That description, "between an orchard and a veil of tepid rain" is very nice indeed, but New Wye is located in Pale Fire, nowhere else, no more than Cedarn is actually in Utah or Montana.  Kinbote's final motel may well have been in Oregon, but without a doubt it was in "the Beaver State", and my guess is that the nickname is probably more important than a geographical and political region within the U.S. to which it may or may not correspond.
 
Best,
 
Brian Jobe
 

john morris <morris.jr@COMCAST.NET> wrote:
If New Wye must be anywhere (other than New York, where, lexically, it really ought to be, but I take the point about Palermo), I vote for the Mountain State. Recall VN's love for that "Russian something" he detected on a muddy red road in West Virginia. It would quite in keeping with the various "resemblers" in Pale Fire if he decided to redistribute Cornell onto that road, between an orchard and a veil of tepid rain.
 
The "prevalence of Botkins" in Virginia is interesting but irrelevant if our Botkin is an emigre, as he surely must be.  The fact that VN called him an "American scholar of Russian descent" only reflects VN's preferred diction -- he used it for himself too, you will recall: "I am an American writer, born in Russia..." etc.
 
Regards,
 
J. Morris
 
P.S. -- And of course, as Oregon is the Beaver State, we know where Kinbote's final motel was.
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