Pale Fire

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Malignd" <malignd at yahoo.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2003 9:11 PM
Subject: RE: Pale Fire


> >>... an important author like Nabokov who has
> influenced Thomas Pynchon instead of merely discussing
> possible political connections of Pynchon's texts. I
> really wonder why those who had read "PF" before (some
> even twice) never have mentioned it's importance for
> Pynchon's literature; GR wouldn't be the same novel as
> we know it without Thomas having read "PF" as a key
> text for the development of American postmodernism and
> the genre in general.>>
>
> I've read PF a couple of times and have mentioned it
> on this list numerous times.  But the issue of
> influence is a dicey one and GR and PF are very
> different novels.  Indeed, I find their differences
> far exceed their similarities.
>
> But even without demonstrable influence, there is
> certainly usefulness in considering each in light of
> the other.
>

Your mentioning of PF might have escaped me, but a quick check of the
archives proves that you're right.

The differences between both novels are very obvious of course, but I'm not
talking about similarities but a general influence (I admit that 'influence'
even might be a too strong word for it) -- topics like death and afterlife,
binaries, chess, mathematical functions as metaphors (parable, lemniskate),
doubles, false identities, inversions, puns, homosexuality, unreliable
narrators etc.

Otto