NPPF: Should have been Comm2: Metadiscussion, anybody?

[Don Corathers]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo at fuse.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 10:55 PM
Subject: NPPF Comm4: Metadiscussion, anybody?


> Decided to go ahead and post this now, because it includes (just a little
> way down) a structural question we might want to kick around a little bit.
>
>
> Line 71: parents (p 100)
>
> We learn a little more about Shade's parents: that his father Samuel, vice
> president of a surgical instruments company and ornithologist, died in
1902,
> when Shade was four. That his mother Caroline was a skilled artist who did
> the drawings for Samuel's book about Mexican birds. Kinbote doesn't report
> when Shade's mother died.
>
> " 'a bird had been named for him: Bombycilla Shadei' (that should be
> 'shadei,' of course)." Bombycilla is the genus name for the waxwing. The
> common North American waxwing is Bombycilla garrulus. The cedar waxwing,
> Bombycilla cedorum, is a close relative. The one that hit the window was
> Bombycilla shadei.
>
> ".Lukin comes from Luke, as also do Locock and Luxon and Lukashevich. It
> represents one of the many instances when the amorphous-looking but live
and
> personal hereditary patronymic grows, sometimes in fantastic shapes,
around
> the common pebble of a Christian name." As Botkin, cited as an example
> (rather out of context) two sentences later, might become Kinbote.
>
> ".used to call any old tumble-down building 'a hurley-house.'" Nice one,
> Charlie.
>
> And then abruptly we're in Zembla, meeting the king's parents. And here we
> approach a kind of turn in this discussion.
>
> Let me suggest some assumptions. I think we can assume that everybody who
is
> following this discussion seriously has read the book at least once. Thus
we
> 're all aware that Charles Kinbote believes himself to be the deposed King
> of Zembla, and that Kinbote is profoundly delusional. And that while
Zembla
> may or may not really exist in the fictional world of the novel, Kinbote
is
> probably not the king, and may not even be Kinbote. Gradus is probably not
> Gradus, but a local boy named Jack Grey who was trying to shoot the judge
> who committed him to an institution.
>
> Beyond that there are many discoveries yet to be made.
>
> Those of us who have read Boyd's *Nabokov's Pale Fire* know that the
section
> we're talking about now is central to an analysis that opens up the novel
> like a dark Vanessa spreading its wings. This raises a question that goes
> back to the spoilage discussions we had before the reading began, in a
> somewhat different way, and to David Morris's post suggesting that the
> reading is in the doldrums because everybody's sitting around waiting for
> the synthesis to begin. I realize now that this circumstance was what what
> Terrence must have had in mind when he said, early on, that our schedule
was
> fucked.
>
> If the point of this discussion, which is I think essentially
recreational,
> is to share the pleasures of unlocking a difficult work of art together,
it
> seems to me it is much too early in the game to begin posting big slabs of
> received wisdom. But I'm not sure just how we should proceed.
>
> I'd appreciate hearing what the group thinks.
>
> Don
>
>
>