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One of the things that impressed me immediately is that there are different ways to read the book. It's likely that some of us will read straight through, some will bounce back and forth... some may even take Kinbote's advice and read the commentary first. Like you said, Jim, you may as well for as much as it relates to the poem.
I've chosen to read a handful of lines (say, 10 at a time) and then read the commentary (riffs?) on those lines. I've been finding that pretty rewarding, but then I've always liked reading several things at once, which is essentially what this is. I've had our trusty Riverside Shakespeare and various poetry and mythology collections at the ready as well so I can look up unfamiliar allusions.
For me (so far, anyway), Shade's allusion to the Keats poem in Canto I (and Kinbote's immediate misreading) provide a sort of microcosm of their parasitic relationship thus far (although, I guess that Nabokov points out the biggest microcosm of said relationship with the novel's title... more on that later). Shade writes the lines:
"A curio: Red Sox Beat Yanks 5-4
On Chapman's Homer, thumbtacked to the door."
Kinbote does at least pick up on the allusion to Keats' "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," but misses what I think is playfulness in Shade's intent. Kinbote calls the headline "drolly transposed, from some other article"... as unimaginative a reading as is possible. Keats' poem has been taken up as something of an anthem for inspiration and the importance of art to transform and elevate; I think that Shade is maybe, instead, telling us something about how Aunt Maud felt about baseball, particularly the magic of the Sox-Yankees rivalry in New England. At the very least, it's a comment on pop sports' standing in for poetry as a means to inspire in the 20th century, but Kinbote shrugs off both the potential meeting of sport and poetry and Shade's (I think) impish appreciation of this odd juxtaposition and gives us dull, unhelpful analysis.
The true (intended) microcosm, though, is the allusion in Shade's title, "Pale Fire." Kinbote, as usual, recognizes but doesn't understand the reference. The joke here is that, reading from a translated edition of Shakespeare's The Life of Timon of Athens (from whence the words "Pale Fire" are derived), Kinbote gets the lines wrong. He quotes:
"The sun is a thief: she lures the sea
and robs it. The moon is a thief:
he steals his silvery light from the sun.
The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon."
Compare to the lines as written (in IV.iii):
"The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears;..."
Timon of Athens is about an Athenian nobleman, generous to a fault, who spends his entire fortune (and beyond) entertaining hangers-on and false friends; when the coffers finally run out, his friends harumph and make excuses for not coming to his aid, and he's banished from Athens as a debtor. Timon, suddenly a beggar digging his dinner out of the ground on the edge of the city, becomes wildly misanthropic.
The above lines are spoken by Timon to a group of thieves who find him in his beggarly state. Timon instructs the thieves that all things in life steal from others in order to sustain themselves, thus painting a picture so bleak that several of the thieves reconsider their own profession. The irony is that Kinbote doesn't recognize in himself the thief, the hanger-on -- in particular in this metaphor, where he is the moon reflecting Shade's (ha!) bright light, even though that's the assignation Shade seems to have determined for himself -- it's all really clever. We'll have to see whether it steps beyond clever into profound, but I have confidence in Nabokov.
Mod
I have (but haven't started) an e-reader edition. I'm wondering how that will effect my interaction with the text. I wonder if I would have to find a way to go to the end of the book for the commentary or if it would be formatted with footnotes and what-not that can be accessed during reading (the same way the dictionary function works).
God damn, Dave! Bringin' the heat.But what is the literary allusion in the quote, "You have hal.....s real bad, chum"? Hmmmm?
Possibly spoilery question-slash-theory:
(view spoiler)
Mod
I took that one as a joke... I filled in the blank as "halitosis." What did everyone else think?
Interesting theory about Kinbote and Xavier. I've wondered that a few times myself. Kinbote seems especially concerned with the deposed king regaining his throne... feels a little like a play on Anastasia to me (a 1956 Ingrid Bergman film rekindled interest in the (then relevant) situation at that time). Regardless, it's intentionally separate from the poem.
Dave wrote: "I took that one as a joke... I filled in the blank as "halitosis." What did everyone else think?"Well, yeah. Unlike Kinbote, I didn't think it was "hallucinations" horrifically misspelled.
And would a boy leave a message about hallucinations in the man's pocket? A note about bad breath is disturbing enough....
Further evidence for my theory: (view spoiler)
I will herewith be ignoring everything in the book that contradicts my pet theory.
