GRGR(16): the Wimpe factor

[Jeremy Osner]

>The association with Wimpe couldn't be true

A very beautiful aspect of this episode is the uncertainty over whether
Tchitcherine really had contact with Wimpe. When Wimpe is introduced the
verbs are subjunctive -- "Certainly he *could* have known Wimpe." "But
Tchitcherine would have stayed." (notice the italics are gone here.)
"How could they have failed to be observed?" Moving in a weirdly natural
way into painting a picture of what they would have looked like *if*
they had really been together, "Wimpe the jinni of the West holding them
up, vial after vial, for little Tchitcherines's face to wonder at," but
still not making any commitments -- "Was Tchitcherine there at all?"
There is a little more putative dialogue between the hypothetical two
and then focus moves away, to the East; when Wimpe reappears the verbs
are declarative: "Any more than he can now connect this raw jumble of
forty alkaloids with the cut, faceted, polished, and foiled molecules
that salesman Wimpe showed him once upon a time, one by one, and told
the histories of..." *But* "these are rumors. Their chronology can't be
trusted." and we're back to uncertainty, with the fucking *amazing*
line, "If you *are* Tchitcherine, though, well, that puts you in more of
a peculiar position. Doesn't it."

Anyone think Wimpe's name is a reference to Segar's Wimpy?

--
The right-hand, still untasted part of the novel, which,
during our delectable reading, we would lightly feel,
mechanically testing whether there were still plenty
left (and our fingers were always gladdened by the
placid, faithful thickness) has suddenly, for no reason
at all, become quite meager: a few minutes of quick
reading, already downhill, and -- O horrible!

Invitation to a Beheading
Vladimir Nabokov
http://www.readin.com/books/invitationbeheading/