Pale Fire

[Terrance]

> Part of the schizophrenia of this book is the various ways in which it
> gets you to read it.  Almost as if there are several personalities in
> the book vying for your attention (all the way from Kinbote's suggestion
> to destruct the book itself to the commentaries' instructions), as if
> each voice (POV?) is attempting to make its own case for authorship.
> And what of Kinbote's suggestion to take the book apart?  Is this satire
> on "deconstruction"?  If so, what does that say about whether we should
> grapple for clues outside the text or not; is this satire on attempts to
> claim everything that we can know is text, that is, is constructed of
> signs in relationship?  And then that whole existence of an independent,
> physical world.

You can take it a part, see how it was constructed, analyze it, but in
the end, so N claims in Franz Kafka, "you have to have in you some cell,
some gene, some germ that will vibrate in answer to sensations that you
can neither define,  nor dismiss."  

Paul,  Ada fits N's definition of art: "beauty plus pity."