Pale Fire Peoples!
As suggested last week, here’s a bonus round for folks interested in re-reading the first section, talking about the Richard Rorty introduction to the Everyman’s Library, and/or bringing other external sources to the party.
My 2 cents: I was a bit disappointed with the Rorty intro. Seemed to me he was commiting a Kinbote of sorts — putting himself too much in the center of things. I kept waiting for him to say “When we first encounter so-called ‘Gradus,’ we are wearing those pants we thought we’d given away, but then it turned out they were just buried under some other clothes on our rocking chair in the back room.”
Some of what he described as what the reader would go through rang true for me — in particular the section on page x where he talks about the experience of reading the intro and the poem. But after that, I started writing “no” in the margin of my copy every paragraph or two. “The awed sense that royalty has condescended to treat us as a confidant”? no. “the revelation of some new and surprising fact about our remarkable host and commentator”? no again. I just didn’t have that experience — at the start, for me at least, Kinbote was a clown. It was only toward the very end that I was surprised to find myself getting a wee bit of sympathy for the narrator.
Those are quibbles, I suppose. My biggest beef is that so much of Rorty’s essay hinges on the idea that Nabokov wanted us to forget about Hazel and then only come back to her in the end. (1) did we really forget about her? didn’t seem that way to me. (2) I don’t recall N. swinging her story back into view in the last few pages.
Still, it made for an interesting reading. Your thoughts?
Next up: starting on August 16th, Deathmarch 3: At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flan O’Brien (aka Brian O’Nolan), which, according to James Joyce, is “A really funny book.” (I’m not making that up.)
I agree with a lot of Cecil’s take re: the specifics or Rorty’s piece – I never felt honored to have a king take me into his confidence nor did I suddenly remember I’d never seen Zembla on a map. But his larger point that VN used his mastery of language and narration to make us stop paying attention to things we knew to be true I buy completely.
The idea that I was being gulled into thinking of Kinbote as King Charles Xavier only to discover he was insane doesn’t interest me entirely. The idea that the book is so vehemently about how much of ourselves goes into reading a work is more interesting. The questions no longer seems to be whether we like Shade or Kinbote better, believe Kinbote was a king or a madman or even if Kinbote was planning suicide at the end. The better question is that if I see Kinbote as the more interesting character who was delusional but not suicidal – what does that say about me?
I want to believe Kinbote was the king in exile, and I’m torn between his clearly lucid moments (like his admission of forcing the interpretation on the work) and his clearly mad moments (his spying on Shade). Of course, he could be king and delusional…
At swim-two-birds! Cool… Sign me up. I read that many years ago, and keep eyeing the fresh new copy on my bookshelf that I bought on my last trip to Dublin.
Maybe I’ll catch up on Irish folktales & legends in the meantime.
Getting back to Rorty’s intro, I thought it was a little facile. He occasionally got my first reaction right, but overall his intro seemed based on a presumptious conceit, which undercut his discussion. It left me more annoyed than enlightened.
All right. At-Swim-Two-Birds is one of my favorites of all time. Very funny, indeed.
I mentioned earlier that I was reading “Reading Lolita in Tehran.” The author’s main idea from Nabokov is that he celebrates those with imagination of those trying to repress imagination (and finds a good metaphor for Islamic Iran in that). She makes little mention of “Pale Fire” but at one point labels Humbert & Kinbote as Nabokov’s crazy dreamers.
Humbert is clearly a bad man though he represents imagination in “Lolita.” So if Kinbote is the imaginative force here – is he also evil for his craziness? My feeling is no.
Hoping I can join in for At Swim, but it’s too soon to tell.
Didn’t have the Rorty essay in my edition, but read the Boyd essay on line. His theory, that Shade’s ghost somehow guides Kinbote’s commentary from beyond the grave, seems pretty gratuitous to me. It in no way enhances my experience or enjoyment of the book. Nor do the theories that Shade is an invention of Kinbote’s, or Kinbote is an invention of Shade’s. These theories seem more about trying to second-guess VN than really making sense of the book. What makes sense to me is that, in part, VN was analyzing and satirizing his own experiences as the all-knowing and intrusive commentator on other people’s (Pushkin, Lermontov) poetry.
Geh. I’ve been hideously busy with a show. I wrote a long comment for last week, which my computer ate. Oh Well. Just a quick note to say hi, loved the book, didn’t read the intro yet, I’ll not be with the next march Best of luck to everyone!
i’ll miss your comments, cap’n, and hope you’ll march again, down the road.