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Fw: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3530 Pale Fire
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----- Original Message -----
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 10:28 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3530
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 06:17:45 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2 (tendril)
>
> - --- Don Corathers <gumbo@fuse.net> wrote:
> > > "...as a sister but with no soft shadow of incest or secondary
homosexual
> complications.
> >
> >
> > What does that mean, "secondary homosexual complications"? Anybody?
>
> I believe it means that since she was his sister - not his brother - that
there
> was neither incestual - nor homosexual - temptation for Charles.
>
> David Morris
>
> __________________________________
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 06:22:17 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: Dr. Notebook
>
> - --- Don Corathers <gumbo@fuse.net> wrote:
> >
> > The argument I was trying to make last night on Nabokov coming close to
> showing his authorial cards to get us to make the Kinbote/Botkin
connection was
> almost purely intuitive. To the extent there was any reasoning involved,
it was
> that since Kinbote ostensibly controls the narrative and wants to conceal
his
> past as Botkin, Nabokov would have to either contrive to get Kinbote to
act
> against his own interests (as a self-destructive psychotic might plausibly
do)
> or otherwise subvert Kinbote's intentions in order to lead us to Botkin.
Seemed
> to me that was what was happening in the two passages Rob and I were
> discussing.
>
> Another possibility is that Botkin is just a "coicidental" false lead
throw in
> by VN.
>
> David Morris
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 09:59:49 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: RE: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-pynchon-l@waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l@waste.org] On
> > Behalf Of Don Corathers
> > Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 11:00 PM
> > To: pynchon-l@waste.org
> > Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
> >
> > Where are all of the Hamlet references headed? They point to Botkin, and
> > they prepare us for Kinbote's contemplation of suicide. Is there a
larger
> > significance than we've seen on the ground in Zembla? If Fleur =
Ophelia,
> > does her mother = Polonius? Where's Claudius? Or is it just Hamlet as
> > comedy, the joke being that Zembla, unlike Elsinore, can't even mount a
> > proper palace intrigue? The two hapless Danish tourists as R&G, now
that's
> > funny.
> >
> > Don
> >
>
> It sufficed that I in life could find
> Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind
> Of correlated pattern in the game
>
> I'm not sure how useful it would be to try assigning one to one
> correspondences for characters or plot; more like Fleur temporarily
becomes
> Ophelia (or rather Bizarro Ophelia) and then returns to being Fleur. Same
> for Charles as Bizarro Tristan (who obviously can't parallel Tristan per
se
> - -- Charles doesn't even like girls!). Zembla is a land of fairy tales
and
> make-believe, where characters from literature and history appear and then
> promptly vanish, sometimes inhabiting other characters, sometimes just
> passing through the background. Which doesn't mean they don't have their
> reflections elsewhere (one major way in which VN links different parts of
> his narrative) or properties in common. As you point out, Kin-Hamlet
points
> to Botkin, and later we'll see Prince Hal show up along with Falstaff,
then
> see Charles become Prince Hal (along with half of Zembla), then scratch
our
> heads wondering about "You have hal.....s real bad, chum," and then try to
> list the ways in which John Shade may also be John Falstaff, and so on.
> Later we'll see where and how Fleur ends up, and the similarity to Ophelia
> becomes a striking contrast (which we may not have noticed if VN hadn't
> taught us to look for it).
>
> Bizarro Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 06:58:05 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> - --- Don Corathers <gumbo@fuse.net> wrote:
> > Where are all of the Hamlet references headed? They point to Botkin, and
> > they prepare us for Kinbote's contemplation of suicide. Is there a
larger
> > significance than we've seen on the ground in Zembla? If Fleur =
Ophelia,
> > does her mother = Polonius? Where's Claudius? Or is it just Hamlet as
> > comedy, the joke being that Zembla, unlike Elsinore, can't even mount a
> > proper palace intrigue? The two hapless Danish tourists as R&G, now
that's
> > funny.
>
> I think the Hamlet references point to the suspicious early death of Sam
Shade
> and that lack of any specifics about the death of John Shades' mother (did
she
> really die?). If you follow the chronology you'll see that:
>
> 1. Both John and Charles lost their fathers at the age of four.
> 2. Sam was 46 of 47 when John was born. We don't know how he died (except
the
> poem's info).
> 3. Alfin was 42 when Charles was born. He died in a sports-plane crash.
> 4. We have no specifics about when Sam's wife died (except the scant bit
in the
> poem), nor even her name.
> 5. Queen Blenda died of a "bood disease" when Charles was 21.
