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.