From: NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU>
Subject: [NABOKV-L] THOUGHTS: Kinbote as gay sterotype or symbol
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Date: Tuesday, October 21, 2008, 5:40 PM

Jansy responds to Joseph:

JM: In the same way that we see wealthy and poor, philistine and pervert, 
fertile or sterile, patriotic or treacherous, normal or neurotic 
heterosexuals, the same applies to "homosexuals", no? 

J.A.: This is true. By no means am I suggesting that N. should have painted the

portrait of "nice" homosexual, but I do think Kinbote's hysteria

Narcisism, and especially the unfortunate implied suicide are 

lame stereotypes (as are the Shades and Hazel in my opinion), for the reasons which I gave and which states, once more,

that Nabokov's detailing is vague and abstract where it should have

been specific and precise, as concerns the character's vice. Just

as Nabokov noticed that Dostoyevsky wasn't really explaining to us

what the narrator of Notes from the Underground actually did that

was so sinful, Nabokov fudges on his character, and I think it's

because he doesn't understand the character; his imagination fails

him at that front. I

don't think you can argue with this, but you have anyway.

 This is why I
don't 
think Kinbote's fondness for either strong burly types or long lashed young

men, or description of sexual encounters would be sufficiently revelatory of 
VN's intention to burlesque expressions of sexuality to deal with 
post-modern "solipsism" in literature or in language.

J.A.: Are you saying that I suggested he be specific in order to 

dramatize this theme? Or that the theme is fully apparent as is

without the sordid details? Now remember, I'm criticizing this book

as the work of a great writer, on that level and not simply as any other

book. My point was that Lolita worked in every way while in my

opinion Pale Fire doesn't quite work on any level excepting how it was conceived. I focused

on Kinbote's sexuality because I thought it revealed an aesthetic

flaw as set by Nabokov's own standards. I.E. he's against types, but then

goes on to give us a
 florid gay character so self-hating he commits suicide

and uses his condition to function as a comic abstraction of arstistic solipsism, though I'm

certain he would vehemently deny this, saying that he functioned as nothing more or

less than the precise words set down on the page.

  Btw: VN often 
acknowledges that his characters are not "types" ("The story in
Bend 
Sinister is not really about life and death in a grotesque police state. My 
characters are not 'types,' not carriers of this or that
'idea.'  BS, 
preface )

J.A.: It's because he says that I brought all this up in the first

place. Yet you can't always trust the interviews and the prefaces,

The Wilson letters have him claiming the opposite of his stated

stands: to Wilson for instance, he says that Lolita is a deeply moral

book which makes fun of American mores.  Btw. this anti-idea notion has never made any sense. Surely

you can't really believe in that "bl" notion. Nabokov is one of the

most opinionated and polemical of writers I've ever come across, even politically. This is a writer who 

ascribes spiritual

valuations to bathing! Ada is filled with carping, swipes and
 asides

about his own likes and dislikes.