NPPF - Foreword - Summary / Commentary (2)

[Jasper Fidget]

> From: David Morris [mailto:fqmorris at yahoo.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 12:48 PM
> To: Jasper Fidget; pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Foreword - Summary / Commentary (2)
> 
> 
> --- Jasper Fidget <jasper at hatguild.org> wrote:
> >
> > "(See my note to line 991.)"  The only cross-reference in the Foreword.
> 
> Not so.  He also points the reader to the *last* line in the Foreword, but
> I
> don't have my book with me now...

Yes, he does reference several lines in the poem but not any of his own
notes in the Commentary.

> 
> > This cross-reference is also the first of several indications that the
> Foreword has been written last or close to last, after the Commentary.
> 
> Again, not so.  In the Commentary he corrects his error in calling the
> sound
> outside his room as comming from an amusement park, and pointed says he's
> not
> going  to fix his earlier error in the text.
> 
> David Morris
> 

I posted something about this earlier in a similar context.  On page 15,
Kinbote writes, "(See my note to line 991)", and then on page 17 writes,
"As mentioned, I think, in my last note to the poem", both referring to the
commentary as if it already exists; but then as you point out K seems to
contradict that in his Note to 609-614 (p. 234-235): "diabolical radio music
from what I thought was some kind of amusement park across the road -- it
turned out to be camping tourists."

My first impression was that the Commentary and the Forward had been put
together out of order, with at least those two Notes (991 and 1000)
preceding the Foreword, but at least Note 609-614 being written afterwards,
but then it occurred to me that the writing must have taken place in
discrete groups based around location (or what I've been thinking about as
"planes") rather than according to the structure of Shade's poem.  The Notes
to 991 and 1000 take place in New Wye, as do all of the cross-references
that begin from the Note to 991; these must have been written first.  The
set of notes taking place in Zembla, those discussing only the poem itself,
and the Foreword must have been written next, and finally those notes
concerning K's exile in Utana must have been written last, given that they
refer to the Foreword.

Yet another wrinkle in the questions surrounding the way this thing got to
the printer.

Jasper