Subject
CORRECTION / THOUGHTS re: three options for coincidences in PF
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Date
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CORRECTION
Matt Roth's message was inexplicably garbled. The second option for
dealing with VN's coincidences should read as follows:
2. We can say that they simply reveal VN's role as pattern-maker. In
effect, all these coincidences are an analogy: Nabokov is to his
fictional characters and worlds as the cosmic game-players ("promoting
pawns / To ivory unicorns and ebon fauns") are to us.
John Morris writes in response to Matt:
Matt Roth’s excellent post has (among other perceptive
points)
nailed the most pressing problem about Botkin/Kinbote, I think. He
writes,
“If Kinbote can make up the exchanges in [the note to line 894] --and
these
events are impossible--then we should question the veracity of all
Kinbote's
supposed interactions with residents of New Wye, including John and
Sybil.”
But what happens if we do?
The problem, in brief, is how much narrative is actually
left
if neither Kinbote nor Zembla can be presumed to exist. We now have a
narrator so unreliable that we either believe nothing he says, or
selectively pick and choose which passages to accept or “correct” in
order
to support whatever theory we hold about the respective realities of
Zembla
and “Professor Kinbote” in the world of Pale Fire. Indeed, why should
our
radical Cartesian doubt stop with line 894, or interactions with New Wye
residents? This skeptical road, once embarked upon, has no self-evident
terminus.
This is a tedious way to approach a novel. Anything we say
about it now gets a footnote: “According to Botkin, who may be lying.”
Does
John Shade exist? Yes, according to Botkin, who may be lying. Does
Kinbote
abscond with the text of Shade’s poem? Yes, according to Botkin, who
may be
lying. And on and on.
Can this really be the reading experience VN intended for us?
Imagine you are describing this wonderful novel to someone who has never
read it. Do you begin, “The main characters are John Shade, an aging
poet,
and a Russian madman named Botkin who makes up this place called Zembla –
oh, and possibly Shade too; who knows?; he’s crazy! – and then . . .”?
I’m
not even sure how that sentence would end, and I’m quite sure that none
of
us would so describe Pale Fire. In VN’s own occasional words about the
book, he always adopted what we might call a “surface-level reliability”
version; for instance, he speaks of "the day on which Kinbote committed
suicide (and he certainly did, after putting the last touches to his
edition
of the poem)." That is, even though he elsewhere states that Kinbote is
really Botkin, he sees no need to tack that on to this gloss of the
book’s
denouement, or to question whether Kinbote really headed for the hills
with
Shade’s text. The story is about Charles Kinbote and John Shade,
whatever
else we may care to presume is “really” going on. V. Botkin isn’t even
a
character in the book, in an important sense.
Kinbote himself – irritating, pathetic, deluded, proud,
ultimately lovable – and his forever unreachable Onhava are what this
reader
cherishes in the novel. It’s all very well to say that K is “really”
Botkin. This may be a case in which “reality” (which for VN was “an
infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms…”)
should
remain a footnote, in a very small font.
Does this amount to “explaining less of the novel”? Yes,
that
worries me too. But it’s a symptom of a deeper worry; to use Matt
Roth’s
phrase, I worry about how V. Botkin can be “wedged into” any narratively
satisfying scenario. I’ll be interested to see what others think.
Regards,
J. Morris
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Matt Roth's message was inexplicably garbled. The second option for
dealing with VN's coincidences should read as follows:
2. We can say that they simply reveal VN's role as pattern-maker. In
effect, all these coincidences are an analogy: Nabokov is to his
fictional characters and worlds as the cosmic game-players ("promoting
pawns / To ivory unicorns and ebon fauns") are to us.
John Morris writes in response to Matt:
Matt Roth’s excellent post has (among other perceptive
points)
nailed the most pressing problem about Botkin/Kinbote, I think. He
writes,
“If Kinbote can make up the exchanges in [the note to line 894] --and
these
events are impossible--then we should question the veracity of all
Kinbote's
supposed interactions with residents of New Wye, including John and
Sybil.”
But what happens if we do?
The problem, in brief, is how much narrative is actually
left
if neither Kinbote nor Zembla can be presumed to exist. We now have a
narrator so unreliable that we either believe nothing he says, or
selectively pick and choose which passages to accept or “correct” in
order
to support whatever theory we hold about the respective realities of
Zembla
and “Professor Kinbote” in the world of Pale Fire. Indeed, why should
our
radical Cartesian doubt stop with line 894, or interactions with New Wye
residents? This skeptical road, once embarked upon, has no self-evident
terminus.
This is a tedious way to approach a novel. Anything we say
about it now gets a footnote: “According to Botkin, who may be lying.”
Does
John Shade exist? Yes, according to Botkin, who may be lying. Does
Kinbote
abscond with the text of Shade’s poem? Yes, according to Botkin, who
may be
lying. And on and on.
Can this really be the reading experience VN intended for us?
Imagine you are describing this wonderful novel to someone who has never
read it. Do you begin, “The main characters are John Shade, an aging
poet,
and a Russian madman named Botkin who makes up this place called Zembla –
oh, and possibly Shade too; who knows?; he’s crazy! – and then . . .”?
I’m
not even sure how that sentence would end, and I’m quite sure that none
of
us would so describe Pale Fire. In VN’s own occasional words about the
book, he always adopted what we might call a “surface-level reliability”
version; for instance, he speaks of "the day on which Kinbote committed
suicide (and he certainly did, after putting the last touches to his
edition
of the poem)." That is, even though he elsewhere states that Kinbote is
really Botkin, he sees no need to tack that on to this gloss of the
book’s
denouement, or to question whether Kinbote really headed for the hills
with
Shade’s text. The story is about Charles Kinbote and John Shade,
whatever
else we may care to presume is “really” going on. V. Botkin isn’t even
a
character in the book, in an important sense.
Kinbote himself – irritating, pathetic, deluded, proud,
ultimately lovable – and his forever unreachable Onhava are what this
reader
cherishes in the novel. It’s all very well to say that K is “really”
Botkin. This may be a case in which “reality” (which for VN was “an
infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms…”)
should
remain a footnote, in a very small font.
Does this amount to “explaining less of the novel”? Yes,
that
worries me too. But it’s a symptom of a deeper worry; to use Matt
Roth’s
phrase, I worry about how V. Botkin can be “wedged into” any narratively
satisfying scenario. I’ll be interested to see what others think.
Regards,
J. Morris
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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