This reminds me of the comment in 'Strong Opinions': "What I
would welcome > at the close of a book of mine is a sensation of its world
receding in the > distance and stopping somewhere there suspended afar
like a picture in a > picture". The picture-in-a-picture seems to
suggest that the best the > reader can do is to come up with a series of
interim solutions, with the > ultimate solution forever delayed.
Regardless, I'm not sure this is > entirely consistent with the idea
of an author creating a puzzle without > any solutions, nor a puzzle with
a single solution; it might suggest an > authorial intention which is to
undermine the importance of authorial > intention. Or at least, it
might if you read it as: my intention is to > produce a book in which it
is impossible to distinguish my intention. > > That sounds like a
circular argument, but it may well be a spiral. > > Yours, >
Nick. > >
Dear Mr Grundy,
But isn't Pale
Fire different? It does seem to me to be a puzzle, at least I never found
the novel of the slightest interest until I approached it as a puzzle. Then it
became very interesting.
Carolyn Kunin
p.s. There are many things
I don't understand, among which are
1) Mr Nguyen's argument
2)
Shade's "texture not text" idea (several people have tried to explain this
concept to me to no avail) and
3) an author whose intent is to write a
book whose intent is impossible to discern. There are of course some writers
(French, I think) who write like this, but I don't see much point to reading
them.
I'm beginning to think I had better give up Nabokov too and
go back to the 18th and 19th centuries where I belong.