NPPF: Preliminary: The Epigraph

[Malignd]

<<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.>>

Well, yes, it's possible, of course, that there are
bond traders who write like Fitzgerald, but if a
reader or if Fitzgerald brings that into the novel, it
becomes the single most interesting thing about the
novel.  Who's this bland chap nextdoor who writes so
well?  Why's he mucking about trading bonds?  And yes,
Rorty and I are mulling it, but so what?  The point is
still the same:  Fitzgerald is not intending that
Carraway be framed by the reader as someone who writes
like a poet, who is wasting his life on Wall Street.  

<<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?!>>

I wouldn't say one who misses this is a "bad" reader. 
I'd say he misses something crucial.

<<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.>>

Whether or not he's "mad" is not crucial to my point;
let's say he isn't.  There's still the fact that he
writes very well and, yes, I'd say "like Nabokov" and
that fact seems relevant and inescapable in
considering the question of internal authorship, even
if one's conclusion is to discard the idea that one
wrote the other.

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