On Mar 12, 2009, at 11:04 AM, James Twiggs wrote: I
stubbornly resist all totalizing, only-I-have-the-key interpretations of Pale Fire.
The very idea that it would take FORTY-ODD YEARS for somebody to snort
out The One True Truffle strikes me as absurd. If Allied Intelligence
had been as incompetent as we readers of Pale Fire have supposedly
been, we would all be marching to the tune of a Gradus right this
minute.
Dear Mr Twiggs,
I
have wondered about this myself. I wonder if Nabokov meant it to be so
hard to find the solution. I can only surmise that he really didn't
care. However I am heartened to know that I am not the only person to
have found this solution. And I am further heartened that none of
those few is either an academic or a particular fan of Nabokov, since I
believe the puzzle was constructed so it would more likely be solved by
a non-academic non-nabokovian. By the way, one of those who solved the
puzzle had done so before 1983 (Harry Geduld, a scholar of film I
believe). The other, a legal genius of my personal acquaintance,
intuited it in one reading and this would have been when he was in
college around the time the book came out. There are probably many many
more who shall remain known only to themselves.
I
believe Martin Gardner could have solved it fairly easily, but as I
think everyone agrees, the reader has to be willing to re-read the
"novel" at least once, and I can certainly understand that someone as
busy as MG probably would not take the time to do that. I am not all
that bright (IQ <120) and I think it took me four or maybe even five
total readings. Someone truly brilliant could probably do it in two.
Carolyn