Until I come up with a new one. :P
Question for the group:How important are John Shade, or his poem, to the novel? We have 40 pages of Shade's autobiographical verse -- seen only through the lens of "editor" Kinbote, so how can we trust even that? -- followed by 230 pages of Kinbote's self-serving "commentary."
So Kinbote has held this last poem hostage as a pretext for telling his own story, right?
Sorry if I'm belaboring the obvious here.
One more thing: The commentary on line 80 contains the only indexed mention of mirror maker Sudarg, which is Gradus in reverse -- mirrored, if you will.The same passage includes a brief description of Gradus clearing the square for the wrongful execution of two Danish tourists as arsonists.
Not sure what the Sudarg-Gradus connection might turn out to be -- if anything -- but here's another idea forming in my head:
(view spoiler)
It's a theory.
Mod
And not a bad one. Good catch on Sudarg/Gradus, by the way, I totally missed that.
Good call on mirrors, too. Reflections of all sorts are a major image in this book, down to the title (the moon reflects the light of the sun). Not just literally, either... aliases abound, and Kinbote is a very real reflection of... well, a few different men, it seems.
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(view spoiler)
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I think this is an interesting question, and one I don't have an easy answer for at only 1/3 of the way through the book. I have a love/hate relationship with Kinbote's commentary... on the one hand, it's hilarious, and the story Kinbote is telling is interesting if ludicrous; on the other hand, I like Shade's poem quite a bit more than Kinbote's rambling, and kinda wish Kinbote were more helpful (or could at least stay on subject). As is, his commentary obscures rather than clarifies the poem and, even if that's the joke, it's still a shame.
Moving into the commentary on Canto 2, we get another reflection: Odon and his evil half-brother, Nodo. Following the passage about Xavier's reflection (and mistaken reflection -- reflection of a reflection?) in the lake, I begin to wonder if this isn't some bizarre part of the Zemblan identity. More likely, an hallucination on the part of Kinbote, I guess.
Another image to pay attention to in the poem: astronomy, celestial bodies, the heavens. "Pale fire" refers to the moon, but the sun and stars and sky are mentioned any number of times. Shade is captivated by the mystery, and seems obsessed (at one point, anyway) with the artist's usual gristle: mortality.
Mod
At any rate, I am only ~20 pages into the book and am lapping it up. The wretched, loathsome picture this guy paints of himself is extremely entertaining to me. I don't care if we never got to the text in question, I could read this pompous ass unknowingly damning himself for a whole book.
Mod
That's really cool about the linking feature. I honestly don't know how else they could publish the book and have it be at all readable.
I can't decide whether Kinbote reminds me more of the narrator of THE THIRD POLICEMAN or of de Selby himself. I don't think he's quite as insane, but he's equally self-obsessed.
Glad to hear the Kindle version is hyperlinked, Matt. I agree with Dave -- it'd be madness to publish it any other way.But again I say unto you: The poem doesn't seem to have anything to do with the story being told in this novel. The poem is useful to the extent that Kinbote's annotations to this or that line reinforce to the reader how clueless and self-absorbed he is, but the reader should already have that idea well in hand.
Props to Dave for pointing out the mirror/reflection theme; I feel like I'm seeing a lot more of it since you brought it up.
And I love that a copy of Timon popped up in the novel just after I read Dave's explanation of the "pale fire" verse. Good show once again, m'man.
Mod
Madness has arrived. :(
So, the hyperlinks are in the foreword (for lines & annotations referenced) and in the annotations (for referencing the foreword, others annotations, and other lines besides the line being referenced).
So, when reading Shade's poem, I have no way to see Kinbote's notes w/o MENU > GO TO > SYM (symbol) enter page # guess(!), PAGE, ENTER and hope like hell I jump somewhere near where I am in the poem. After reading the first Canto that way, I'm going to have to do something else.
Kinbote's wants me to read his notes, then the poem WITH his notes, and then his notes one last time. I'm inclined to do the opposite (Shade, Shade w/ Kinbote, Shade again), because I don't trust him. :)
Matt wrote: "Madness has arrived. :( "Not as mad as it seems, actually.
I was surprised when Dave said he would read some verses, then the commentary, then back to the poem. This strikes me as the least effective way to read this book.
"What can our editor add to Shade's musings on waxwings/mortality/the weather?" Answer: Nothing!!! Reading the commentary will not illuminate the poem for you!
Read the poem, then read the commentary while flipping/clicking back to the cited lines. Seems to me the ebook was well-conceived.
Mod
I'll read the way you said. Hmph!
