R.Rosenbaum:While I'm sure there is much more fun to be had in finding strained near-anagrams of Kinbote, I should point out, on behalf of V. Botkin…the potential relevance of the existence of a large Moscow Hospital known as Botkin or Botkinskaya Hospital,which had a wing for the insane and which was in operation before <Pale Fire> was published… Perhas it means nothing but it seems to have more direct relevance than Allen Ginsberg and Lenin… Interesting Botkin, hospital mental ward in Moscow--aa inspiration of Kinbote/Botkin names? More perusasive to me than scrabble games.      
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EDNote: For the record, I'm pretty sure everyone who has commented here on this topic has accepted and agreed that Botkin is in some way involved, whoever he is, and that this can be demonstrated independently of VN's comment.  But then, Shade was pretty sure, too, that he'd wake next morning . . .
~SB

 

JM:No...no Lenin grab legs or scrabble games would do away with  V.Botkin in PF. All the botflies remain the same thriving carriers of another fly’s eggs,as ready as ever to suck the blood from acquiescent mammals. Pale Fire, the novel, takes its title from similar operations, now on a cosmic scale.

Btw: Stan Kelly-Bootle’s exercise, following Alexey’s propositions, analyses some of the Nabokovian logogryphs in a scientific manner. Right?    

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