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Re: Nabokov contra Bunuel, etc.... (fwd)
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From: Brian Walter <bwalter@dobson.ozarks.edu>
> > > If anyone has cross-referenced the book from beginning to
> > > end I'd like to hear about the experience -- and tell me, how did
> > > you find the time? I mean this seriously: reading a book straight
> > > through permits for the occasional interruption, but pursuing an
> > > unending Kinbotian knot from reference to reference seems a
> > > little like assembling a house of cards -- a Taj Mahal of cards -
> > > - in one's head. If a ringing phone doesn't dissolve the thought
> > > process, prying your hand from the pages they are marking
> > > certainly would.
I'm not sure how advisable this confession is, but while preparing to
write a dissertation chapter on PALE FIRE, I did in fact follow Boyd's
suggestion (such as it is) and chased Kinbote's cross-references down to
their "ends." And yes, I did find the experience useful on a variety of
different counts. My dissertation describes the strategies by which
Nabokov's work not only rewards but in fact constructs a certain kind of
reader, marked (among other traits in my characterization) by a willing,
even eager, impracticality in his approach to reading. PALE FIRE,
naturally, was central to my argument, and one of my reasons for following
the most insanely impractical of reading methods with it was to chart the
reference patterns. As an appendix to my dissertation, in fact, I put
together an exhaustive (and exhausting, frankly) series of diagrams that
show which notes connect to which and in what order.
The dissertation chapter itself offers a far fuller explanation of the
benefits of this method of reading than I can offer here, but I'll
summarize one or two of the findings. In particular, I was interested in
how the cross-reference structure constitutes a possible counter to "the
element of time" whose inevitable part in the act of reading Nabokov
decries memorably in "Good Readers and Good Writers" (see LECTURES ON
LITERATURE, p. 3). The reference patterns do not simply destroy the
chronological progress of the narrative, but they do completely and
ingeniously disrupt all impressions of a linear progression, if not (in
the process) quite transforming narrative into image, at the least
bringing out recursive qualities that are easily ovelooked (you have
probably noticed, by the way, that certain notes refer the reader back and
forth to each other, making for what, in my high-school computer-
programming days, we would have called an endlessly-repeating loop).
Also, what I found in tracing the reference patterns was a marked pattern
of decline in the frequency and the extent of the detours Kinbote directs
his readers to take. Relatively few of the last two-thirds or so of
Kinbote's 131 notes embed any of his famous wild-goose chases. This
pattern of decline, my chapter argues, is not a chance occurrence, but
I'll leave my explanation of its design to those who think they might be
sufficiently bored someday to read it in full in the chapter.
BW
Brian Walter, Assistant Professor
HFA-English
University of the Ozarks
415 North College Avenue
Clarksville, Arkansas 72830
(501) 979-1339 or 754-3499
bwalter@dobson.ozarks.edu
> > > If anyone has cross-referenced the book from beginning to
> > > end I'd like to hear about the experience -- and tell me, how did
> > > you find the time? I mean this seriously: reading a book straight
> > > through permits for the occasional interruption, but pursuing an
> > > unending Kinbotian knot from reference to reference seems a
> > > little like assembling a house of cards -- a Taj Mahal of cards -
> > > - in one's head. If a ringing phone doesn't dissolve the thought
> > > process, prying your hand from the pages they are marking
> > > certainly would.
I'm not sure how advisable this confession is, but while preparing to
write a dissertation chapter on PALE FIRE, I did in fact follow Boyd's
suggestion (such as it is) and chased Kinbote's cross-references down to
their "ends." And yes, I did find the experience useful on a variety of
different counts. My dissertation describes the strategies by which
Nabokov's work not only rewards but in fact constructs a certain kind of
reader, marked (among other traits in my characterization) by a willing,
even eager, impracticality in his approach to reading. PALE FIRE,
naturally, was central to my argument, and one of my reasons for following
the most insanely impractical of reading methods with it was to chart the
reference patterns. As an appendix to my dissertation, in fact, I put
together an exhaustive (and exhausting, frankly) series of diagrams that
show which notes connect to which and in what order.
The dissertation chapter itself offers a far fuller explanation of the
benefits of this method of reading than I can offer here, but I'll
summarize one or two of the findings. In particular, I was interested in
how the cross-reference structure constitutes a possible counter to "the
element of time" whose inevitable part in the act of reading Nabokov
decries memorably in "Good Readers and Good Writers" (see LECTURES ON
LITERATURE, p. 3). The reference patterns do not simply destroy the
chronological progress of the narrative, but they do completely and
ingeniously disrupt all impressions of a linear progression, if not (in
the process) quite transforming narrative into image, at the least
bringing out recursive qualities that are easily ovelooked (you have
probably noticed, by the way, that certain notes refer the reader back and
forth to each other, making for what, in my high-school computer-
programming days, we would have called an endlessly-repeating loop).
Also, what I found in tracing the reference patterns was a marked pattern
of decline in the frequency and the extent of the detours Kinbote directs
his readers to take. Relatively few of the last two-thirds or so of
Kinbote's 131 notes embed any of his famous wild-goose chases. This
pattern of decline, my chapter argues, is not a chance occurrence, but
I'll leave my explanation of its design to those who think they might be
sufficiently bored someday to read it in full in the chapter.
BW
Brian Walter, Assistant Professor
HFA-English
University of the Ozarks
415 North College Avenue
Clarksville, Arkansas 72830
(501) 979-1339 or 754-3499
bwalter@dobson.ozarks.edu