Oh, and here's my comeback: YOU were well-conceived! BOOYAH! Don't mess the with bull, my friend. ;)
Matt wrote: "YOU were well-conceived! BOOYAH!"Aaarrrh! It burns! ;)
Something nagging at me about the five-month relationship -- I won't say "friendship" -- between Shade and Kinbote has me rereading the foreword right now. Then I'll be reading the poem for the third time, then back to the, ahem, commentary.
Also been skimming the index. The entry on King Charles's wife Disa, Duchess of Payn ("Payn," really? What's that about?) reads, in part:
(view spoiler)
Mod
Given the importance of reflections in PALE FIRE, this immediately set me to thinking about how this line applies. I've been focusing so much on Kinbote as a reflection of Shade (quite literally living in his shadow) that I've been giving short shrift to Kinbote's being a reflection of Charles II -- essentially, of himself, of his former position. His obsession with telling his story and using PALE FIRE to regain his power is at the center of the plot.
What does this have to do with the Rushdie quotation? Well, I'm mostly concerned with the idea of being "diminished" in the reflection. Kinbote's new identity is so firmly established that he almost comes off as subordinate to his own former self. He praises his former identity too grandly, too thoroughly; that's what makes him a reflection. His Xavier identity, too, was a reflection of his royal identity, and I think we've been removed enough from those early (naughty) glory days that Kinbote is actually a reflection of Xavier (the teacher, the intellectual, remember). And, even as we find out clownish things about his former identities, no one in the book comes across as a bigger clown than Kinbote.
A small thought...
Man I really have to pull my finger out with this book! Matt my E-reader doesn't have any hyperlinks in the text!
Mod
For as we know from dreams it is so hard
To speak to our dear dead! They disregard
Our apprehension, queaziness and shame--
The awful sense that they're not quite the same.
And our school chum killed in a distant war
Is not surprised to see us at his door,
And in a blend of jauntiness and gloom
Points at the puddles in his basement room.
Did this remind anyone else of THE WAVES?
Could be I'm missing some other (more obvious?) allusion, or reading too much into these lines, but good ol' Percival is the first person I thought of when I read "our school chum killed in a distant war".
(Kinbote is, as usual, completely unhelpful on the matter.)
Mod
2 things:
1. Maybe my favorite joke of the book: Kinbote tracks the game of word golf referenced at line 819 in the index. Look under "word golf" to follow the thread.
2. If I had to choose a single word to describe this book, it would be "reflection." Every iteration of that word's definition comprises the meat of the novel, no matter whether it's Shade or Kinbote at the helm.
Looking forward to the chat!
Mod
Me, too. I'm not gonna talk about it, 'cause we're so close to the episode, but I just wanted to mention I FINALLY figured out where I'd heard the name "Kinbote" before:
http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Lord_Ki...
(one of my top 5 favorite episodes...it has Charles Nelson Reilly in it, fer Pete's sake!)
That was driving me nuts.
So...to prepare, Dave read Shakespeare and I watched The X-Files...typical.
Mod
Reading Timon of Athens was unnecessary, as it turns out. But, I'm not sorry I did, because that was an enjoyable (if somewhat incomplete) story on its own. The story of Timon has little to do with Nabokov's work, except for Shade's lifting the words "Pale Fire" to symbolize reflection--an act of theft that Kinbote points out even as he's stealing Shade's final poem and piggybacking on it to publish his own wild history. The point Timon is making in the pale fire speech is that every man is a thief, by design and by necessity--survival is impossible unless we rob nature for energy and shelter, kill plants and animals for food. Nabokov's novel might involve a more civilized setting, but his characters do nothing to disprove Timon's assertions.
An interesting note for discussion: The index tells us there are 3 main characters, labelled "G, K, S." On finishing the novel, we know that these stand for Gradus, Kinbote, and Shade. Now, Kinbote and Shade are given; but Gradus? Did anyone consider him a "main" character of this novel? An important character, even a major character... but a main one? I think Nabokov might be having some fun with us through Kinbote again....
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I'm still finishing up, but...
All through the book, I just thought of Gradus' name as meaning "steps" or "degrees." I'm glad I looked it up or I never would have seen this additional meaning:
A handbook used as an aid in a difficult art or practice, specifically, a dictionary of Greek or Latin prosody used as a guide in writing of poetry in Greek or Latin.
