[NPPF] _See under Real_

[s~Z]

This sumary of the fictional work of fiction, _See under Real_, written by
the fictional author, Vadim Vadimovich N., in LOOK AT THE HARLEQUINS! reads
like a hyperbolic hybrid of SEBASTIAN KNIGHT and PALE FIRE.


As was also to happen in regard to my next English books (including
thepresent sketch), the title of my first one came to me at the moment of
impregnation, long before actual birth and growth. Holding that name to the
light, I distinguished the entire contents of the semitransparent capsule.
The title was to be without any choice or change: See under Real. A preview
of  its eventual tribulations in the catalogues of  public libraries
could not have deterred me.
     The idea may have been an oblique effect of the insult dealt by the two
bunglers  to my careful art.  An English novelist, a brilliant and unique
performer, was supposed to have  recently died. The story of his life was
being knocked together by the uninformed,  coarse-minded, malevolent Hamlet
Godman,  an Oxonian Dane, who  found in this grotesque task a Kovalevskian
"outlet"  for the literary  flops that his proper mediocrity fully deserved.
The  biography was being edited, rather unfortunately for its reckless
concocter, by the indignant brother of the dead novelist. As the opening
chapter unfolded  its  first reptilian coil (with insinuations of
"masturbation guilt" and the castration of toy soldiers) there commenced
what was to me the delight and  the magic of my book: fraternal footnotes,
half-a-dozen lines  per page,  then more, then much more,  which started to
question, then refute, then  demolish by  ridicule the would-be biographer's
doctored anecdotes and vulgar inventions. A multiplication of  such notes at
the bottom of  the page led to  an  ominous increase (no doubt disturbing to
clubby or convalescent  readers) of astronomical symbols bespeckling the
text.  By the end of the biographee's college  years  the height of the
critical apparatus had reached one third of each page. Editorial warnings of
a national disaster--flooded fields and so on--accompanied a further rise of
the  water  line.  By  page  200  the  footnote  material  had  crowded  out
three-quarters of the  text  and  the  type  of  the  note   had  changed,
psychologically  at  least (I loathe typographical frolics in books)  from
brevier to long primer. In  the course  of the last chapters the  commentary
not  only replaced the  entire  text  but finally swelled  to  boldface. "We
witness here  the admirable phenomenon of a bogus biographie romancÉe
being gradually supplanted  by the true  story  of a great man's life."  For
good measure  I  appended  a  three-page  account of  the great  annotator's
academic career: "He now teaches Modern Literature, including his brother's
works, at Paragon University, Oregon."
     This is the description of a novel written almost forty-five years ago
and probably forgotten by the general public. I have never reread it because
I reread (je relis, perechityvayu--I'm teasing an adorable mistress!) only
the page proofs of my paperbacks; and for reasons which, I am sure, J. Lodge
finds judicious, the thing  is still in its hard-cover instar. But in rosy
retrospect I feel it as a pleasurable event, and have completely dissociated
it in my mind from the terrors and torments that attended the writing of
that rather lightweight little satire.
     Actually, its composition, despite the pleasure (maybe also noxious)
that the iridescent bubbles in my alembics gave me after a night of
inspiration, trial, and triumph (look at the harlequins, everybody
look--Iris, Annette, Bel, Louise, and  you, you, my ultimate and immortal
one!), almost led to the dementia paralytica that I feared since youth.