Given the energetic current of "strong opinions" swirling through The List these days--a good thing, in my opinion--I've been thinking about how we approach novels like Pale Fire. In particular, I've been thinking of VN's famous passage in SM about chess problems. A couple quotations:

"It should be understood that competition in chess problems is not really between White and Black but between the composer and the hypothetical solver (just as in a first-rate work of fiction the real clash is not between characters but between the author and the world), so that a great part of a problem's value is due to the number of "tries"--delusive opening moves, false scents, specious lines of play, astutely and lovingly prepared to lead the would-be solver astray" (290).

"The [sophisticated player] would start by falling for an illusory pattern of play based on a fashionable avant-garde theme . . . which the composer had taken great pains to 'plant'. . . . Having passed through this 'antithetic' inferno the by now ultrasophisticated solver would reach the simple key move . . . as somebody on a wild goose chase might go from Albany to New York by way of Vancouver, Eurasia and the Azores."

Thinking about these passages in terms of VN's fiction, we now have two metaphors--chess and exploration--to guide us. What strikes me about VN's thoughts, especially in the context of our recent and not-so-recent debates here, is the emphasis on the importance of "tries"--those false scents and specious lines of play that take the reader on a wild goose chase. Yet I wonder if critics of VN's works really value the "tries" as much as VN seems to. As I have been attempting to piece together my own theories about Pale Fire, I often feel an intense pressure to be right--that is, to find "the ultimate solution" to end all solutions. Am I correct that the intense debate surrounding Pale Fire does not so much stem from the fact that the novel has inspired various contrasting interpretations but from a fear that accepting another's interpretation necessarily invalidates one's own?

Allow me to extend VN's metaphor a bit. Imagine VN's fictions as planets--perhaps together they make a solar system. We, his readers, are explorers (and temporary inhabitants) of these planets. On each planet, we have a goal, something we are looking for, but the directions are confusing and we end up taking a more circuitous route than was really necessary. Still, along the way we discover some pretty wonderful features of the planet that are clearly put there by a loving (though perhaps a bit wicked) designer. (We try to be careful not to see a primitive salad bowl in every concave depression of a rock.) Upon returning to our home planet, we write up our report for the ones who sent us on the expedition. We faithfully transcribe our diaries and relate all the details of what we found along our winding way. But when we submit our draft of the report to our superiors, they send it back with a note saying they are only int erested in the "best way to reach the goal," not all that surrounding country leading nowhere. Since we won't get paid for the expedition unless our report is accepted, we give them what they want and the details of our trip--the bubbling landscapes, the beasts with five legs--are discarded and eventually forgotten.

The point of this analogy is to suggest that when we explore VN's fiction, we might benefit from an approach to interpretation which places less importance on the ultimate goal. As I develop my own theories about Pale Fire, I am constantly in a state of anxious doubt about whether or not I'm headed in the right direction, but I'm equally thrilled by what I'm finding along the way. I am open to the notion that where I'm headed may not turn out to be the ultimate goal, but I am also fairly convinced that the landscape I've discovered is a landscape not of my own making, and I think I could reasonably help others to see this landscape, too. The question then becomes whether or not it is valuable to report on those treks into the wilderness, or should we limit our published reports to only those details which lead most directly to the finish line. Is there a way of valuing those "tries" that the designer has intentionally placed in the problem , or should we simply put up a sign at the entrance to those dead-end tunnels that says DO NOT ENTER?

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.