NPPF: Preliminary: The Epigraph

[jbor]

on 14/7/03 12:29 PM, Don Corathers wrote:

> Did we just cross the membrane between the novel and the book here? As you
> observed earlier, these internal authorship questions are really plot
> issues--an especially sophisticated kind of plot issue, but basically a
> matter of storytelling. I don't think anybody's suggesting Nabokov's not
> responsible for everything in the book. But in order to read and enjoy the
> fiction that the author has presented us with, I'm willing to accept at face
> value, for now, Kinbote's account of his negotiations with the publisher,
> his review of the proofs, his hiring of a professional proofreader, his
> signing an agreement to take sole responsibility for everything in the
> commentary. 

Yes, so do I. But these are fictional arrangements, not "real" ones, and I
read and accept them as such. It seems to me that authorship of the various
parts of the text exists in the exact same space, has the same status --
i.e. fiction -- as do these publication details. I think it's a somewhat
arbitrary act to place a threshold, or exert a "suspension of disbelief", at
one point rather than the other. Or, expressed differently, I think Nabokov
placed this "threshold", or perceived it as operating, *between* his
authorship and the *fictional* internal authorships which he has
orchestrated within his text.

In other words, I'm also willing to take at face value that Shade "could"
have written the poem 'Pale Fire', and that Kinbote "could" have written the
Foreword and Commentary, when I read the novel.

> I will leave myself open to other theories that Kinbote is
> Botkin, or that Shade wrote the whole thing and invented the deposed king,
> or that Shade is Kinbote's, uh, ghostwriter.
> 
> But I think the threshhold proposition is that one of the characters in this
> novel is responsible for its contents, and got it published. If you don't
> suspend disbelief to that point, the whole thing is an empty technical
> exercise.

Not at all, though it is a technical exercise, and it did get published, but
by Nabokov rather than any one of his characters.

My point, or suggestion really, is that we "cross the membrane between the
novel and the book" by thinking in terms of whether or not the characters
could write "as well as" Nabokov, just as much as we do by wondering how
they might have got it past the publisher (what with inevitable interest
from the criminal justice system, libel suits, a Sybilline injunction etc).
I think, from what little supplementary stuff I've read, that Nabokov would
have been enormously amused by the way some critics approached his text as
though Shade and/or Kinbote were as "real" as the author himself, in respect
of its composition.

This said, there might be internal ambiguities and clues around who wrote
what, and I'm not saying these aren't worth discussing or considering. But
they are questions which exist within the fictional ontological framework
which Nabokov has set up, rather than in the "real" world where we, and
Nabokov himself, engage with his text-as-novel.

best