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JM on slippery shagbark (Department of Corrections)
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Carolyn called my attention to several incorrections made by me while adding comments on an impulse without checking them first.
I said Shade had slipped but it was, indeed Kinbote who fell and gave start to the machine ( Foreword, page 20,Everyman's edition).
The point about a kind of creative crash remains, but the actual wording is less noisy: As CK writes: "I lost my footing and sad down on the surprisingly hard snow. My fall acted as a chemical reagent on Shade's sedan,..." ( a "chemical reagent"????)
Carolyn added "since you bring up this scene, has anyone given any thought to the reason for the fight between Sybil & Shade?"
Now, look at who was driving! John Shade, himself, was "at the wheel..." and he almost ran over Kinbote.
A very fast move, by the way ( Shade had been outside his old packard, "distributing handfuls of brown sand over the blue glaze") . Quite a surprising feat for such a clumsy shuffling sick guy wearing snowboots and holding a bucket! .
The other mistake relates to the tree. I recollected Kinbote's reference as mentioning the Juniper, but it must indeed have been a (shag-bark) "hickory".
I don't know why "shag-bark" displeases me so much that I wanted to associate it to any other kind of name, risking a Kinbotean turn to achieve that...My only excuse is that I've never seen either ( juniper or hickory).
Thank you, Carolyn, for your attentive reading.
Jansy
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I said Shade had slipped but it was, indeed Kinbote who fell and gave start to the machine ( Foreword, page 20,Everyman's edition).
The point about a kind of creative crash remains, but the actual wording is less noisy: As CK writes: "I lost my footing and sad down on the surprisingly hard snow. My fall acted as a chemical reagent on Shade's sedan,..." ( a "chemical reagent"????)
Carolyn added "since you bring up this scene, has anyone given any thought to the reason for the fight between Sybil & Shade?"
Now, look at who was driving! John Shade, himself, was "at the wheel..." and he almost ran over Kinbote.
A very fast move, by the way ( Shade had been outside his old packard, "distributing handfuls of brown sand over the blue glaze") . Quite a surprising feat for such a clumsy shuffling sick guy wearing snowboots and holding a bucket! .
The other mistake relates to the tree. I recollected Kinbote's reference as mentioning the Juniper, but it must indeed have been a (shag-bark) "hickory".
I don't know why "shag-bark" displeases me so much that I wanted to associate it to any other kind of name, risking a Kinbotean turn to achieve that...My only excuse is that I've never seen either ( juniper or hickory).
Thank you, Carolyn, for your attentive reading.
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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