Subject
Fw: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3423
From
Date
Body
> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 09:03:59 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Who's watching Gradus
>
> - --- gumbo@fuse.net wrote:
> > I also should have noted, as Jasper pointed out, Kinbote's gradual move
from
> third person to first in references to Charles the Beloved.
>
> His transition to third person in these stories about Charles have the
effect
> of making them into a myth or history instead of a personal account.
Again it
> makes me think of Stencil.
>
> DM
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:04:57 -0400
> From: <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: Re: Re: NPPF: Who's watching Gradus
>
> > Kinbote's gradual move from third person to first in references to
Charles the Beloved. It does seem to be a meaningful parallel, slipping into
one new identity as an old one is shed.
>
> Revising myself: Except, of course, that we know the King Charles persona
existed in the winter and spring, because Kinbote talked to Shade about it,
and the Gradus figure, as Malign pointed out, could not have been invented
until after the shooting.
>
> In the foreword and commentary, which were both written after Shade's
death, we see Kinbote first concealing and then revealing his identify as
the King, and apparently trying--not very successfully--to disguise some
other aspect of his personality in Gradus.
>
> Slippery bastard, that Mr. K.
>
> D.C.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
>
>
> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 09:40:05 -0700
> From: "Glenn Scheper" <glenn_scheper@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Who's watching Gradus?
>
> > "Canto Two, your favorite
> ....
> > Who is "you?" Canto Two is mainly about Shade's speculation on the
> > possibility of survival after death with particular emphasis on the
> > survival of Hazel.
> ....
> > No. Canto Two is about Hazel's suicide. It would be strange for that
>
> > to be someone's favorite.
> ....
> > Unless one's is seeking liberation from the the slings and arrows of
> outrageous fortune.
> > Who might not his own quietus make with a bare bodkin.
> > Had not the everlasting set his mark against self slaughter. (roughly)
>
> Aha. Looking up Bodkin == stilleto, helped a lot.
>
> When I tried to kill myself (leaving a freeway
> offramp at high speed after longtime driving with
> my thumb in right eye, as if I might pluck it out),
> all my attention was rapt by God, that is, by an
> intrusive authority pressuring me to kill myself.
>
> At other times, ideas of reference would make the
> radio seem to broadcast divine messages specific
> to me, first enticing me with how I was loved, and
> then changing to indict with God's disappointment.
>
> So if Kinbote were schizophrenic, You could be God.
>
> Yours truly,
> Glenn Scheper
> http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: 17 Jul 2003 12:53:34 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: More Re: N and homosexuatity
>
> On Thu, 2003-07-17 at 12:13, David Morris wrote:
> >
> >
http://dir.salon.com/books/feature/2000/05/17/nabokov/index.html?CP=YAH&DN=110
> >
> > The gay Nabokov
> > The novelist never could face the secret that cost his brother his life.
>
>
> Interesting. The extreme degree of VN's homophobia? Is this the view of
> his biographers? Was he bigoted in other ways? Antisemitic to any
> degree? Vera was Jewish. Geniuses are sometimes hard to figure.
>
> P.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 10:18:00 -0700 (PDT)
> From: pynchonoid <pynchonoid@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Lady Cowper an 18th century Kinbote?
>
> ....of possible interest to those discussing Kinbote:
>
> [...] Anne Kugler invites readers to meet cranky,
> self-righteous, Lady
> Sarah Cowper and to hear her tales of "forty-two years
> of wedded
> misery" [...] Sarah's more orthodox strategy for
> coping
> with an unhappy marriage was to record a lifetime of
> reading and
> writing, first in commonplace books, later in a
> seven-volume,
> 2,300-page diary written between 1700 and 1716. [...]
