NPPF: Preliminary: The Epigraph

[gumbo at fuse.net]

There actually is a nugget of evidence in the foreword that the text was published as Kinbote describes, or at least that it was set in type and prepared for publication. 

(Just to be clear: although I'm describing an aspect of the physical book and its production here, I mean to stay within the boundaries of the fiction.)  

It's one of those odd interjections: "Insert before a professional," p 18. This is clearly a proofreading note that was set in type by mistake. The next sentence shows that it was followed in correcting the text. ("A professional proofreader...").

Curiously, it would have taken three people to create this error (or maybe two, I guess, if one of them was a typesetter with a very short attention span). Someone, presumably Kinbote or the jobbed-in proofreader, but also possibly an editor in the publisher's offices, wrote the note on the page proof. A second person, sitting at a typesetting keyboard, made the correction. A third looked at the same proof, mistook the instruction for a text insertion, and keyed it in.

I think this can be read as evidence that with respect to the publishing process, some of the things Kinbote says are happening really are.

Don Corathers