James/Sam: Optionally skip to para 2! I can’t resist adding that in my radio & TV career, Green Rooms are where performers enjoy pre- and post-show Hospitality, before (soft-drinks) and after (the hard-stuff) sober studio sessions. I can’t speak of Wiki’s usage as temporary rooms for off-stage actors, but the historical connection is clear. My Green Room definition is certainly the common understanding in the BBC (predominately beige décor), with the added delight that you get to booze with more famous performers, hospitalized [sic] from other shows. There was an infamous BBC mini-scandal last year, when Maggie Thatcher’s daughter, Carol, assumed that her off-beat remarks made in a Green Room were guaranteed private. This notion of Hospitality does seem to be the most current, widespread Brit association with Green Room. I bring it up to remind Wikipedophiles that even lengthy, erudite entries may omit pertinent information.
I would agree with you both on the potential irrelevance of door-colour (room-colour even more so!) in the giddy Pale Fire allusion-chase, if it were not for the Nabokovian fact that VN both encourages (Shade) and ridicules (Kinbote) our search for hidden meanings! Open meanings are even more beguilingly cunning since they must be hiding something. Incidentally, I can imagine VN’s reaction to Pale Fire being tagged “postmodern,” but do we have any specific comments, beyond his general indifference to LitCrit categories (other than “good” and “bad”)?
Real doors are usually coloured one way or another, bright or drab, but every 20th/21st novelist I browse seems determined to tell me the particular paint applied to every surface encountered, whether or not it advances the plot or character-insights.
VN’s (and Flaubert’s) attention to detail does seem to avoid this spurious over-enumeration, although it’s difficult to pin down statistically. My early admiration for William Boyd (a declared Nabokovian) has declined a few whiskers after reading his 2006 Costa Prize winner, Restless. I suppose we must accept the facial, clothing and furniture descriptions, but the relentless itemizing of every meal and drink consumed becomes tedious.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 04/03/2010 01:09, "James Twiggs" <jtwigzz@YAHOO.COM> wrote:
I agree with Sam Schuman that this is a curious thread (to which he has added the use of the term “green room” in theatrical parlance). Curious or not, it’s perhaps worth noting that the most significant mention of the color green in Pale Fire is surely in the following passage (commentary to line 172), in which Kinbote is setting forth some of Shade’s opinions:
Of students' papers: "I am generally very benevolent [said Shade]. But there are certain trifles I do not forgive." Kinbote: "For instance?" "Not having read the required book. Having read it like an idiot. Looking in it for symbols; example: 'The author uses the striking image green leaves because green is the symbol of happiness and frustration.'
We should bear this in mind before making too much of the green doors in the book. If the color green has a special meaning in the novel, it is surely its association with Gerald Emerald. But of the green doors, was it VN or SF who said that sometimes green is just a color and a door is just a door?
The cultural history of The Green Door, as set forth in the Wikipedia article and supplemented by various members of the List, is nonetheless fascinating. And the YouTube video that Steve Diedrich put us on to is very much worth a look and a listen.
Jim Twiggs
From: Samuel Schuman <sschuman@UNCA.EDU>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Wed, March 3, 2010 2:08:58 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Green Door
This is one of the more "curious" threads in the life of the list. Perhaps it is worth adding that the "green door" in Pale Fire seems to lead to that area of the theater building known as the "green room," a place where actors wait for their cues.