>
> What makes this study so rewarding for historians and
> literary
> critics is that Kugler has uncovered Sarah's method of
> seamlessly
> incorporating passages from the books that she read
> into her own
> personal observations. What at first seems an
> informal account is
> actually the product of the selection and intertwining
> of her own
> thoughts with specific conduct manuals, sermons,
> periodicals, and
> other prescriptive texts. In effect, Sarah speaks in
> the voice of
> others, without signaling that fact. "I account
> Stealing," she
> declares, "to be when we altogether Transcribe out of
> any Author,
> but to borrow and alter is what most do" (p. 3). This
> method allows
> Kugler to examine closely the relationship between
> prescriptive
> literature and actual practice. She finds that
> Sarah's own
> interpretations of her texts constantly subverted the
> intentions of
> their original authors. Sarah clearly read and
> employed
> prescriptive literature to support her own views. As
> she did so,
> however, she reshaped the words and meanings of those
> in authority.
>
> [...] Though so much is revealed, the reader still
> misses clues as to what
> Sarah looked like, illustrations of her handwriting, a
> page of her
> diary, and a portrait, if not of her, of her husband.
> What is more
> pressingly lacking, however, are other persons'
> perspectives of
> Sarah and her husband. Did others see her as she saw
> herself? Were
> her negative views and feelings of being wronged
> justified? Knowing
> that, like all historians, Sarah selectively
> interpreted texts to
> support her arguments, the reader misses multiple
> viewpoints gleaned
> from family correspondence. Dialogues with her
> husband are
> apparently absent, except in one instance, where he
> appears to be
> quite reasonable. Only at the end of the book, do we
> get a hint of
> another's view of her, when her son William expresses
> pity for her
> dependency in old age. As Kugler herself notes when
> dealing with a
> troubled annuity payment, without the other side of
> the story it is
> difficult to decide whether Sarah's anger against her
> family was
> appropriate.
>
> Kugler herself calls for caution in weighing
> autobiographical
> evidence. Indeed, she makes us understand that through
> her diary,
> Sarah was consciously "building a case to prove to God
> that she
> deserved to be saved on Judgment Day" (p. 63). Though
> she never
> contemplated publication, Sarah also hoped that her
> writings would
> posthumously vindicate her actions, in the eyes of her
> descendants.
> Sarah's journal does live on in Kugler's fine book.
> Historians and
> literary critics will want to read it and make their
> own conclusions
> about this complaining, self-righteous, but very human
> woman. [...]
>
> from:
> H-NET BOOK REVIEW
> Published by H-Albion@h-net.msu.edu (June 2003)
>
> Anne Kugler. _Errant Plagiary: The Life and Writing of
> Lady Sarah
> Cowper, 1644-1720_. Stanford: Stanford University
> Press, 2002. viii
> + 288 pp. Appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $55.00
> (cloth), ISBN
> 0-8047-3418-6.
>
> Reviewed for H-Albion by Susan E. Whyman
> <swhyman@monmouth.com>,
> Princeton University
>
> ------------------------------
>> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 11:39:48 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Malignd <malignd@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: More Re: N and homosexuatity
>
> <<Was he bigoted in other ways? Antisemitic to any
> degree? >>
>
> Apparently not racist, not antisemitic. But there
> seems to be little doubt about his homophobia.
>
>
>
> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 14:16:00 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: From the N-List
>
> From: tom@discobolus.co.za
> To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
>
> Dear Don and List...
>
> Now I know the true meaning of the term "brainstorm."
>
> With reference to the gum-logged Aunt Maud, the seafood aroma
> of the golden paste would seen to indicate that John Shade's abusive aunt
> was suffering from a Gardnerella infection.
>
> Maybe at this point it would be appropriate to recall how "Old McNab" used
to
> delight in setting traps for the over-
> sophisticated -- be they chess problem aficionados ot literary ferrets.
>
> Wherever VN and Vera are currently chasing butterflies, be it in Ardis or
> Zembla, I bet they're having a hilarious time,
> tuning in to the recent postings.
>
> I can just imagine his smile...
