Subject
JM to MR on Trundling/Truckling, KQK:trundling a PS
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MR: What I did find in Webster's is that trundle is synonym to truckle, which can
mean "to yield or bend obsequiously to the will of another."
JM: In KQK, we have neat descriptions for this meaning of "truckling" (or trundling).
CCC's (page 834) "his thoughts were spinning alont from the push given them by Martha..." and page 851 ( where there is also a reference to Aqua Tofana, a poison widely explored in ADA) " Franz no longer had a will of his own; the best he could do was to refract her will in his own way" .
All the other mentions of "truckling" apply to authorial schemes and interventions on the lives of his compliant characters ( see page 838, for example).
( as a child the cartoons I read, with the blurbs translated into Portuguese, dogs still emitted sounds like "growl", "arf" , "bark,bark",crying girls went "snif,snif", doors closed "slam", a boy into a pool made "splash". There were crunch and crash, plink and plonk. Rolling stones went "rumble rumble". So... my PF gardener went "trundle, trundle", like old times before I realized those sounds corresponded to real verbs in English. And yet, I glanced into a Longmann's, and VN's "trundle" seems to be unrelated to truckle and even trucksters. )
Franz usually wears brown and resembles, although farcically, Blavdak Vinomori, when he is wearing dark glasses over his regular ones, and a red robe ( page 905). Vinomori's eyes are "walnut-brown", Vladimir Nabokov's are "hazel-brown"...
There is also a photographer, skier and teacher of English named Vivian Badlook ( page 845). A foreign couple and the guy with a butterfly-net flitter suspiciously by on pages 901,916,919.
Then comes the inventor, growing a beard along the story and beginning to acquire some names after becoming associated with "the god of chance" ( Cazelty or Sluch: any suggestions on the meaning or origin of such names?)
The colors of KQK ( for advertising the film created from Goldmar's successful play named "King Queen Knave") are:
King: maroon Knave: red turtleneck Queen: black bathing suit.
Isn't this insistence in "black, brown and red" an indication of the Red Admiral, similar to the description for Gradus' tie in Pale Fire?
Jansy
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