NPPF - preliminary

[Jasper Fidget]

Despite the linkage, I have trouble with Hazel as nymphet -- if anything
she's more anti-nymphet, inspiring opposite reactions to those around her;
it's her sense of extreme rejection that pushes her to the ice and not the
extreme acceptance of a Humbert.

Also, I can't say I agree that Lolita leads Humbert astray.  That puts a
whole lot on the shoulders of an innocent little girl -- Humbert already is
astray and stays there.  Similarities do exist, as you point out, between HH
and Kinbote, certainly: the former's pornography is Lolita, the latter's is
Pale Fire; but their behavior in response to it is all on themselves.  Still
there is lots to work with in comparing the two.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf Of Burns, Erik
> Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2003 11:06 AM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: re: NPPF - preliminary
> 
> Foax:
> 
> malignd wrote:
> 
> >There are some interesting things in your post, but I find things to
> >question, one being what do you mean by "influence"?   Pale Fire followed
> Lolita and
> >Nabokov is playful in referring to Lolita in Pale Fire (and I never
> noticed
> the
> >Haze, L connection, although I feel certain VN did), but I can't quite
> see
> >the "influence" in the relationship between the two books.
> 
> I realize I'm out on a limb here, but bear with me while I saw a bit more.
> Here's my idea: that what "influenced" VN was the uproar over _Lolita_,
> not
> the book per se. (I think it's tautological to say an author influences
> himself.) It seems to me (and I may be one of the few people who read
> _Pale
> Fire_ before reading _Lolita_) that _PF_ is a response to the uproar - a
> similar story, but "safely" told (the troublesome young woman remains the
> focus, but is dead early on, not to mention the hilarious academic drag it
> gets dressed up in). VN's final joke, of course, being that in a world
> without your nymphet (that is, a world with Haze-L absent) you
> nevertheless
> get your mania, murder and mayhem. Kinbote is, like Humbert, a weird
> European washed up on the shores of small-town American academe. In
> Humbert's case, Lolita leads him astray; in Kinbote's it's "Pale Fire,"
> (the
> poem) and his own delusions. Shade is like Charlotte: in the way. (I've
> always thought one of literature most shocking murders - and I
> deliberately
> mean here the murder of a character by the author - is the death of
> Charlotte Haze. So convenient! Breathtaking. It still gives me the willies
> to think of it.)
> 
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