NPPF Comm 2: Parents: some notes

[jbor]

on 31/8/03 11:48 AM, Don Corathers at gumbo at fuse.net wrote:

>> pg. 101
>> "the neatly stacked batches of [Pale Fire index cards] lie in the sun on
> my
>> table as so many ingots of fabulous metal"
>> 
>> Prompts a question that I don't recall being asked: could Kinbote be in it
>> for the money?
> 
> He says in the foreword that his contract with Sybil provides that "all
> profits, except the publisher's percentage, would accrue to her." I think
> he's just drawing a contrast between how highly he values the poem and
> Hurley's dismissive mention of it.

I think he's also gloating about the fact that he's the one who has
possession of the poem, thumbing his nose at both Hurley and Sybil because
they don't have it. Note also the way he starts off the previous paragraph
saying that a "Commentary where placid scholarship should reign is not the
place for blasting the preposterous defects" of Hurley's article, and yet
that's exactly what he's doing right there in the sentence (and all through
the first three paragraphs of the note in fact). His final remark in that
paragraph about a "'hurley-house'" is another thinly-veiled attack on
Professor Hurley, and it seems to me that the reason he goes through the
whole Lukin etymology thing, and then into the the list of names derived
from various professions, is just to set up this ad hominem dig at Hurley.

I think there might be scope for another pile or sub-pile which is comprised
of those narrative and expository elements which derive from Kinbote's
professional jealousies and paranoias.

best