Matthew Roth (I think) wrote:
> Jerry Friedman wrote:
> "Technically, by the way, I don't believe the Botkin reading is
> MPD. Botkin acquires the delusion that he's Kinbote the ex-king,
> but we don't see him switch back and forth between B. and K."
>
> But he must switch back and forth (assuming for the moment that he is
> not a
> figment of Shade's psyche). If he is Kinbote all the time, what
> department
> does he teach in at Wordsmith?
Never specified as far as I know, though he tells us he taught
literature in Zembla (n. 12), so we might imagine he teaches a
course rather like Nabokov's at Cornell, only with more about
himself and more personal interaction with the male students.
> Is there really a Zemblan dept.?
No, and the chair of Kinbote's department isn't Zemblan either.
(Just one reader's opinion.)
> This brings
> home one of the reasons I've never found the traditional (Shade and
> Kinbote
> as separate characters) theory of the novel satisfying. I simply can't
> imagine how Kinbote/Botkin would be able to keep his job for more than a
> day. If Kinbote's delusional state is constant, as JF asserts above, he
> would scarcely be able to teach Zemblan at Wordsmith.
I didn't exactly assert it. I said a non-constant delusion
isn't part of the Botkin reading (which is my second-last reading).
I should have said I don't see evidence one way or the other.
An example of people in New Wye dealing with the insane Kinbote
is in the Foreword (p. 25 of the Vintage edition, and I love
Amazon book search): the lady who Kinbote exasperates.
> If, on the other
> hand, he exists as Botkin at Wordsmith, how do we reconcile all the
> scenes
> where he clearly identifies himself to others as Charles Kinbote? I
> can't
> imagine the college would sit by while someone who is clearly and openly
> insane teaches there.
Seems to me that subject has come up, but I can't find it in
the list archives.
> And why would Shade be so unfazed?
Kindness to the unsuccessful? Or the attitude shown in this
passage?
"'That is the wrong word,' he said. 'One should not apply it to
a person who deliberately peels off a drab and unhappy past and
replaces it with a brilliant invention. That's merely turning
a new leaf with the left hand.'" (n. 629)
"Deliberately"? I hadn't noticed the possible significance of
that before. Did he announce that his new name was "a kind of
anagram of Botkin or Botkine"? (n. 894, which you rightly
call implausible.)
Anyway, I think the Botkin reading is that Botkin was teaching
in some literature department, went crazy (or deliberately
assumed a new identity) in winter, and was allowed to stay on
for the spring semester. It would be hard to find a replacement.
He's harmless--the boys can defend themselves. What else can we
do? Not send him to that awful ICI, surely. We can come up with
something over the summer.
Sylvia may be Kinbote's picture of an influential friend, by the
way.
> This has always
> been a problem with the novel for me, and one more reason I'm drawn to
> the Shade MPD theory.
How does that theory handle Kinbote's encounter with the ferocious
lady who fails "to see how John and Sybil can stand you", or the
encounter with Shade and Mrs. H.? Shade's alter ego wants us to
believe he existed as a separate madman in New Wye, so he makes up
incidents where New Wyers called him insane?
In any case, I agree that Kinbote's continuing to teach is a bit
hard to believe, and I don't mind that, because my last reading
is that there is no real story. My view of the themes that fits
with is remarkably similar to what Andrew Brown posted last
Sunday in connection with "The Death of Ivan Ilich". I was
delighted to make out reflections of my edifice or mirage in his
wake--or is it the other way around? If you're interested in
my ideas, you can see them in the archive for March of 2005. The
first title is "How I read _Pale Fire_" and the others, including
Jansy's responses, have "Pale Fire" in the titles. I'm still
interested in any comments or criticism.
Jerry Friedman