"A mere string of figures will disclose the identity of the stringer as neatly as tame ciphers yielded their treasure to Poe. The crudest curriculum vitae crows and flaps its wings in a style peculiar to the undersigner. I doubt whether you can even give your telephone number without giving something of yourself."

My entire posting was full of incomplete sentences and typos, but I'll only correct its last paragraph (see below), although I'm still unsure if the conjecture makes any sense*:

Charles Kinbote seldom acts as an omniscient narrator and, if I'm not mistaken, it only happens when he is inventing Zembla. Otherwise he must stalk John Shade and avoid Sybil when he needs factual information about his biographee - & although he distorts everything, anyway.

Is it reasonable to suppose that CK is not only a satirical presentation of literary commentators in general but that he also represents an authorial ploy to ridicule the "omniscient commentators" (i.e., intended to demonstrate that they must be as deluded as CK)?

* I should be writing about the N-L messages concerning Lolita but I veered towards Pale Fire. While I was trying to locate the quote from VN's Gogol, I found another paragraph that's worth mentioning in relation to these themes (p.55):

"Gogol's play is poetry in action, and by poetry I mean the mysteries of the irrational as perceived through rational words. True poetry of that kind provokes - not laughter and not tears - but a radiant smile of perfect satisfaction, a purr of beatitude - and a writer may well be proud of himself if he can make his readers, or more exactly some of his readers, smile and purr that way." It suggests a reaction or rather, a response on the part of the reader, that's neither totally subjective and full of empathy, nor is it loaded with objective worries over its various hidden (certifiably true) "meanings."