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Re: [THOUGHTS] Dead and Living authors...
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James Twiggs [to JM's question ""Would Nabokov have intended to allude to Barthes, Derrida and others by killing his two authors?" ] The answer is surely not. The death of Shade and the (alleged) death of Kinbote are specific to the novel in which they are characters and not illustrative of any such general idea as Barthes' "death of the author." We all know what VN thought about general ideas. Furthermore, even if he was aware of Barthes, Derrida, et al., their politics, if not their theorizing, would have driven him up the wall.
JM: Thanks for no hem-and-hawing in your answer ("surely not..."), it's rather refreshing! Yes, I agree that Bathes and Derrida et alii would have "driven Nabokov up the wall."
If Nabokov had intended to re-create in fiction a synthesis for Shade's and Kinbote's existence [" but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness" (darkness=a book unread)], and offer, at the same time, a mockery of Barthes' "death of an author" by killing off his two author-creatures, his novel would not have come out as the "Pale Fire" we hold in our hands (or in a PC screen).
However, I gather that Flaubert and T.S.Eliot (authors who are conflictingly present in Nabokov's heart),sometime ahead of Barthes's formulation,were already cultivating the perspective of an "absent third-person narrator," a project which Nabokov doesn't seem to have embraced ever, although he takes some pains to refer to both GF and TSE (GF is present in ADA, I cannot remember him in PF).
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JM: Thanks for no hem-and-hawing in your answer ("surely not..."), it's rather refreshing! Yes, I agree that Bathes and Derrida et alii would have "driven Nabokov up the wall."
If Nabokov had intended to re-create in fiction a synthesis for Shade's and Kinbote's existence [" but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness" (darkness=a book unread)], and offer, at the same time, a mockery of Barthes' "death of an author" by killing off his two author-creatures, his novel would not have come out as the "Pale Fire" we hold in our hands (or in a PC screen).
However, I gather that Flaubert and T.S.Eliot (authors who are conflictingly present in Nabokov's heart),sometime ahead of Barthes's formulation,were already cultivating the perspective of an "absent third-person narrator," a project which Nabokov doesn't seem to have embraced ever, although he takes some pains to refer to both GF and TSE (GF is present in ADA, I cannot remember him in PF).
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/