Gradus/Sudarg seems to be a device more than a character, no matter how I think of him. We'll have to discuss why Nabokov had Kinbote promote him to major character. :)
Mod
Sounds like one more play on words. (view spoiler)
I hope you don't think I'm nuts, but I think Matt's hinting at this by referring to Gradus as a "device."(view spoiler)
Mod
(view spoiler)
The common thread here is that Kinbote is yet another unreliable narrator, not just to the point where he's a bumbling clown, but to the point where he's actively inventing major parts of the plot. Many doubt the existence of Zembla, or at the very least Charles II's naughty palace exploits and general history. (Curiously, the plot laid out in the novel in several ways resembles Nabokov's real life; he was raised a Russian aristocrat, forced into exile after the Revolution, and at some point his father was even murdered in a failed attempt on the life of another:
"[Nabokov's father] attended a CD political conference in Berlin on 28 March 1922. During the proceedings, a far-right Russian activist approached the stage singing the Tsarist national anthem and then opened fire on liberal politician and publisher Pavel Miliukov. In response, Nabokov jumped off the stage and wrestled the gunman down to the floor. Another assassin then shot Nabokov twice, killing him instantly. One of the assassins was Piotr Shabelsky-Bork, who was subsequently convicted of the murder and sentenced to a fourteen-year prison term, but who served only a small part of that sentence — the judicial system of Germany at the time being more lenient with right-wing criminals than with their leftist equivalents. Upon his release, Shabelsy-Bork befriended Alfred Rosenberg, the notorious Nazi ideologue. Nabokov's demise was in keeping with his career as a democrat: he died defending Pavel Miliukov, who was one of his own political rivals. After the shooting, the assassins realized that they had failed even to wound their intended target.")
Dave wrote: "I looked the book up on Wiki and found the following somewhat similar interpretations, endorsed by Nabokov:..."Mind. Blown.
That is a lot of interpreting. Maybe too much for me.
Botkin, huh? Huh.
Well, I'm not rereading the book to find the damned clues to that one. I'ma go watch The Sixth Sense instead. :P
With respect to Dave's word golf note, here's my contender for Best Index Thread:*Crown jewels, see Hiding Place
*Hiding place, potaynik
*Potaynik, taynik
*Taynik, Russ., secret place; see Crown Jewels.
Sonofabitch!
And even as dense as I am, I think I would have picked up on the omnipresent "reflection" theme without Dave pointing it out. Probably. Maybe.
Dave: "Check out that elephant in your kitchen."
Jim: "Oh yeah... I'd've seen it eventually."
Mod
As they say, take what the defense gives ya, and you can only play the teams that are in front of you. Not commenting on the reflections theme just wouldn't have made sense. :)
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Is that Kinbote trying to horn in on the poem (as if he inspired it) or is he doing what The Dude does in The Big Lebowski and picking up bits of language he hears and adopting them? (This aggression will not stand, man!)
Dave, after reading the interpretations on the Wiki page, I want to re-read the whole damn book right now. DAMN. Shadeans, Kinboteans, Botkinsers, oh my!!
LOVED IT.
Mod
The big question I came away with last night: Did Gradus (alias Jack Grey) actually exist, or was it all an elaborate revenge plot on the part of Kinbote/Botkin? Who was Shade's real killer? If I can see Kinbote as a madman, I can certainly see how he might have met a character like Grey and used him in a larger scheme. I still don't know whether I've answered it for myself... I'd probably have to read the book another time (or 2) looking for clues to support the theory.
I think Nabokov was a really sly writer. The Charles II/Kinbote connection is, I'm convinced, a total red herring; it's the mystery you're meant to solve, a bit of misdirection leading away from the real story (and, perhaps, the real crime). Nabokov's subtlety comes out in the way he's treated the book like a real academic text and as though it were really authored by 2 different men with opposite agendas. The reader is left with a work that doesn't readily reveal itself in the way a typical novel would, all because the characters and subject are accorded structural realism. There are as many clues in the foreword as in the index. It's a marvelous invention.
Dave wrote: "I think Nabokov was a really sly writer. The Charles II/Kinbote connection is, I'm convinced, a total red herring; it's the mystery you're meant to solve, a bit of misdirection leading away from the real story (and, perhaps, the real crime)."Yeah, he definitely snookered me there. By the time I realized there was no mystery to the mystery, I must've missed dozens of clues about what was really going on. There's no doubt this novel will reward multiple readings.
Mod
Mine is the Vintage International edition. No information on the publication date of this printing on the copyright page, but there's a 2009 advertisement in the back and the book has a modern feel to the design, so I'm guessing it was recent.