>
> Tom Rymour
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: 17 Jul 2003 17:28:07 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF--status of the two author theory
>
> Of course we have ventured far into the novel in opening up various
> theories of authorship but in order to keep the status of the OFFICIAL
> reading schedule straight is there anything in the foreword itself that
> leads us to suspect that the Kinbote edition of the Shade poem needs to
> be the product of a single mind--that one or the other gentlemen has to
> have invented the other? I don't recall that there is.
>
> P.
>
>
>
> Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 08:30:29 +1000
> From: jbor <jbor@bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Who's watching Gradus?
>
> > --- Jasper Fidget <jasper@hatguild.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> I agree -- and had the same impression -- that the narrator knows too
much
> > about Gradus and his story, especially toward the end when Gradus
becomes
> > fully
> > realized -- er real-ized? -- and the level of detail grows quite vivid.
>
> on 17/7/03 11:40 PM, David Morris wrote:
>
> > We readers know that there is no possible way for ANYONE to know as much
about
> > Gradus's journey as Kinbote relates to us - UNLESS the speaker was
Gradus.
> > Otherwise I think we have to chalk it up to Kinbote's imagination. This
whole
> > question brings to mind Stencil's "Stecilizations."
>
> Yes, I was going to suggest a tie-in between Stencil and Kinbote. Although
> the publication dates of the two novels are cutting it a bit fine for a
> direct influence, Stencil's interpretations (and wilful misinterpretation)
> of his father's diaries is very much like Kinbote.
>
> best
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 08:31:33 +1000
> From: jbor <jbor@bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: From the N-list
>
> on 18/7/03 12:36 AM, David Morris at fqmorris@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > http://www.centerforbookculture.org/context/no6/gessen.html
> >
> > Like many newly minted Americans, Nabokov worked to reinvent himself
upon new
> > shores--but he did not fall upon us from the sky. What should be made
clear
> > about his Russian work is that his poetry was straightforwardly lyrical,
> > emphatic, and peculiarly lacking in the sleights and feints we associate
with
> > Nabokov--it is not, in short, very interesting poetry.
>
> His early short stories (translated) are very much of a different era and
> style also, lacking in "the sleights and feints" etc.
>
> best
>
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3423
> ********************************
>
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Who's watching Gradus
>
> - --- gumbo@fuse.net wrote:
> > I also should have noted, as Jasper pointed out, Kinbote's gradual move
from
> third person to first in references to Charles the Beloved.
>
> His transition to third person in these stories about Charles have the
effect
> of making them into a myth or history instead of a personal account.
Again it
> makes me think of Stencil.
>
> DM
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:04:57 -0400
> From: <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: Re: Re: NPPF: Who's watching Gradus
>
> > Kinbote's gradual move from third person to first in references to
Charles the Beloved. It does seem to be a meaningful parallel, slipping into
one new identity as an old one is shed.
>
> Revising myself: Except, of course, that we know the King Charles persona
existed in the winter and spring, because Kinbote talked to Shade about it,
and the Gradus figure, as Malign pointed out, could not have been invented
until after the shooting.
>
> In the foreword and commentary, which were both written after Shade's
death, we see Kinbote first concealing and then revealing his identify as
the King, and apparently trying--not very successfully--to disguise some
other aspect of his personality in Gradus.
>
> Slippery bastard, that Mr. K.
>
> D.C.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
>
>
> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 09:40:05 -0700
> From: "Glenn Scheper" <glenn_scheper@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Who's watching Gradus?
>
> > "Canto Two, your favorite
> ....
> > Who is "you?" Canto Two is mainly about Shade's speculation on the
> > possibility of survival after death with particular emphasis on the
> > survival of Hazel.
> ....
> > No. Canto Two is about Hazel's suicide. It would be strange for that
>
> > to be someone's favorite.
> ....
> > Unless one's is seeking liberation from the the slings and arrows of
> outrageous fortune.
> > Who might not his own quietus make with a bare bodkin.
> > Had not the everlasting set his mark against self slaughter. (roughly)
>
> Aha. Looking up Bodkin == stilleto, helped a lot.
