NPPF: Preliminary: The Epigraph

[jbor]

on 15/7/03 12:48 AM, Malignd wrote:

>> Nick is a bond trader, a bond trader who writes like
>> this:
> 
> "We walked through a high hallway into a bright
> rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by
> French windows at either end. The windows were ajar
> and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside
> that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A
> breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one
> end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them
> up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling --
> and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a
> shadow on it as wind does on the sea."
> 
> The point is that a reader isn't intended to mull or
> worry this, to bring it into the novel.  Rather, he
> suspends disbelief and reads on.

Sure (except, to make this point, you, or Rorty, *are* mulling over and
worrying about it). The fact that he's a bond trader doesn't automatically
preclude him from having a way with descriptive adjectives, adverbs and
imagery, of course.

> But Pale Fire is a book in part about writers and the
> quality of their writing, and so a good reader doesn't
> so readily suspend disbelief when he notices that the
> mad Kinbote writes like Nabokov.

But a "bad" reader does?! Is Kinbote totally "mad", or just occasionally
deluded? (Eg. How would he have kept his job at Wordsmith if altogether
insane?) This aside, many great artists and writers were cot-cases. And,
does he really write exactly "like Nabokov"? There are quite a few
assumptions made in this and I'm still not sure that I see it as a valid
argument.

best