NPPF Comm 2: Parents: some notes

[jbor]

>> 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 this is partly true, although Nabokov the uber-author had his own
> reason for the surname exercise: to plant the name Botkin in it,

Yes. I think it is the first time Nabokov has Kinbote drop the name
"Botkin", though it (or he) gets two or three more mentions, and it's
included in the Glossary. When the name of "Botkin" is dropped, particularly
later on, it seems as if Kinbote is self-consciously nurturing those
ambiguities which surround him, or it.

Note also that Kinbote had supposedly written a "remarkable book of
surnames", with a 1956 English translation (note to line 894).

> like a
> dandelion in a pot of impatiens, in a context that suggests the malleability
> of names. If Lukin can become Lukashevich,

Kinbote's point is that both Lukin and Lukasevich derive from "Luke" -- the
"Christian name" -- and he uses this fact, and the fact that Hurley "does
not know" (does not mention it in the obituary, and why would he have?) as a
pretext to talk about the way a "live and personal hereditary patronymic
grows", and thus as an excuse to provide another list of names which derive
from "professions", all in order to get in that last little dig at Hurley.

It might be worthwhile checking out a possible connection with the Biblical
Luke, or his Gospel, but I think Kinbote's just being a bitch.

best


> Botkin might change into
> something else, too.
> 
>> 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.
> 
> This would be an entertaining stack. I would include not just professional
> jealousies but also material that grows out of personal affronts: the
> fascinating Gerald Emerald strand comes to mind.
> 
> Don
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
> To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Saturday, August 30, 2003 10:34 PM
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm 2: Parents: some notes
> 
> 
>> 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). >
>> best
>> 
>> 
> 
>