>
> When I tried to kill myself (leaving a freeway
> offramp at high speed after longtime driving with
> my thumb in right eye, as if I might pluck it out),
> all my attention was rapt by God, that is, by an
> intrusive authority pressuring me to kill myself.
>
> At other times, ideas of reference would make the
> radio seem to broadcast divine messages specific
> to me, first enticing me with how I was loved, and
> then changing to indict with God's disappointment.
>
> So if Kinbote were schizophrenic, You could be God.
>
> Yours truly,
> Glenn Scheper
> http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: 17 Jul 2003 12:53:34 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: More Re: N and homosexuatity
>
> On Thu, 2003-07-17 at 12:13, David Morris wrote:
> >
> >
http://dir.salon.com/books/feature/2000/05/17/nabokov/index.html?CP=YAH&DN=110
> >
> > The gay Nabokov
> > The novelist never could face the secret that cost his brother his life.
>
>
> Interesting. The extreme degree of VN's homophobia? Is this the view of
> his biographers? Was he bigoted in other ways? Antisemitic to any
> degree? Vera was Jewish. Geniuses are sometimes hard to figure.
>
> P.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 10:18:00 -0700 (PDT)
> From: pynchonoid <pynchonoid@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Lady Cowper an 18th century Kinbote?
>
> ....of possible interest to those discussing Kinbote:
>
> [...] Anne Kugler invites readers to meet cranky,
> self-righteous, Lady
> Sarah Cowper and to hear her tales of "forty-two years
> of wedded
> misery" [...] Sarah's more orthodox strategy for
> coping
> with an unhappy marriage was to record a lifetime of
> reading and
> writing, first in commonplace books, later in a
> seven-volume,
> 2,300-page diary written between 1700 and 1716. [...]
>
> What makes this study so rewarding for historians and
> literary
> critics is that Kugler has uncovered Sarah's method of
> seamlessly
> incorporating passages from the books that she read
> into her own
> personal observations. What at first seems an
> informal account is
> actually the product of the selection and intertwining
> of her own
> thoughts with specific conduct manuals, sermons,
> periodicals, and
> other prescriptive texts. In effect, Sarah speaks in
> the voice of
> others, without signaling that fact. "I account
> Stealing," she
> declares, "to be when we altogether Transcribe out of
> any Author,
> but to borrow and alter is what most do" (p. 3). This
> method allows
> Kugler to examine closely the relationship between
> prescriptive
> literature and actual practice. She finds that
> Sarah's own
> interpretations of her texts constantly subverted the
> intentions of
> their original authors. Sarah clearly read and
> employed
> prescriptive literature to support her own views. As
> she did so,
> however, she reshaped the words and meanings of those
> in authority.
>
> [...] Though so much is revealed, the reader still
> misses clues as to what
> Sarah looked like, illustrations of her handwriting, a
> page of her
> diary, and a portrait, if not of her, of her husband.
> What is more
> pressingly lacking, however, are other persons'
> perspectives of
> Sarah and her husband. Did others see her as she saw
> herself? Were
> her negative views and feelings of being wronged
> justified? Knowing
> that, like all historians, Sarah selectively
> interpreted texts to
> support her arguments, the reader misses multiple
> viewpoints gleaned
> from family correspondence. Dialogues with her
> husband are
> apparently absent, except in one instance, where he
> appears to be
> quite reasonable. Only at the end of the book, do we
> get a hint of
> another's view of her, when her son William expresses
> pity for her
> dependency in old age. As Kugler herself notes when
> dealing with a
> troubled annuity payment, without the other side of
> the story it is
> difficult to decide whether Sarah's anger against her
> family was
> appropriate.
>
> Kugler herself calls for caution in weighing
> autobiographical
> evidence. Indeed, she makes us understand that through
> her diary,
> Sarah was consciously "building a case to prove to God
> that she
> deserved to be saved on Judgment Day" (p. 63). Though
> she never
> contemplated publication, Sarah also hoped that her
> writings would
> posthumously vindicate her actions, in the eyes of her
> descendants.
> Sarah's journal does live on in Kugler's fine book.
