>
> Further, I think it's a misreading of Kinbote to say
> he lacks self-awareness. He's nothing but
> self-awareness. He's deluded, probably, and, at the
> time of writing the commentary, likely suicidal, but
> he's a case study of pathological self-regard.
>
>
> Do you Yahoo!?
> SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
> http://sbc.yahoo.com
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:24:01 -0400
> From: "charles albert" <calbert@hslboxmaster.com>
> Subject: Re: P and N content: James Wood reviewed
>
> - ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Terrance" <lycidas2@earthlink.net>
> Cc: <pynchon-l@waste.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 9:43 AM
> Subject: Re: P and N content: James Wood reviewed
>
>
> >
> > Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:23:57 -0700 (PDT)
> From: pynchonoid <pynchonoid@yahoo.com>
> Subject: RE: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
>
> - --- Malign:
> > I stand corrected.
>
> For the second time in 24 hours. Now, what was that
> you were saying about the P-list never discussing,
> before yesterday, the Nabokovs' response to queries
> about Pynchon being his student?
>
>
>
>
>>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3391
> ********************************
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to waste@waste.org
> with "unsubscribe pynchon-l-digest" in the message body.
"why are we reading PALE FIRE" which are tending to swamp the discussion.
-------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 7:24 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3391
>
> pynchon-l-digest Friday, July 11 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3391
>
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 04:00:39 EDT
> From: Eulenspiegel7646@aol.com
> Subject: Boycott the Pale Fire discussion
>
> - --part1_1d0.d835299.2c3fc8a7_boundary
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
> In a message dated 7/9/2003 9:36:37 PM Pacific Standard Time,
> quail@libyrinth.com writes:
>
>
> > To believe that we have to labor to make arbitrary connections to
> > Pynchon in order to please a vocal minority is misguided.
>
>
>
> The "minority" might be vocal, but the vast majority are just boycotting
the
> PF reading, which, I reiterate, does not belong on this list. Those
saying
> there is no need to relate the PF reading to Pynchon are wrong, just like
> Republicans who insist that the missing WMDs have no bearing on the
invasion &
> destruction of Iraq.
> If you can't make a case for the relevance of a work by Nabokov being
> formally read & discussed on this Pynchon-list, beyond the possibility
that the young
> Tom Pynchon may or may not have audited or taken his class at Cornell
(which,
> in itself, does not rate a reading), you do not have a case for a reading
of
> PF.
> I maintain that there is no reason to have a formal discussion of Pale
Fire
> on the Pynchon List. I remember a few years ago, some twits wanted to
have a
> reading & discussion of Something by David Foster Wallace. It died a
deserved
> death.
> There is a Nabokov List. It is a moderated list. What a shame! Maybe
the
> lack of opportunity to flame someone who disagrees with them is too hard
for
> them to bear. If they really are interested in Pale Fire, let them go to
the
> Nabokov List. No, they are only interested in having their little
circle-jerk.
> Go to it! I for one will take no part in this folly. I enjoy using my
> delete key.
> From: Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask@sun3.oulu.fi>
> Subject: NPPF - VN & GR
>
> Still awaiting my copy of PF, and, consequently,
> unable to participate in the NPPF discussions.
>
> Meanwhile, I hope you don't mind the following
> recollection tangential to the Cornell messages.
>
> When in the early 90s I was having dinner in Helsinki
> with him and David Cowart [and Pauline von Bonsdorff
> and Jari Kauppinen, let it be added], the leading
> Finnish Nabokovian Pekka Tammi told us that Nabokov
> did intend to read Gravity's Rainbow, but did not
> manage to do that before his death in 1977.
>
>
>
> Heikki
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 05:12:24 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Malignd <malignd@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
>
> <<Further, I don't think the picture you present below
> quitematches with what we come to know about Kinbote
> or his state of mind as he takes flight, Shade's poem
> in hand, and composes his Foreword and Commentary to
> it. >>
>
> There is also the matter of where Kinbote is, holed up
> outside an amusement park. His having access to
> Boswell's Life of Johnson is unlikely, as is his
> having such a quote committed to memory.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 09:33:04 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: RE: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-pynchon-l@waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l@waste.org] On
> > Behalf Of Malignd
> > Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 8:12 AM
> > To: pynchon-l@waste.org
> > Subject: Re: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
> >
> > <<Further, I don't think the picture you present below
> > quitematches with what we come to know about Kinbote
> > or his state of mind as he takes flight, Shade's poem
> > in hand, and composes his Foreword and Commentary to
> > it. >>
> >
> > There is also the matter of where Kinbote is, holed up
> > outside an amusement park. His having access to
> > Boswell's Life of Johnson is unlikely, as is his
> > having such a quote committed to memory.
