NPPF: Who's watching Gradus?

[Paul Mackin]

On Wed, 2003-07-16 at 23:05, Don Corathers wrote:
> Tim and Jasper were talking about narrative voice and authority this
> morning, and it set me thinking about an aspect of Kinbote's narrative point
> of view that I don't think we've touched on yet, that has some bearing on
> the question of who is responsible for the commentary. From the beginning of
> the foreword to the last page of the commentary, Kinbote speaks to us pretty
> consistently in the same first-person voice. Whacked, but consistent.


He does slip briefly into a second person voice (singular or plural?) in
the second sentence of the second paragraph of the foreword.

"Canto Two, your favorite, and that shocking tour de force, Canto Three,
are identical in length (334 lines) and cover twenty-seven cards each."

Who is "you?" Canto Two is mainly about Shade's speculation on the
possibility of survival after death with particular emphasis on the
survival of Hazel.

He can't likely be addressing the dead Shade, because in the immediately
following sentence "his death" is referred to. Hazel is a possibility.
Why might Kinbote want speak or pretend to speak to Hazel? 

But, now, on with Don's speculation about Gradus . . . .




> 
> *Except* when he's describing Gradus's progress from Zembla across Europe to
> New York and on to New Wye. Those sections are written in a jarringly
> omniscient third person, profoundly different from the rest of Kinbote's
> text. In them we are given a great deal of detail that could only have come
> from somebody who was present. We're told what people were wearing and given
> extended quotes of conversations and direct observations about what the
> weather was like, what the air smelled like, the "blinding blue of the sea"
> at Nice, all this in spite of the fact that Gradus is "exceptionally
> unobservant." More than that, we are inside Gradus's consciousness. We know
> what he had to eat and how it affected his digestive processes, how he was
> feeling, what he was thinking, why he was infuriated by the instruction to
> amuse himself in the South of France.
> 
> Now, Kinbote tells us he had an interview (or was it two?) with Gradus when
> the killer was in custody after the murder, and the implication is that he
> captured all of this narrative detail in that meeting. I don't believe it.
> 
> But I'm not sure where that leads. Seems to me there are three
> possibilities:
> 
> 1. The writer of the commentary was present. That is, Kinbote was describing
> first-person experiences, but shifted the narrative to the third person.
> Kinbote = Gradus. Problematical, yes (but what about this puzzle isn't?)
> because if we accept Kinbote's calendar, he was with Shade in New Wye when
> Gradus was traveling from Zembla.
> 
> 2. Kinbote (or somebody posing as Kinbote) made the whole thing up. This
> seems to be the default explanation for everything that cannot otherwise be
> sorted out in this novel. Not as much fun as some of the other
> possibilities.
> 
> 3. The wild card, Gerald Emerald, is somehow in play. He is present in at
> least three of Gradus's traveling episodes.
> 
> I expect we'll be returning to this question in the coming weeks.
> 
> Don Corathers
> 
> 
> 
> 
> >  Perhaps
> > we are conditioned to suspect the 1st person voice, reduce it immediately
> to
> > opinion and limited perspective, while the 3rd person voice has that
> > compelling pretension to omniscience.  Does this trust in a 3rd person
> voice
> > imply our susceptibility to control by others?  If so, with a missed
> > communication, I think in a 3rd person narrative we are less suspicious of
> > the *origin* of the message.  When told by the god-narrator that it
> exists,
> > then we assume that yes, it must exist.  If Pynchon is concerned with
> > methods of control, then why assume in his narrative voice one such
> method?
> > Or does he work consciously to undermine that voice?
> >
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