NPPF - and Pynchon too

[Burns, Erik]

Foax:

David Morris wrote:

>Didn't that little girl on the Anubis want it?

Er, possibly. But she couldn't have gotten it unless Lolita'd been there
first. (Don't forget plenty labeled _Gravity's Rainbow_ obscene, and it
wasn't because of the "bread on porcelain waters," now was it?)

But I digress. I did start, to answer akaJasperFidget (to whom I tip my fez
to for all the work so far and all the expectation engendered) with Hazel
Shade as the *antithesis* of Lolita - that was my point, that VN dispatched
her right off so as not to have a sexy little girl running around
distracting Kinbote from his urgent tasks. (Not that she would, I know ...
he may not really be a King, but he surely is a queen.)

And I agree that _Pale Fire_ and _Lolita_ are very different books, to be
read differently, for different audiences even, but think there's a
progression (regression?) into the (funny) academic drag of PF that is VN
deliberately "smarting up" the raunch of _Lolita_. (How many people buy and
start reading _Pale Fire_ post-_Lolita_ in hopes of more of the same "smut"?
A lot, is my guess. Suckers.)

Finally, only someone who has never seen the VN edition of _Eugene Onegin_
would be unable to see its connection to PF. Volume I is 334 pages:
Foreword, "EO" Revisited, Method of Transliteration, Calendar, Abbreviations
and Symbols, Translator's Introduction (81 pages, seven parts), poem
(novel). Then Volume II: almost 1,000 MORE pages of commentary, in two
parts, including 100+ pages of index.

This is *not* something VN dashed off in two years after finishing PF;
indeed, I always understood _PF_ was what VN did to blow off steam after
meddling all day with his EO obsession (please, correct me if I'm wrong
here).

etb