>
> C. 172 (p. 154): "In a black pocketbook that I fortunately have with me I
> find, jotted down, here and there, among various extracts that had
happened
> to please me (a footnote from Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson[...])"
>
> It's not direct evidence linking the epigraph to Kinbote, but it allows
for
> the possibility. It may be that this is the *only* part of Life of
Johnson
> that Kinbote possesses -- why he has it is another question.
>
>
> > >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 09:40:20 -0400
> From: Terrance <lycidas2@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF -- Why care about Zoyd
>
> >
> > N talks about it and takes quite a dim view of it.
> >
> > " . . . there it the comparatively lowly kind [of reading] which turns
> > for support to the simple emotions and is of a of a definitely personal
> > nature. (There are various subvarieties here, in this first section of
> > emotional reading.) A situation in a book is intensely felt because it
> > reminds us of something that happened to us or to someone we know or
> > knew. Or, again, a reader treasures a book mainly because it evokes a
> > country, a landscape, a mode of living which he nostalgically recalls as
> > part of his own past. Or, and this is the worst thing a reader can do,
> > he identifies himself with a character in the book. The lowly variety is
> > not the kind of imagination I would like readers to use."
> >
> > Lectures on Literature, p. 4.
>
> While only immature readers ever really identify with any character,
> losing all sense of distance and hence all chance of an artistic
> experience, our emotional reaction to every event concerning [Zoyd]
> tends to become like his own. When he feels paranoid, anxious,
> frustrated, don't WE feel analogous emotions? Our postmodern awareness
> that such mediated "feelings" are not identical with those we feel in
> our own lives in similar circumstances has tended to blind us to the
> fact that aesthetic form can be built out of patterned emotions as well
> as out of other materials. It is absurd to pretend that because our
> emotions and desires in responding to fiction are in a very real sense
> disinterested, they do not or should not exist.
>
>
>
> Again, one device for inducing a parallel emotional response between the
> deficient hero/heroine/narrator/character ... and the dear reader is
> Inside View.
>
> Of course if Inside View induces a reduction of emotional distance it
> has the tendency to reduce moral and intellectual distance as well. The
> notion that America is Cope-Land is one of Zoyd's (and his generation's)
> most tragic flaws.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
>
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 06:55:52 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Malignd <malignd@yahoo.com>
> Subject: RE: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
>
> <<C. 172 (p. 154): "In a black pocketbook that I
> fortunately have with me I find, jotted down, here and
> there, among various extracts that had happened
> to please me (a footnote from Boswell's Life of Dr.
> Johnson[...])">>
>
> I stand corrected.
>
>
>
>>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:06:23 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
>
> >>> And is it Nabokov's epigraph, or Kinbote's?
>
> For it to be Kinbote's would require him to have more of a sense of humor
and
> self-awareness than his Intro and Commentary suggesthe has. I think that
> becomes evident when you examine the content of the epigraph.
>
> David Morris
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
> http://sbc.yahoo.com
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:16:04 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Boycott the Pale Fire discussion
>
>>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:08:23 -0400
> From: "davemarc" <davemarc@panix.com>
> Subject: Vera's Veracity
>
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
>
> - ------=_NextPart_000_0011_01C34794.5CA428E0
> Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
> Has there ever been verification that Pynchon even took a course from =
> Nabokov? I thought there had been some research debunking the Vera =
> anecdote.
>
> d.
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:18:35 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: RE: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
>
> On Behalf Of jbor:
> > Further, I don't think the picture you present below quite
> > matches with what we come to know about Kinbote or his state of mind as
he
> > takes flight, Shade's poem in hand, and composes his Foreword and
> > Commentary
> > to it. And the specific quote he chooses, if indeed we assume Kinbote
did
> > choose it, isn't particularly flattering to either Johnson or Boswell
(nor
> > thus to himself or Shade), nor does it correlate much to the whole
debacle
> > as he perceives or imagines it. For one thing, Kinbote believes himself
to
> > be of equal or greater stature than Shade in the general scheme of
things,
> > and would cast Shade as his own Boswell (or panegyrist), if but he
could,
> > rather than vice versa. In fact, he overtly eschews the role of Shade's
> > biographer (eg. see "Commentary: Line 71").
