NPPF&VLVL2 Preliminaries: The Epigraphs

[Don Corathers]

It's not the cat but the shot, and which cat doesn't get it, that relates
the epigraph to Kinbote's story. Innit?

Don Corathers


jbor:

> I'd say that the relationship between Nabokov's epigraph and his novel is
> more oblique than that between Pynchon's and _Vineland_.

[...]

With _Pale Fire_ I
> get the sense that the satiric connection is between Kinbote (as Boswell)
> and Shade (as Johnson), but the specific content of the anecdote doesn't
> correlate with the narrative in the same way that the modified proverb or
> cliché does in _Vineland_. (In other words, no cat.)