NPPF: Preliminary: The Epigraph

[jbor]

>> It might be as
>> Malignd said, "that VN intended this sort of unknowing", that
>> indeterminacies such as this have been deliberately inscribed by Nabokov
>> into his text (cf. Pynchon again), or, indeed, that he was happy enough to
>> let rather more unintentional ambiguities persist once they had arisen.

on 13/7/03 10:35 AM, charles albert wrote:
> 
> From Alvin Kernan's - Reading Zemblan: The Audience Disappears in Pale Fire:
> 
> " Nabokov has, of course, purposely placed his readers in a most difficult
> position, forcing them to face the fact than any reading of his work may be
> simply a reflection of the readers own subjective needs from within a prison
> house of self as confined as Shade's or Kinbote's......By setting up the
> Kinbote misreading of the Shade poem, Nabokov involves us as readers in an
> awareness of the full extent of human subjectivity and it's causes, and at
> the same time warns us against detective story types of interpretations
> which arrive at some absolute truth to the exclusion of all other
> possibilities."
> 
> Surely no-one would suggest that COL49 offers a "resolution" in any orthodox
> sense........Have you found any COL49 criticism which cites PF as a possible
> model - I have heard references to Borges' Aleph and a novel often referred
> to here - the name of which I have forgotten, but not PF....

I can't recall seeing anything specifically relating _Lot 49_ with _Pale
Fire_ in this way, and I'm not sure the latter really does provide a "model"
for the former. But I think it's reasonable to suggest a more general or
all-pervasive influence, alongside more specific resonances and allusions
("Humbert Humbert cats" in 'Serge's Song' in _Lot 49_, Blodgett Waxwing in
_GR_).

As to the quote from Alvin Kernan, it reminds me of Erik's joke about his
"inner Kinbote". I think it's true that as readers -- and as humans -- we
all have something like an "inner Kinbote"; it seems that the difference is
that some are just better at keeping this needy little fellow in check than
others are.

best