> >
> > All that said, it's a possibility of course, and worth considering. I
just
> > think that it allows Kinbote greater self-awareness and a healthier
sense
> > of
> > humour than the rest of the novel would actually warrant.
> >
> > NB also Kinbote's remarks about Judge Goldsworth's cat (see "Commentary:
> > Lines 47-48"). These don't relate to the Epigraph, nor do they betray a
> > consciousness of it, at all. The shooting of Shade, like Judge
> > Goldsworth's
> > cat, resonates only very superficially with the novel's Epigraph imo.
> >
> > best
>
>
> Casting Shade as Kinbote's Boswell (or panegyrist): this is an interesting
> dimension to Kinbote, the mirror of the commentator dutifully gathering
and
> reporting information on his subject; Kinbote wants to gather and report
his
> own information as well, and hang it in Shade's mirror. He sees his role
as
> collaborative rather than merely responsive. This all goes to the idea of
> synthesis: of poem and commentary into an atomic text. But it also serves
a
> larger process in PF, the act of creating connections and meaning from the
> discovered world. As Shade creates meaning through the writing of the
poem
> - -- a process that structures the entire commentary (to the extent that
> Kinbote allows it) -- by taking parts of his world and his memory and
> putting them into verse, so too Kinbote creates meaning for himself by
> supplying Shade and the hypothetical reader with his own world and
memories.
> Zembla too is created as the novel moves along, again for both Shade and
> reader. John Shade is for Kinbote one more discovered aspect of the world
> that can be used in order to create meaning.
>
> We see Kinbote attempt to perform this magic trick many times. Taking
parts
> of the poem and creating his own memories. Taking Shade as a neighbor and
> creating his own place in that other's life. Taking the poem itself and
> making himself its commentator. It could be that everything in Kinbote's
> possession becomes in some manner a part of the text, and that would
include
> the "footnote from Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson" (154). If we want to
> contend that Kinbote invents the events of the story, this epigraph might
> supply not its reflection, but the germ of its origination: "the
despicable
> state of a young gentleman of good family" who runs about town shooting, a
> member of that town who will specifically not be shot, the
interrelationship
> of subject and commentator, even the subtle but deliberate interweaving of
> cat references throughout the text.
>
> As sort of an aside -- and due only to the pressure to produce (or at
least
> forecast) a Pynchon correlation now as opposed to when it's the right time
> - -- a possible reason or explanation for Kinbote's frenetic creation of
> meaning, patterns, and correlations, is paranoia; one might contend that
the
> creation of Zembla works in the *reverse* of how it might initially seem
to
> a reader: that Zembla is made by Kinbote in order to fill in the gaps
> created by his own paranoia, a system of meaning applied to his world and
> himself in order to account for and somehow understand the "reality" he
> perceives himself immersed in, and in order to make arbitrary connections
> between himself and both the world and its history. We will see many
> examples of both Kinbote's paranoia and of his (or the narrator's I should
> say) creation of patterns that satisfy it.
>
> akaJasperFidget
>
>>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:21:15 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Malignd <malignd@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
>
> <<For it to be Kinbote's would require him to have
> more of a sense of humor and self-awareness than his
> Intro and Commentary suggest he has. I think that
> becomes evident when you examine the content of the
> epigraph.>>
>
> I think this is wrong.
>
> I had forgotten (and was corrected by Jaspar) that
> Kinbote had access to at least some part of Boswell's
> Johnson; I don't think that can be assumed of no
> consequence.
>
> Further, I think it's a misreading of Kinbote to say
> he lacks self-awareness. He's nothing but
> self-awareness. He's deluded, probably, and, at the
> time of writing the commentary, likely suicidal, but
> he's a case study of pathological self-regard.
>
>
> Do you Yahoo!?
> SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
> http://sbc.yahoo.com
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 10:24:01 -0400
> From: "charles albert" <calbert@hslboxmaster.com>
> Subject: Re: P and N content: James Wood reviewed
>
> - ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Terrance" <lycidas2@earthlink.net>
> Cc: <pynchon-l@waste.org>
> Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 9:43 AM
> Subject: Re: P and N content: James Wood reviewed
>
>
> >
> > Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:23:57 -0700 (PDT)
> From: pynchonoid <pynchonoid@yahoo.com>
> Subject: RE: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
>
> - --- Malign:
> > I stand corrected.
>
> For the second time in 24 hours. Now, what was that
> you were saying about the P-list never discussing,
> before yesterday, the Nabokovs' response to queries
> about Pynchon being his student?
>
>
>
>
>>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3391
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