NPPF - All Done?

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename at verizon.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2003 5:50 PM
Subject: NPPF - All Done?


> I guess we're more or less done with Pale Fire now?  I've been unable to
> participate much in recent weeks due to an overburdening of other work,
but
> it looks as if the traffic has trickled and the scheduled has ceased.
>
> I think we did a fairly decent job for a bunch of non-experts dealing with
a
> difficult text.  Thanks to all who participated; you've increased my
> appreciation and understanding of a great book and the myriad topics it
> touches upon.  Perhaps the nay-sayers were right and most of the Pynchon
> connections were tenuous if not absent, but I think it was a worthwhile
> experiment anyway.
>
> Now who's ready for Moby Dick?
>
> Jasper Fidget
>

First, I think, VLVL should get the chance of our undivided attention. Look
at the great job Tim, Dave and others are doing.

Second, there are still parts of the Commentary that are worth a little
discussion. Further I miss a more general conversation about the threefold
structure of PF.

There's the binary opposition between modernist Shade and pre-modernist
Kinbote. Shade using the poem-form to express his attitude towards the world
and a possible afterlife, Kinbote spinning a kind of mock hero-tale of a
king that never has existed, and expecting an ode to this king from Shade.
He is disappointed by Shade's poem but in the end the sees clearly what he
himself has done:

"I may pander to the simple tastes of theatrical critics and cook up a stage
play, an old-fashioned melodrama with three principles: a lunatic who
intends to kill an imaginary king, another lunatic who imagines to be that
king, and a distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance into the line of
fire, and perishes in the clash between the two figments."

The last point I think which is very interesting is the question about
Nakokov's own "view" of the world and life after death. I tend to believe
that by letting down Shade in his belief the real author expresses that he
doesn't share this belief:

"I'm reasonably sure that we survive
And that my darling somewhere is alive,
As I am reasonably sure that I
Shall wake at six tomorrow, on July
The twenty-second, nineteen fifty-nine,
And that the day will probably be fine;"
(977-80)

I'm a little bit disappointed that Brian Boyd is silent about this passage,
that Shade's convinction is broken so harshly by the course of the novel.

I would reverse Shade's logic here and conclude that Nabokov is telling us
that he's an atheist, that tales of an afterlife is what they are: tales,
thus fiction.

Otto