-------- Original Message --------
>I'll also bet more readers
>then than now recognized Colonel Starbottle (who I thank Matt
>Roth for identifying, since I never troubled to do a Web search)....
>As for Col. Starbottle, I wonder whether we're supposed toinfer
that
Kinbote caught the reference to drinking but missed
>that to Bret Harte's character.
>Jerry Friedman
Jerry, I agree that many people would have known Harte's Starbottle 45
years ago. Less would have known of Edsel Ford (the poet) but he did
publish quite often in the NY Times and Herald Tribune, as well as Good
Housekeeping and McCall's. He was also the subject of a part of the
"Talk
of the Town" section in The New Yorker in 1959. Nevertheless, I imagine
VN
thought most readers would assume it was a joke about the carmaker.
That
might be why he put it there--reality in something that appears false.
As for our Colonel Starbottle (astronomer Starover Blue), I discovered
today--I don't believe it's been noted before but apologies if I'm
mistaken-
-that there is another allusion hidden behind the more obvious Bret
Harte
allusion. In a novel called Goddess of Atvatabar: Being the History of
the
Discovery of the Interior World and Conquest of Atvatabar (1891), by
William R. Bradshaw, a crew of explorers, travelling on a ship called
the
Polar King, discover another world inside the earth. Among the crew we
find the following: Professor Starbottle, Astronomer. Towards the end
of
the novel, we read "The Report of the Astronomer Starbottle," in which
he
explains the atmosphere of the interior world, and also how to kill a
giant
seemorgh. What might be more interesting is the discussion of
"twin-souls,"
which figure heavily in the plot of the (ridiculous) novel. On first
glance, the novel seems a knock-off of Bulwer-Lytton's _The Coming Race_
(1871), which also deals with a subterranean world. I'll have more on
this
when I manage to wade through it.
Matt Roth
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