NPPF&VLVL2 Preliminaries: The Epigraphs

[Don Corathers]

Well, yeah. But where does the fiction begin? The dedication is inarguably
Nabokov's. The table of contents is both Nabokov's and Kinbote's: it
describes both Pale Fire, A Novel by Vladimir Nabokov, and Pale Fire, A Poem
in Four Cantos by John Slade, with commentary by Charles Kinbote. I think
that leaves the epigraph in a kind of ambiguous middle ground.

Which is interesting. It's a nice picture, Kinbote at the end of his
literary labor having a scotch and choosing the epigraph, imagining himself
as Slade's Boswell and, at the same time, Hodge the unshot cat.

Don Corathers


----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 12:19 AM
Subject: Re: NPPF&VLVL2 Preliminaries: The Epigraphs


> on 11/7/03 1:46 PM, Don Corathers wrote:
>
> > And is it Nabokov's epigraph, or Kinbote's?
>
> Well, it precedes the Index of Contents and Kinbote's Foreword, and it
> occupies the same space in the text between the title page and these as
does
> Nabokov's dedication of the novel to Véra, so ...
>
> best
>
>