Amazon has put up a a picture of the Gingko
Press edition of 'Pale Fire (an information received from James Bonney)
Sandy Klein sent http://www.valleyadvocate.com/blogs/home.cfm?uid=15&d=%7Bts%20'2010-08-03%2000%3A00%3A00'%7D / Extracts: “critics…who give their lives
meaning by deconstructing works of art that don't need their help, academic
sorts who get so caught up in out-clevering and out-egoing each other that they
obscure brilliant, vibrant literature in layer upon layer of self-important
nattering…I think Nabokov's Pale
Fire is a work of utter brilliance--it sits upon my "bookshelf
of genius" beside Joyce and Melville, forming a sort of holy triniity.
[. . .]* “
JM:
In the above mentioned “Holy Trinity” I suppose Pale Fire will
stand for the holy ghost following some kinbotean theological arrangement? I
forgot to mention still another different meaning related to the word “Index”
(I was studying the catholic inquisition with a grandson) “Index”
as the name for the book in which all the herectic and condemned books were
listed, most of them later burned in an “auto de fé,” like some of
Shade’s rejected lines.
Lolita, of course, was saved. And Shade’s pale-fire incinerations were
limited and his own Pale Fire lives on to adorn many a sophisticated
book-shelf.
………………………………………………………………………………………..
*- EDNote: I do not know who these out-clevering, out-egoing people can
possibly be. ~SB