NPPF Preliminary - Jasper Fidget

[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 10:02 AM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: RE: NPPF Preliminary - Jasper Fidget
> 
> I wonder if you (if you're the current moderator)
> could refocus the discussion.
> 
> The explosion of bickering yesterday, to which I was
> party, has shaken the bookmarks from my copy.
> Probably some others as well.
> 
> Thanks.


On Behalf of jbor:

> on 11/7/03 12:56 PM, s~Z wrote:
> 
> > Historian Thomas Macaulay (1800-1859) called Boswell's worship of Dr.
> > Johnson "Lues Boswelliana, or disease of admiration."
> 
> Pynchon's satiric depiction of the relationship between Boswell and
> Johnson
> in _M&D_ has some affinities with the similarly satiric purport of
> Nabokov's
> chosen epigraph. There are also similarities in the parodic mirroring of
> Boswell and Johnson in Kinbote and Shade, and in Cherrycoke and M & D.
> 
> 718.4 Some horrible Boswell pursues them, asking questions.
> 
> 746.1 " ... he intends to go to the Hebrides, to the furthest Isle ... "
> 
> 747.21 "I had my Boswell, once," Mason tells Boswell, "Dixon and I. We
>     had a joint Boswell. Preacher nam'd Cherrycoke. Scribbling everything
>     down, just like you, Sir. Have you," twirling his Hand in Ellipses,--
>     "you know, ever...had one yourself? If I'm not prying."
>        "Had one what?"
>        "Hum...a Boswell, Sir,-- I mean, of your own. Well you couldn't
>     very well call him that, being one yourself,-- say, a sort of Shadow
>     ever in the Room who has haunted you, preserving your ev'ry spoken
>     remark,-- "
> 
> best
>


Another potentially fruitful line to follow is the one Rob started with the
three pairs of Shade/Kinbote, Johnson/Boswell, Mason/Dixon (not quite
parallel but mirrors nonetheless).  Why do we write biographies in the first
place?  In what ways does it serve the biographer to produce commentary on
another?  How does recording the subject of human being(s) differ from that
of the natural world (hunting butterflies for instance, or mapping terrain),
and that of writing criticism for works of literature?  Is this the role of
one who is essentially *outside* that world (paring his nails), of one who
fundamentally wants to be *in* that world, or of one who must already be
part of it?  (Just brainstorming really, but anyway....)