NPPF: Preliminary: The Epigraph

[jbor]

>>... Nabokov still perceived the author's position -- his own position -- in
>> respect to the text as one of preeminence, even though, admittedly, the
themes 
>> and structural complexities within the text do challenge and problematise
that 
>> whole relationship between "authorship" and "authority". I don't think
Nabokov 
>> sees this paradox as an issue. Thus, the question of whether Shade or Kinbote
>> or any other character could write "as well as" Nabokov seems to me to be
>> irrelevant. It is Nabokov who can write as well as Nabokov:

on 14/7/03 6:16 AM, MalignD at aol.com at MalignD at aol.com wrote:
 
> Here I'm not so sure.   This point has been raised (not originally by me) in
> the context of suspended disbelief.   In brief, one reads first-person novels
> (the example given, The Great Gatsby) and readily suspends disbelief; i.e.,
> the disbelief that Nick Carroway could write as well as Fitzgerald.   But in
> Pale Fire, the question of the quality of the poem and of the writers of the
> Poem and the Commentary (Kinbote and Shade), are pertinent to the novel
> itself.   

There are questions around Nick's personal relationships and involvement in
the events of the narrative to do with his reliability, prejudices etc as
narrator as well, of course. We view Gatsby and Daisy sympathetically
because he does; his estrangement from Tom and Jordan colours the way they
are portrayed; there's attitude towards the Wilsons, Meyer Wolfsheim etc.
Sure, some of this might be down to Fitzgerald's own biases, but there's not
a 1:1 alignment between Carraway and his author either. There are moments
when we get glimpses of the characters and events in the novel from a
vantage point which is outside of Nick's, and the perspectives which emerge
at these moments are altered from those which Nick gives us. And we do get a
definite sense of Nick as character also. It's not really so different from
what Nabokov is doing in _Pale Fire_.

While I agree that the "quality" of Shade's poem is worth discussing, I
would say that this aspect of it is also down to Nabokov. Critical arguments
based on whether Shade or Kinbote could write "as well as" Nabokov, such as
those made in the essay Jasper posted, seem irrelevant, was my point.

> Boyd, for example, believes the poem first-rate and much of his
> analysis of the novel, indeed the entirety, I would say, of his first, now
> rejected, explanation of Shade as creator of Kinbote and author of the
> entirety of Pale Fire (poem and commentary) would have been impossible but for
> the idea that Shade could have created Kinbote, but the opposite would be
> quite impossible.

I'm inclined to reject this idea. I don't think the poem is "first-rate" in
itself. I do think it's a first-rate parody of a type of pseudo-Eliotesque
bombast, however. In that sense, it's Nabokov's poem, rather than Shade's,
which might be called "first-rate". I also don't buy either of the "Shade
creates Kinbote" or "Kinbote creates Shade" arguments, but I haven't yet
seen these cases elaborated, and I guess the evidence will present itself as
we venture into the text further with the group read.

> However, Richard Rorty argued that the poem is second-rate
> and that Kinbote, despite his madness, writes like Nabokov and thus Kinbote
> could have created Shade and not the opposite.
> 
> We can go into this--the question of authorship within the novel; it's
> endlessy interesting--further, but the idea that Nabokov was indifferent to
> this and simply wrote as himself in the Commentary is not an argument I'm
> ready to accept.

No, that's not what I've said at all. I don't understand why the obvious
possibility, that Nabokov created both Shade and Kinbote as separate and
independent characters, and consciously endowed them with the particular
artistic, critical, intellectual, emotional etc talents and foibles they
present with, and that (Nabokov's) Shade wrote the poem and (Nabokov's)
Kinbote the Foreword and Commentary, has been discarded. To take any one of
the four propositions offered in the essay Jasper linked just one short
(logical) step further -- How could Shade, or Kinbote, or Kinbote channeling
Shade's ghost, or Botkin, manage to get the text, as it stands, past the
publisher? They couldn't. Only Nabokov could.

best