> 6. Aunt Maude and the "oldest Shadow" (the probable murderer of Iris Acht)
were
> both born in 1869. Maude dies in 1950 at age 81.
> 7. Hazel dies in 1957, age 23.
>
> I don't know where this leads...
>
> David Morris
>
>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> Jasper Fidget wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> snip
>
>
> > Later we'll see where and how Fleur ends up, and the similarity to
Ophelia
> > becomes a striking contrast (which we may not have noticed if VN hadn't
> > taught us to look for it).
> >
> > Bizarro Jasper
>
> Taught us?
>
> Yes, Pale Fire is about teaching.
> Yes, it really is. Nabokov was a teacher.
> Lots of his characters are too.
>
> Teach Karlik!
>
> Ridiculous? A man of such wealth, teach boys to write and read?
>
> Ah, I'm quite sure Nab had a soft spot in his heart fro Jimmy Joyce.
>
>
> Reading the commentary I'm reminded of the ridiculous arguments that
> men like T.S. Eliot got into over Hamlet. Eliot sounds rather ridiculous
> insisting that everything is About the "Objective Correlative."
>
> Line 962
> Help me, Will. Pale Fire.
>
> My reader must make their own research.
>
> Read Shakespeare!
>
> Poor man, he's only got a Zemblan copy of Timon in his "cave."
>
> The translator spent half a century on Will's works.
>
> He was a pioneer, a veterano de la jungla, but he lived too much in the
> world of books and not enough in the world of boys. Writers, Nabokov
> teaches in his lectures, need a library, a cave, but they need, less
> they start doing battle with windmills, to see the world, pluck its figs
> and peaches, and not keep constantly mediating in the tower of yellow
> ivory--which was also John Shade's mistake in a way.
>
> ------------------------------
>> Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2003 12:10:30 -0400
> From: Terrance <lycidas2@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> Writers, Nabokov
> > teaches in his lectures, need a library, a cave, but they need, lest
> > they start doing battle with windmills, to see the world, pluck its figs
> > and peaches, and not keep constantly mediating in the tower of yellow
> > ivory--which was also John Shade's mistake in a way.
>
>
>
> "The Art of Literature and Commonsense"
>
> Nabokov talks about being an author.
>
>
> Nabokov says that an author should be a good mixer. But he must also
> get
> an ivory tower,
>
> "provided of course it has a telephone and an elevator just in case
> one
> might like to dash out and buy the evening paper of have a friend come
> up for a game of chess, the latter being somehow suggested by the form
> and texture of one's carved abode. ... But before building oneself an
> ivory tower one must take the unavoidable trouble of killing quite a
> few
> elephants. The fine specimen I intend to bag for the benefit of those
> who might like to see how it is done happens to be a rather incredible
> cross between and elephant and a horse. His name is common sense."
>
> "Common sense is fundamentally immoral, for the natural morals of
> mankind are as irrational as the magic rites that they evolved since
> the
> immemorial dimness of time."
>
> Elephant horse sense and magic.
>
> "I am triumphantly mixing metaphors because that is exactly what they
> are intended for when they follow the course of their secret
> connections--which from a writer's point of view is the first positive
> result of the defeat of common sense."
>
> "Two and two no longer make four, because it is no longer necessary
> for
> them to make four. If they had done so in the artificial logical world
> we have left, it had been merely a matter of habit: two and two used
> to
> make four in the same way as guests invited to dinner expect to make
> an
> even number. But I invite my numbers to a giddy picnic and then nobody
> minds whether two and two make five or five minus some quaint
> fraction."
>
>
>
> In "AL&CS" Nabokov talks about why we read a book from left to right
> and
> why writers write like painters paint, but of course we can't read
> novels in the same way that we read paintings. Or can we?
>
> I read an article in the Financial Times other day about Michelangelo
> Buonarroti and how one of his unfinished works was admired by Rodin. Got
> me thinking about that unbuilt house that Mark mentioned and Timon.
>
> Why did Shakespeare leave Timon unfinished?
>
> What might it have been if had filled in the shadows and shades?
>
>
> Some say that Will want crazy writing this play and that he was
> overwhlemed by what he was creating. Others say Will abandoned his
> project because he was bored with it.
>
> Others say, and this seems to be the consensus these days, that Will
> simply failed to make Timon into an acceptable tragic protagonist.
>
> Timon is a critic. While others play with toys and boys, Timon laughs at
> them.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 09:12:23 -0700 (PDT)
> From: pynchonoid <pynchonoid@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> fq:
> > I don't know where this leads...
>
> Ever more distant from Pynchon.
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to waste@waste.org
> with "unsubscribe pynchon-l-digest" in the message body.