> Historians and
> literary critics will want to read it and make their
> own conclusions
> about this complaining, self-righteous, but very human
> woman. [...]
>
> from:
> H-NET BOOK REVIEW
> Published by H-Albion@h-net.msu.edu (June 2003)
>
> Anne Kugler. _Errant Plagiary: The Life and Writing of
> Lady Sarah
> Cowper, 1644-1720_. Stanford: Stanford University
> Press, 2002. viii
> + 288 pp. Appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $55.00
> (cloth), ISBN
> 0-8047-3418-6.
>
> Reviewed for H-Albion by Susan E. Whyman
> <swhyman@monmouth.com>,
> Princeton University
>
> ------------------------------
>> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 11:39:48 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Malignd <malignd@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: More Re: N and homosexuatity
>
> <<Was he bigoted in other ways? Antisemitic to any
> degree? >>
>
> Apparently not racist, not antisemitic. But there
> seems to be little doubt about his homophobia.
>
>
>
> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 14:16:00 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: From the N-List
>
> From: tom@discobolus.co.za
> To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
>
> Dear Don and List...
>
> Now I know the true meaning of the term "brainstorm."
>
> With reference to the gum-logged Aunt Maud, the seafood aroma
> of the golden paste would seen to indicate that John Shade's abusive aunt
> was suffering from a Gardnerella infection.
>
> Maybe at this point it would be appropriate to recall how "Old McNab" used
to
> delight in setting traps for the over-
> sophisticated -- be they chess problem aficionados ot literary ferrets.
>
> Wherever VN and Vera are currently chasing butterflies, be it in Ardis or
> Zembla, I bet they're having a hilarious time,
> tuning in to the recent postings.
>
> I can just imagine his smile...
>
> Tom Rymour
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: 17 Jul 2003 17:28:07 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF--status of the two author theory
>
> Of course we have ventured far into the novel in opening up various
> theories of authorship but in order to keep the status of the OFFICIAL
> reading schedule straight is there anything in the foreword itself that
> leads us to suspect that the Kinbote edition of the Shade poem needs to
> be the product of a single mind--that one or the other gentlemen has to
> have invented the other? I don't recall that there is.
>
> P.
>
>
>
> Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 08:30:29 +1000
> From: jbor <jbor@bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Who's watching Gradus?
>
> > --- Jasper Fidget <jasper@hatguild.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> I agree -- and had the same impression -- that the narrator knows too
much
> > about Gradus and his story, especially toward the end when Gradus
becomes
> > fully
> > realized -- er real-ized? -- and the level of detail grows quite vivid.
>
> on 17/7/03 11:40 PM, David Morris wrote:
>
> > We readers know that there is no possible way for ANYONE to know as much
about
> > Gradus's journey as Kinbote relates to us - UNLESS the speaker was
Gradus.
> > Otherwise I think we have to chalk it up to Kinbote's imagination. This
whole
> > question brings to mind Stencil's "Stecilizations."
>
> Yes, I was going to suggest a tie-in between Stencil and Kinbote. Although
> the publication dates of the two novels are cutting it a bit fine for a
> direct influence, Stencil's interpretations (and wilful misinterpretation)
> of his father's diaries is very much like Kinbote.
>
> best
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 08:31:33 +1000
> From: jbor <jbor@bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: From the N-list
>
> on 18/7/03 12:36 AM, David Morris at fqmorris@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > http://www.centerforbookculture.org/context/no6/gessen.html
> >
> > Like many newly minted Americans, Nabokov worked to reinvent himself
upon new
> > shores--but he did not fall upon us from the sky. What should be made
clear
> > about his Russian work is that his poetry was straightforwardly lyrical,
> > emphatic, and peculiarly lacking in the sleights and feints we associate
with
> > Nabokov--it is not, in short, very interesting poetry.
>
> His early short stories (translated) are very much of a different era and
> style also, lacking in "the sleights and feints" etc.
>
> best
>
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3423
> ********************************
>