NPPF: Preliminary: The Epigraph

[jbor]

>> 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.

on 14/7/03 10:36 PM, Malignd wrote:
 
> The point here is that the publication of the book
> would be legally impossible?  Are we so certain of
> that?  (Is there a lawyer out there?)  Kinbote writes
> in the Foreword:
> 
> "Immediately after my dear friend's death I prevailed
> on his distraught widow to forelay and defeat the
> commercial passions and academic intrigues that were
> bound to come swirling around her hujsband's
> manuscript ... by signing an agreement to the effect
> that he had turned over the manuscript to me; that I
> would have it published without delay, with my
> commentary, by a firm of my choice; that all profits,
> except the publisher's percentage, wouldaccrue to her;
> and that on publication day the manuscript would be
> handed over to the Library of Congress for permanent
> preservation."
> 
> Am I wrong in believing that, if there is nothing
> illegal contained within, a contract is binding; is,
> in a real sense, the law governing what it contains
> and entails?  I'm not certain this is as strong a
> disqualifier as seems to be believed.

It's not just the legal aspect, though that is certainly one. I also think
that *any* publisher, once having read it, would baulk at the prospect of
publishing Kinbote's manuscript, regardless of him possessing the signed
release from Sybil. There's obviously something amiss with it; it's not what
it purports to be at all. Kinbote's delusion is palpably evident.

And even in the passage you cite from the Foreword there's a fairly strong
intimation that the widow Shade signed the poem over whilst in a state of
some duress ("I prevailed on his distraught widow ... ") and an admission by
Kinbote that he had already taken premature possession of it ("transferred
by me to a safe spot even before his body had reached the grave"). As well,
he notes the academic controversy surrounding the poem's status and his
possession of it. Is it really credible that a publisher would take on this
manuscript from Kinbote and publish it without any reservation?

I'm quite happy to accept that it has happened this way in the fictional
world Nabokov has created. But, likewise, I'm happy to accept that Shade is
the poet he is and Kinbote the writer he is, within the fiction. I don't
think it's valid to drag either the one or the other out of the fiction and
set him beside Nabokov in order to argue the point about who created whom
within that fiction. To me, that's the same as saying that it would have
been impossible for any of the characters, in whichever context of putative
authorship you'd like to suggest, to get the manuscript published in the
"real" world, and thereby "proving" that the text doesn't exist! The issue
of publication is raised within the text just as prominently as the issue of
authorship, so I don't think it's illogical or unreasonable to posit the
analogy.

I'm not sure I fully understand the point about Nick Carraway's "prose
style" in _The Great Gatsby_. It has always struck me as being in keeping
with his character that he narrates in the way he does -- up-front, to the
point, with simplicity, clarity and sincerity. It is around the perimeters
of Nick's narration in the novel that we begin to perceive that there might
be different perspectives and other dimensions to the events and characters,
and this is achieved via Fitzgerald's skill as a writer rather than Nick's.

But, as far as _Pale Fire_ goes, you've identified two key issues which seem
to be up for debate. One is the "quality", or relative merit, of Shade's
poem (and my stance on this is that it is Nabokov's poem, as parody and
satire, which is a far greater achievement than Shade's, *even though it's
exactly the same poem*, but I acknowledge that Otto, yourself and others
dispute this interpretation). The other is the question of who might have
written what (or whom), within the text. It will be interesting to see how
these play out.

best

> 
> Nabokov was reported (I think by Dimitri Nabokov) to
> have said that the idea that Kinbote created Shade or
> that Shade created Kinbote was just slightly less
> preposterous than the idea that each had created the
> other.  (I would not necessarily put faith in this
> comment.)
> 
> Rob's making a good point in noting the membrane
> between Nabokov's novel and the artififact that it
> contains (and that happens, the artifact, to coincide
> word for word with the entirety of Nabokov's novel).
> I'm not sure, however, I agree precisely upon which
> side of that membrane the various arguments are
> properly heard.
> 
> Questions about the quality of the writing are the
> most tricky.  Rob's argument (comparing the internal
> writers to VN) is strong if one accepts his judgement
> on the quality of the poem, less so if one doesn't.
> 
> Also, separately, Rob's points about Carroway in
> Gatsby are fair, but it is specifically the quality of
> prose that Rorty's point addresses, Nick's prose
> style, not the colorations and characterizations that
> accrue to his point of view.
>