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 10:28 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3530
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 06:17:45 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2 (tendril)
>
> - --- Don Corathers <gumbo@fuse.net> wrote:
> > > "...as a sister but with no soft shadow of incest or secondary
homosexual
> complications.
> >
> >
> > What does that mean, "secondary homosexual complications"? Anybody?
>
> I believe it means that since she was his sister - not his brother - that
there
> was neither incestual - nor homosexual - temptation for Charles.
>
> David Morris
>
> __________________________________
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 06:22:17 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: Dr. Notebook
>
> - --- Don Corathers <gumbo@fuse.net> wrote:
> >
> > The argument I was trying to make last night on Nabokov coming close to
> showing his authorial cards to get us to make the Kinbote/Botkin
connection was
> almost purely intuitive. To the extent there was any reasoning involved,
it was
> that since Kinbote ostensibly controls the narrative and wants to conceal
his
> past as Botkin, Nabokov would have to either contrive to get Kinbote to
act
> against his own interests (as a self-destructive psychotic might plausibly
do)
> or otherwise subvert Kinbote's intentions in order to lead us to Botkin.
Seemed
> to me that was what was happening in the two passages Rob and I were
> discussing.
>
> Another possibility is that Botkin is just a "coicidental" false lead
throw in
> by VN.
>
> David Morris
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 09:59:49 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: RE: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-pynchon-l@waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l@waste.org] On
> > Behalf Of Don Corathers
> > Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 11:00 PM
> > To: pynchon-l@waste.org
> > Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
> >
> > Where are all of the Hamlet references headed? They point to Botkin, and
> > they prepare us for Kinbote's contemplation of suicide. Is there a
larger
> > significance than we've seen on the ground in Zembla? If Fleur =
Ophelia,
> > does her mother = Polonius? Where's Claudius? Or is it just Hamlet as
> > comedy, the joke being that Zembla, unlike Elsinore, can't even mount a
> > proper palace intrigue? The two hapless Danish tourists as R&G, now
that's
> > funny.
> >
> > Don
> >
>
> It sufficed that I in life could find
> Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind
> Of correlated pattern in the game
>
> I'm not sure how useful it would be to try assigning one to one
> correspondences for characters or plot; more like Fleur temporarily
becomes
> Ophelia (or rather Bizarro Ophelia) and then returns to being Fleur. Same
> for Charles as Bizarro Tristan (who obviously can't parallel Tristan per
se
> - -- Charles doesn't even like girls!). Zembla is a land of fairy tales
and
> make-believe, where characters from literature and history appear and then
> promptly vanish, sometimes inhabiting other characters, sometimes just
> passing through the background. Which doesn't mean they don't have their
> reflections elsewhere (one major way in which VN links different parts of
> his narrative) or properties in common. As you point out, Kin-Hamlet
points
> to Botkin, and later we'll see Prince Hal show up along with Falstaff,
then
> see Charles become Prince Hal (along with half of Zembla), then scratch
our
> heads wondering about "You have hal.....s real bad, chum," and then try to
> list the ways in which John Shade may also be John Falstaff, and so on.
> Later we'll see where and how Fleur ends up, and the similarity to Ophelia
> becomes a striking contrast (which we may not have noticed if VN hadn't
> taught us to look for it).
>
> Bizarro Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 06:58:05 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> - --- Don Corathers <gumbo@fuse.net> wrote:
> > Where are all of the Hamlet references headed? They point to Botkin, and
> > they prepare us for Kinbote's contemplation of suicide. Is there a
larger
> > significance than we've seen on the ground in Zembla? If Fleur =
Ophelia,
> > does her mother = Polonius? Where's Claudius? Or is it just Hamlet as
> > comedy, the joke being that Zembla, unlike Elsinore, can't even mount a
> > proper palace intrigue? The two hapless Danish tourists as R&G, now
that's
> > funny.
>
> I think the Hamlet references point to the suspicious early death of Sam
Shade
> and that lack of any specifics about the death of John Shades' mother (did
she
> really die?). If you follow the chronology you'll see that:
>
> 1. Both John and Charles lost their fathers at the age of four.
> 2. Sam was 46 of 47 when John was born. We don't know how he died (except
the
> poem's info).
> 3. Alfin was 42 when Charles was born. He died in a sports-plane crash.
> 4. We have no specifics about when Sam's wife died (except the scant bit
in the
> poem), nor even her name.
> 5. Queen Blenda died of a "bood disease" when Charles was 21.
> 6. Aunt Maude and the "oldest Shadow" (the probable murderer of Iris Acht)
were
> both born in 1869. Maude dies in 1950 at age 81.
