NPPF Comm2: Parents, part 2

[jbor]

>> It's also possible that the two incidents (bird into window, plane into
>> scaffolding) actually happened (in terms of the fiction), that the
>> similarities between them are superficial and coincidental, and that the
>> account of each was independent of the other, or that the detailed
>> recollection/significance of the one was jogged by the oral/written
> recount
>> of the other.
>> 
>> Call this the Nabokovian authorship theory.
> 
> Certainly. But if that is true of all of the consonances between Shade's
> life and Kinbote's, and Shade's poem and Kinbote's Commentary--and I realize
> that you didn't suggest that it was--then the intricacy and complexity of
> the coincidence and happenstance is pretty spectaclar, isn't it? But not
> terribly interesting.
> 
> I believe the book invites the reader to make connections and to indulge the
> human impulse to create order and sense.

Sure. But by "the book" you actually mean Nabokov. And as the composer of
the text he not only "invites" this activity on the part of the reader, he
satirises it (through his characterisation of Kinbote), and in fact has
rendered the task of creating ultimate "order and sense" impossible.

The thing that strikes me about _Pale Fire_ is that, yes, we're invited to,
and, yes, we *do* end up wondering whether Kinbote fabricated this or that,
whether Kinbote or Shade or another character made everything and everyone
else up, whether one or another event or character or reminiscence is "true"
or "fictional", and so forth, when in fact it's *all* a fiction, and the
questions about authorship and identity -- about what's "fact" and what
isn't -- are components of a larger literary construction, and they are
questions and coincidences and contradictions which Nabokov has deliberately
created. And, that he has deliberately created these hints and leads and cul
de sacs in such a way that there is no ultimate solution to the questions we
are being invited to consider about all these connections and coincidences
and consonances. (I actually find that pretty interesting. But I realise
that mileage will vary.)

> It's impossible to resist trying to
> unravel the strands.

Pretty soon it becomes clear that the strands won't ever unravel in a neat
way, however. But I agree it can be fun, a bit like trying to put together a
jigsaw puzzle where there are too many pieces.

best

> It's probably also impossible to achieve a Unified
> Theory that everybody is going to find satisfactory, but it's fun trying.