Some general comments on PF.

[Prsamsa at aol.com]

At the risk of too much sound and fury,
I'd like to say:  PF is an explosion of the novel form.  Pynchon
would tire of the conventional narrative novel before he'd
written his first one, and maybe VN helped?  Could we guess
that Nabokov had seen what some students had done on papers to
butcher the principles of "New Criticism", as put forth by the leading
poetry scholars of the time--Ransom, Brooks, Jarrell, Robert Penn
Warren, and the Vanderbilt crowd of the "Fugitive" mag, etc.--
and decided, I'll have an insane person, beset by demons and 
pretty much clinical paranoia, decipher a pretty straight-forward poem.

Of course it pricks academia itself (as TP does in his fictional scholarly
articles in fictional journals) and that may be something to get on later.

Nabokov had published poetry before leaving Russia, and wrote in Russian
for decades before learning English and mastering the novel form
in that language.  More than in his prose,  there's still a touch
of the dictionary about his poetry;  no free-verser he, why not write fiction
if you won't observe most of the traditions of verse?  --again that seems
outside the purpose of this short post. 
 
Just a note too, that "Speak Memory", is a good resource on VN's life
and he is much less astringent on the current Soviet government than
one might expect, but WAS uprooted (1919) and thrust into survival-mode much 
as
a certain character in PF was-- so he would stretch and exaggerate and 
bend tales he probably heard from expatriate Russians in Paris and New York,
and that could account for the genesis of the fictional king of Zembla.

Which ReZembles the USSR not in the least, but does resemble the 
overripe monarchies that WWII finally toppled, (Bulgaria, 
Albania?), (could it be that similar countries attract and yet use opposite 
letters,
so--
A for Z?) -- and that TP parodies a fictional country/monarch
with the Giant Adenoid dreams that PPrentice is compelled to have for
the govt-in-exile in London.  

Have there been any posts on what happened to kings of Bulgaria, 
Albania, etc?  In Greece during the late 1940's, there was lots of
back and forth between several parties, the Resistance had been
mainly socialist, so once the 1950's swung into McCarthyite
fury, I believe the US did an about-face and left the commies holding
lots of metal hard-ons with no vaseline, so to speak....supplying
the other side, it was soon, bend over for our former buddies
who'd fought the Nazi's--Greece, love it or leave it, huh?  

from the hip, some, correct me if I'm far off.  But write me just because,
or comment, too--

best at gongonzo at msn.com
because I have 480 pieces of mail in my mailbox right now and no way
of distinguishing p-posts from personal without eyestrain, and you 
guygurls'es
must be superhuman at reading posts if you get through them all.

Perry Sams,
"Samsa."    
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