Subject
Re: from Ron Rosenbaum re VN's own words about the <Pale Fire>
narrator]
narrator]
From
Date
Body
For those who don't know, and who might be interested, Ron Rosenbaum published
at least three columns on VN in the New York Observer, two of which are devoted
to the views of Brian Boyd. Besides the one Rosenbaum linked us to a couple of
days ago, here are links to the others that I'm aware of:
In the Personal Library of Vladimir Nabokov Are Clues to the Esoteric Obsessions
of the Supreme Esthete.
By Ron Rosenbaum
November 23, 1997 | 7:00 p.m
http://www.observer.com/node/39879
The Novel of the Century: Nabokov's Pale Fire
By Ron Rosenbaum
December 5, 1999 | 7:00 p.m
http://www.observer.com/node/42295
I would guess that all three of these columns were duly noted on the List when
they appeared, and perhaps discussed, but I have not gone back and checked.
Jim Twiggs
________________________________
From: Nabokv-L <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Mon, August 9, 2010 12:00:54 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] from Ron Rosenbaum re VN's own words about the <Pale Fire>
narrator]
EDNote: Since R. Rosenbaum's challenge here is to B. Boyd, I am not going to
post any responses to this gauntlet until B.Boyd has had a chance to make his
own reply, at which point I'll open the forum for others' observations. Normally
I would have asked an author to edit out such phrases as "sadly ill advised" and
"untethered critical virtuosity", and I point to them here as reminders to all
to keep discourse respectful and free of ad hominem comments. It's a tricky
boundary, and these clearly straddle it, or at least tickle it. Let's please
stick to the facts. ~SB
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: from Ron Rosenbaum re VN's own words about the narrator
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2010 09:20:28 -0700
From: palefire30 <palefire30@yahoo.com>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
There's an old saying that when you find you're in a hole best stop digging. I
couldn't help but think of it--and of Occams's razor (entities should not be
multiplied beypnd necessity") when reading Brian Boyd's latest attempt to force
the text of Pale Fire to offer evidence in favor of his assertion that Hazel
Shade is the real auithor of "Pale Fire" and <Pale Fire>.
And make no mistake about it, although he seems to be now backing away from it,
thankfully, to register instead all sorts of Hazel Shade "presences" in the
book, I have some first hand evidence for what he originally professed, because
I happened to interview Profesor Boyd in 1999 in New York when he first
announced that he had renounced his revious "shadean "Shadean" position (that
the poet John Shade made up the madman's commentary on his own poem. And that
Boyd had had an epiphany that it was <really> Shade's dead daughter Hazel whod
done it and that Boyd had turned that theory into a book into a (sadly ill
advised) six week frenzy of misreading and writing.
You can read my interview with Boyd about his second conversion to a new
narrator theory here:
<http://www.observer.com/node/41393>
Here we have in Boyd's own words his Hazel Shade theory.
But in re reading the interview I was struck by something I had forgotten.
That VN himself explicitly tells us who <he> believed was the real madman
narrator: V. Botkin. Not Mary Mccarthy who was the first reviewer to suggest it,
but VN himself.
I'm surprised that I haven't seen this name mentioned by the many discussants
of the question on the list of late--it's only the author's own words after all.
But here is how I introduced those words in the article on Boyd above.although
"The controversy over the commentary began almost as soon as the 1962
publication of Pale Fire , with a now-famous New Republic essay by Mary McCarthy
about the novel (an essay entitled "A Bolt From the Blue") which called it "one
of the very great works of art of the 20th century," and which advanced a
strikingly ingenious conjecture about the identity of the mad commentator,
Charles Kinbote: "The real, real story" of Pale Fire , she argued, is that
Kinbote and his Zemblan Kingdom are both the invention of a barely mentioned
figure in the novel, a fellow faculty member of Kinbote and Shade, a fellow
identified in the commentary only as "V. Botkin." Although V. Botkin is referred
to only briefly, he occupies a disproportionate amount of space in the index
"Kinbote" has appended to his commentary. And from clues in the index and
elsewhere, Mary McCarthy argued that Kinbote was a fictive persona created
anagrammatically by V. Botkin (a name
enclasped,
I've just noticed, by the initials V.N.).
It was a brilliant conjecture which was adopted by most readers and critics for
nearly three decades until Brian Boyd sought to overturn it. [Actually Andrew
Field was the first Shadean, Boyd a later disciple]. It [the Botkin theory] was
a conjecture which Mr. Boyd's own research in the Nabokov archives seemed to
confirm. According to a footnote in Mr. Boyd's second volume of his Nabokov
biography, "At the end of his 1962 diary, Nabokov drafted some phrases for
possible interviews: 'I wonder if any reader will notice the following details:
1) that the nasty commentator is not an ex-King and not even Dr. Kinbote but
Prof. Vseslav Botkin, a Russian and a madman …'"
Sure I suppose the novel is so linguistically complex, one could spend the
rest of one's career, as Boyd seems willing to do, defending or backing off
slowly from his Hazel Shade conjecture.
But it would be sad if this brilliant biographer decides that he wants as
part of his legacy to be identified with what William of Occam would have called
an unnecessary entity. (Hazel as author). it would be sad if readers of <Pale
Fire> were to take this tortured interpretation as a key to unlock the novel's
magic.
Isn't it time we gave VN's own words about the narrator and their
implications the attention they deserve rather than inventing distractions in
order to demonstrate an untethered critical virtuosity?