> 7. Hazel dies in 1957, age 23.
>
> I don't know where this leads...
>
> David Morris
>
>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> Jasper Fidget wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> snip
>
>
> > Later we'll see where and how Fleur ends up, and the similarity to
Ophelia
> > becomes a striking contrast (which we may not have noticed if VN hadn't
> > taught us to look for it).
> >
> > Bizarro Jasper
>
> Taught us?
>
> Yes, Pale Fire is about teaching.
> Yes, it really is. Nabokov was a teacher.
> Lots of his characters are too.
>
> Teach Karlik!
>
> Ridiculous? A man of such wealth, teach boys to write and read?
>
> Ah, I'm quite sure Nab had a soft spot in his heart fro Jimmy Joyce.
>
>
> Reading the commentary I'm reminded of the ridiculous arguments that
> men like T.S. Eliot got into over Hamlet. Eliot sounds rather ridiculous
> insisting that everything is About the "Objective Correlative."
>
> Line 962
> Help me, Will. Pale Fire.
>
> My reader must make their own research.
>
> Read Shakespeare!
>
> Poor man, he's only got a Zemblan copy of Timon in his "cave."
>
> The translator spent half a century on Will's works.
>
> He was a pioneer, a veterano de la jungla, but he lived too much in the
> world of books and not enough in the world of boys. Writers, Nabokov
> teaches in his lectures, need a library, a cave, but they need, less
> they start doing battle with windmills, to see the world, pluck its figs
> and peaches, and not keep constantly mediating in the tower of yellow
> ivory--which was also John Shade's mistake in a way.
>
> ------------------------------
>> Date: Wed, 03 Sep 2003 12:10:30 -0400
> From: Terrance <lycidas2@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> Writers, Nabokov
> > teaches in his lectures, need a library, a cave, but they need, lest
> > they start doing battle with windmills, to see the world, pluck its figs
> > and peaches, and not keep constantly mediating in the tower of yellow
> > ivory--which was also John Shade's mistake in a way.
>
>
>
> "The Art of Literature and Commonsense"
>
> Nabokov talks about being an author.
>
>
> Nabokov says that an author should be a good mixer. But he must also
> get
> an ivory tower,
>
> "provided of course it has a telephone and an elevator just in case
> one
> might like to dash out and buy the evening paper of have a friend come
> up for a game of chess, the latter being somehow suggested by the form
> and texture of one's carved abode. ... But before building oneself an
> ivory tower one must take the unavoidable trouble of killing quite a
> few
> elephants. The fine specimen I intend to bag for the benefit of those
> who might like to see how it is done happens to be a rather incredible
> cross between and elephant and a horse. His name is common sense."
>
> "Common sense is fundamentally immoral, for the natural morals of
> mankind are as irrational as the magic rites that they evolved since
> the
> immemorial dimness of time."
>
> Elephant horse sense and magic.
>
> "I am triumphantly mixing metaphors because that is exactly what they
> are intended for when they follow the course of their secret
> connections--which from a writer's point of view is the first positive
> result of the defeat of common sense."
>
> "Two and two no longer make four, because it is no longer necessary
> for
> them to make four. If they had done so in the artificial logical world
> we have left, it had been merely a matter of habit: two and two used
> to
> make four in the same way as guests invited to dinner expect to make
> an
> even number. But I invite my numbers to a giddy picnic and then nobody
> minds whether two and two make five or five minus some quaint
> fraction."
>
>
>
> In "AL&CS" Nabokov talks about why we read a book from left to right
> and
> why writers write like painters paint, but of course we can't read
> novels in the same way that we read paintings. Or can we?
>
> I read an article in the Financial Times other day about Michelangelo
> Buonarroti and how one of his unfinished works was admired by Rodin. Got
> me thinking about that unbuilt house that Mark mentioned and Timon.
>
> Why did Shakespeare leave Timon unfinished?
>
> What might it have been if had filled in the shadows and shades?
>
>
> Some say that Will want crazy writing this play and that he was
> overwhlemed by what he was creating. Others say Will abandoned his
> project because he was bored with it.
>
> Others say, and this seems to be the consensus these days, that Will
> simply failed to make Timon into an acceptable tragic protagonist.
>
> Timon is a critic. While others play with toys and boys, Timon laughs at
> them.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 09:12:23 -0700 (PDT)
> From: pynchonoid <pynchonoid@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: My bedroom, part 2
>
> fq:
> > I don't know where this leads...
>
> Ever more distant from Pynchon.
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to waste@waste.org
> with "unsubscribe pynchon-l-digest" in the message body.