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Fw: Fw: Pale Fire, the poem
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> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (38
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> From Walter Miale <wmiale@acbm.qc.ca>
> Subject: Pale Fire, the poem
>
> >> > Is the poem in the novel, Pale Fire, supposed to be a demonstration
of
> >> > poetic genuis?
>
> This was addressed by "Mondegreen" in the discussion on the Pynchon list.
> Restated:
>
> Regarding Shade, the poet: Brian Boyd is emphatic that Shade's Pale Fire
is
> major stuff. Certainly Nabokov's Shade's Pale Fire is a masterpiece, but I
> find the author behind the author to be winking or smiling through the
> lines, which are so integrally --I would say inseparably-- part of a
> "gothic" structure, and some of which have an apparently unconsciously
> droll --even if simultaneously tragic-- ring, or at least a parodic
> character; homely lines of a homely author. For example: a few lines after
> the wonderfully evocative line 57 "The phantom of my little daughter's
> swing," there is the rather incongruous diction of "TV's huge paperclip";
> lines 76-78 "certain words...such as 'bad heart' always to him refer, And
> 'cancer of the pancreas' to her" are true and touching, but aren't they
> somehow bathetic if not gulptious? And Nabokov's lines (beginning with
295)
> that introduce the theme of Hazel's unattractiveness in the eyes of her
> parents: "At first we'd smile and say: All little girls are plump'"
> ...."'That's the awkward age.'" ..."....'Less starch, more fruit!'" ...
> "...that nice frail roommate, now a nun" ...and "almost fetching" are
very
> sad, but they are also arch and droll, aren't they? I think, as Kinbote
> tells us, the poem needs the commentary. Yes, GK is right, and I think "I
> loathe such things as jazz" (Nabokov perhaps turning his own tastes (?)
> into parody) clinches it. ("*such things as* jazz"?)
>
> Shade's closeup focus on his daughter's physical defects, her "swollen
> feet" and "psoriatic fingernails," (355) and his readiness to share these
> minutae with the world, inform the reader that for Shade her
> unattractiveness is integrally and inevitably linked to unhappiness,
> Hazel's and his own. Does he ever inquire or --like David Morris-- wonder
> if Hazel's misery might derive from any cause or causes other than her
> bodily appearance? "She'd criticize Ferociously our projects" (352), but I
> don't think Shade ever took the hint.
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (38
lines) ------------------
> From Walter Miale <wmiale@acbm.qc.ca>
> Subject: Pale Fire, the poem
>
> >> > Is the poem in the novel, Pale Fire, supposed to be a demonstration
of
> >> > poetic genuis?
>
> This was addressed by "Mondegreen" in the discussion on the Pynchon list.
> Restated:
>
> Regarding Shade, the poet: Brian Boyd is emphatic that Shade's Pale Fire
is
> major stuff. Certainly Nabokov's Shade's Pale Fire is a masterpiece, but I
> find the author behind the author to be winking or smiling through the
> lines, which are so integrally --I would say inseparably-- part of a
> "gothic" structure, and some of which have an apparently unconsciously
> droll --even if simultaneously tragic-- ring, or at least a parodic
> character; homely lines of a homely author. For example: a few lines after
> the wonderfully evocative line 57 "The phantom of my little daughter's
> swing," there is the rather incongruous diction of "TV's huge paperclip";
> lines 76-78 "certain words...such as 'bad heart' always to him refer, And
> 'cancer of the pancreas' to her" are true and touching, but aren't they
> somehow bathetic if not gulptious? And Nabokov's lines (beginning with
295)
> that introduce the theme of Hazel's unattractiveness in the eyes of her
> parents: "At first we'd smile and say: All little girls are plump'"
> ...."'That's the awkward age.'" ..."....'Less starch, more fruit!'" ...
> "...that nice frail roommate, now a nun" ...and "almost fetching" are
very
> sad, but they are also arch and droll, aren't they? I think, as Kinbote
> tells us, the poem needs the commentary. Yes, GK is right, and I think "I
> loathe such things as jazz" (Nabokov perhaps turning his own tastes (?)
> into parody) clinches it. ("*such things as* jazz"?)
>
> Shade's closeup focus on his daughter's physical defects, her "swollen
> feet" and "psoriatic fingernails," (355) and his readiness to share these
> minutae with the world, inform the reader that for Shade her
> unattractiveness is integrally and inevitably linked to unhappiness,
> Hazel's and his own. Does he ever inquire or --like David Morris-- wonder
> if Hazel's misery might derive from any cause or causes other than her
> bodily appearance? "She'd criticize Ferociously our projects" (352), but I
> don't think Shade ever took the hint.