Come back to V. Botkin, Brian Boyd.
Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
co-editors.
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
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Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
at least three columns on VN in the New York Observer, two of which are devoted
to the views of Brian Boyd. Besides the one Rosenbaum linked us to a couple of
days ago, here are links to the others that I'm aware of:
In the Personal Library of Vladimir Nabokov Are Clues to the Esoteric Obsessions
of the Supreme Esthete.
By Ron Rosenbaum
November 23, 1997 | 7:00 p.m
http://www.observer.com/node/39879
The Novel of the Century: Nabokov's Pale Fire
By Ron Rosenbaum
December 5, 1999 | 7:00 p.m
http://www.observer.com/node/42295
I would guess that all three of these columns were duly noted on the List when
they appeared, and perhaps discussed, but I have not gone back and checked.
Jim Twiggs
________________________________
From: Nabokv-L <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU>
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Mon, August 9, 2010 12:00:54 PM
Subject: [NABOKV-L] from Ron Rosenbaum re VN's own words about the <Pale Fire>
narrator]
EDNote: Since R. Rosenbaum's challenge here is to B. Boyd, I am not going to
post any responses to this gauntlet until B.Boyd has had a chance to make his
own reply, at which point I'll open the forum for others' observations. Normally
I would have asked an author to edit out such phrases as "sadly ill advised" and
"untethered critical virtuosity", and I point to them here as reminders to all
to keep discourse respectful and free of ad hominem comments. It's a tricky
boundary, and these clearly straddle it, or at least tickle it. Let's please
stick to the facts. ~SB
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: from Ron Rosenbaum re VN's own words about the narrator
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 2010 09:20:28 -0700
From: palefire30 <palefire30@yahoo.com>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
There's an old saying that when you find you're in a hole best stop digging. I
couldn't help but think of it--and of Occams's razor (entities should not be
multiplied beypnd necessity") when reading Brian Boyd's latest attempt to force
the text of Pale Fire to offer evidence in favor of his assertion that Hazel
Shade is the real auithor of "Pale Fire" and <Pale Fire>.
And make no mistake about it, although he seems to be now backing away from it,
thankfully, to register instead all sorts of Hazel Shade "presences" in the
book, I have some first hand evidence for what he originally professed, because
I happened to interview Profesor Boyd in 1999 in New York when he first
announced that he had renounced his revious "shadean "Shadean" position (that
the poet John Shade made up the madman's commentary on his own poem. And that
Boyd had had an epiphany that it was <really> Shade's dead daughter Hazel whod
done it and that Boyd had turned that theory into a book into a (sadly ill
advised) six week frenzy of misreading and writing.
You can read my interview with Boyd about his second conversion to a new
narrator theory here:
<http://www.observer.com/node/41393>
Here we have in Boyd's own words his Hazel Shade theory.
But in re reading the interview I was struck by something I had forgotten.
That VN himself explicitly tells us who <he> believed was the real madman
narrator: V. Botkin. Not Mary Mccarthy who was the first reviewer to suggest it,
but VN himself.
I'm surprised that I haven't seen this name mentioned by the many discussants
of the question on the list of late--it's only the author's own words after all.
But here is how I introduced those words in the article on Boyd above.although
"The controversy over the commentary began almost as soon as the 1962
publication of Pale Fire , with a now-famous New Republic essay by Mary McCarthy
about the novel (an essay entitled "A Bolt From the Blue") which called it "one
of the very great works of art of the 20th century," and which advanced a
strikingly ingenious conjecture about the identity of the mad commentator,
Charles Kinbote: "The real, real story" of Pale Fire , she argued, is that
Kinbote and his Zemblan Kingdom are both the invention of a barely mentioned
figure in the novel, a fellow faculty member of Kinbote and Shade, a fellow
identified in the commentary only as "V. Botkin." Although V. Botkin is referred
to only briefly, he occupies a disproportionate amount of space in the index
"Kinbote" has appended to his commentary. And from clues in the index and
elsewhere, Mary McCarthy argued that Kinbote was a fictive persona created
anagrammatically by V. Botkin (a name
enclasped,
I've just noticed, by the initials V.N.).
It was a brilliant conjecture which was adopted by most readers and critics for
nearly three decades until Brian Boyd sought to overturn it. [Actually Andrew
Field was the first Shadean, Boyd a later disciple]. It [the Botkin theory] was
a conjecture which Mr. Boyd's own research in the Nabokov archives seemed to
confirm. According to a footnote in Mr. Boyd's second volume of his Nabokov
biography, "At the end of his 1962 diary, Nabokov drafted some phrases for
possible interviews: 'I wonder if any reader will notice the following details:
1) that the nasty commentator is not an ex-King and not even Dr. Kinbote but
Prof. Vseslav Botkin, a Russian and a madman …'"
Sure I suppose the novel is so linguistically complex, one could spend the
rest of one's career, as Boyd seems willing to do, defending or backing off
slowly from his Hazel Shade conjecture.
But it would be sad if this brilliant biographer decides that he wants as
part of his legacy to be identified with what William of Occam would have called
an unnecessary entity. (Hazel as author). it would be sad if readers of <Pale
Fire> were to take this tortured interpretation as a key to unlock the novel's
magic.
Isn't it time we gave VN's own words about the narrator and their
implications the attention they deserve rather than inventing distractions in
order to demonstrate an untethered critical virtuosity?
Come back to V. Botkin, Brian Boyd.
Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
co-editors.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/