Stan K-Bootle: Bravissimo,
Tom. Power to your pen. Pale Fire is a damn fine read and finer re-read... there
are ineffable differences in finding the origins of mass, and determining if
Pale Fire reveals anything we didn’t know about the After Life or the perils of
poor parenting and pedantic Literary Criticism.I’ve always thought it risky (but
worthwhile) for authors to include a MAD character in their narratives. Whether
the mad person is truly insane or just playing daft, the normal ‘contract’
between writer and reader is disturbed. I mean, the writer is free to invent
abnormal utterances and actions, forcing us to suspend the judgments we apply to
rational actors.
JM: Congs to T(R) for his
uncancelled sunsets and ensuing "barred" clouds in his fiction. A taste of
two realities, each experienced in separate.
Like in Stan's appraisal, Pale Fire is for me a
fine re-read while critical discussions enrich what my private (and
limited) sensibility doesn't present at a first bite.
What a relief to meet Stan's
illumined wording related to what Pale Fire may, or may not, reveal about
IPH, poor parenting and Lit.Crit.. Also to find his observation about how a
mad character (daft or insane or both) is important to force readers into
suspending their common-sense judgements, once the "contract
between writer and reader is disturbed.' Real madness doesn't deserve to be
treated with flippancy or by generalized categorical or "categorologic" mixes
enhanced by a thousand-isles scholarly sauces, even though the
real pain permeates any work of fiction ( such as "Kinbote"'s moments
of de-personalization or de-realization and inner turmoil at times reaches
me) to demand a writer's art to provide it with a
setting.
.........................................................
Dave Haan: Given the
turn taken with Hazel/Maud and Botkin/Kinbote, I find it odd that DJ West's
_Psychical Research Today_ should be cited without also citing DJ West's
_Homosexuality: Its Nature And Causes_ (1955).
Tom
Rymour Re the hunt for codology in Pale Fire(AKA the Higgs boson of Nabokov
studies) I recall ... it strikes me that Old McNab has given an awful
lot of people a great deal to be getting on with. Personally, I'm content to
look at the Taj Mahal by
moonlight, rather than pore over
architectural drawings of
it.