NPPF Speaking of overt politics ...

[jbor]

Of Gradus, the "Extremist":

        Mere springs and coils produced the inward movements of
    our clockwork man. He might be termed a Puritan. One essential
    dislike, formidable in its simplicity, pervaded his dull soul:
    he disliked injustice and deception. He disliked their union -
    they were always together - with a wooden passion that neither
    had, nor needed, words to express itself. Such a dislike should
    have deserved praise had it not been a by-product of the man's
    hopeless stupidity. He called unjust and deceitful everything
    that surpassed his understanding. He worshipped general ideas
    and did so with pedantic aplomb. The generality was godly, the
    specific diabolical. If one person was poor and the other
    wealthy it did not matter what precisely had ruined one or made
    the other rich: the difference itself was unfair, and the poor
    man who did not denounce it was as wicked as the rich one who
    ignored it. People who knew too much, scientists, writers,
    mathematicians, crystalographers and so forth, were no better
    than kings or priests: they all held an unfair share of
    power of which others were cheated. A plain decent fellow should
    constantly be on the watch for some piece of clever knavery
    on the part of nature and neighbor.  (line 171 note)

Gradus, filtered through Kinbote (filtering Botkin, if necessary), but
filtering, not too indirectly, Nabokov.

Marvellous.

I'm amazed by how much this passage pre-empts _V._, and on in Pynchon's
oeuvre: thematically, politically, the whole shooting match!

Comments?

How bizarre that some readers believe that in denying character and event
they can impose base ideological doctrine onto these fictions.

best


> From: "sZ" <keithsz@[omitted]>
> To: <pynchon-l@[omitted]>
> Subject: Left-wing Infinitude
> Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 21:13:15 -0700
> 
> 
> All you lefties should come over to the Pale Fire discussion. We are deftly
> and nonchalantly enjoying Nabokov's words about the miracle of the
> lemniscate left.