NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph

[Jasper Fidget]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf Of Malignd
> Sent: Friday, July 11, 2003 8:12 AM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph
> 
> <<Further, I don't think the picture you present below
> quitematches with what we come to know about Kinbote
> or his state of mind as he takes flight, Shade's poem
> in hand, and composes his Foreword and Commentary to
> it. >>
> 
> There is also the matter of where Kinbote is, holed up
> outside an amusement park.  His having access to
> Boswell's Life of Johnson is unlikely, as is his
> having such a quote committed to memory.

C. 172 (p. 154): "In a black pocketbook that I fortunately have with me I
find, jotted down, here and there, among various extracts that had happened
to please me (a footnote from Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson[...])"

It's not direct evidence linking the epigraph to Kinbote, but it allows for
the possibility.  It may be that this is the *only* part of Life of Johnson
that Kinbote possesses -- why he has it is another question.