Speaking of which, that advertisement looks fascinating, and seems to be (at least on the surface) a very similar project to what was presented as a fake project in PALE FIRE. The ad reads:
"A PUBLISHING EVENT
The final, unfinished novel from
Vladimir Nabokov
The Original of Laura
After years of controversy surrounding the fate of Nabokov's final manuscript, Knopf will publish the last work by one of the 20th century's acknowledged masters of literature. An essential part of Nabokov's oeuvre, The Original of Laura blurs the line between the author's life and fiction. This edition, uniquely designed by Chip Kidd, includes facsimiles of the 138 note cards on which it was written."
"This edition" references a $35 hardcover published in 2009 by AA Knopf. "Controversy" references the fact that Nabokov himself ordered the novel destroyed (perhaps in the pale fire of an incinerator?) before his death. This rather expensive edition, in business-as-usual Chip Kidd fashion, seems to merely reprint the note cards and outlines and leave it to the reader to fill in any archival gaps; one reviewer said it took him less than 30 minutes to read. The real-life similarities to PALE FIRE, though, make this extraordinarily tempting....
Fascinating stuff, Dave. I looked up some reviews of The Original of Laura; this is from Slate's:"In the introduction to his translation of Eugene Onegin, [Nabokov] wrote: "An artist should ruthlessly destroy his manuscripts after publication, lest they mislead academic mediocrities into thinking that it is possible to unravel the mysteries of genius by studying cancelled readings. In art, purpose and plan are nothing; only the results count." "
The more I learn about Nabokov, the more circular and self-referential his life and works seem.
Matt wrote: "What did you guys make of Kinbote describing Shade's destruction of unused variants as "I recall seeing him from my porch, on a brilliant morning, burning a whole stack of them in the pale fire of the incinerator..."Is that Kinbote trying to horn in on the poem (as if he inspired it) or is he doing what The Dude does in The Big Lebowski and picking up bits of language he hears and adopting them? (This aggression will not stand, man!)"
I'd go with the former.
"I'll tell you what I'm blathering about... I've got information, man! New shit has come to light!"
Mod
It's like Shade himself mentions in his poem with his method A (trying out and discarding words and phrases in one's head) and method B (committing them to paper and slowly changing them until they look and sound right). Method B is a necessary evil for any artist, method A being painful and difficult, but someone coming across all those remnants of method B are going to see all the poor, abandoned choices and random jottings that didn't see print.
And since so many of us are critics like Kinbote, and like to think of our favorite artists as heaven touched, infallible geniuses, it threatens that illusion to know about the laborious processes that resulted in that art. Nabokov seems to be telling those critics that picking apart those discarded drafts to glean some added meaning to the final product is meaningless.
What else does Kinbote say about Shade's burning of the variants? Does he denounce it? I would think that he would, since he represents those "mediocre" critics to which Nabokov refers.
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I think this is exactly right. Nabokov is making an important point, and one with which I agree. Though process is endlessly fascinating to fellow artists, it's a poor substitute for a finished product, and--as was the case with Kinbote's rare commentary on the actual poem--obfuscates the point more than clarifies it. The many alternate lines to PALE FIRE Kinbote includes act as supporting evidence.
Another important point to remember is that Chip Kidd is a graphic design artist who produces coffee table books meant to look pretty and be flipped through more than read. If anyone is like me and bought his Bat-Manga book a few years ago, you already know this.
Mod
All in all, I think Vlad had a blast putting this wonderful beast together and riffing on art, the creation of art, the coat-tails/shadow of art, and the little fish that swim around the shark of art's mouth and nibble on the morsels it leaves behind.
Mod
That surprised me as well. Kinbote did ruminate at length on suicide (an afterthought of the Hazel Shade part of the poem), but otherwise never seemed particularly suicidal to me. Could an ego that massive conceive of non-existence? Or maybe that's where his afterlife fantasies came from?
As a bit of poetry, though, Kinbote's suicide makes perfect sense. Just as PALE FIRE was Shade's autobiography, completed minutes before his murder, Kinbote's commentary ignored Shade's text completely in order to tell his own story (or at least, what he believed was his own story). I also remember being surprised that this was to the extent to which Kinbote hijacked the commentary; the expected end goal (reinstatement as Charles II, revolution in Zembla... something) never materialized. His final act of reflection could be nothing short of a twisted mirror image of Shade's death.
Clarification: Yes, I sincerely appreciated Dave for mentioning the reflections theme -- I just felt like a dope for not spotting it earlier. We good?Great episode, guys. I may well save it so I can re-listen to it after I inevitably reread the novel. ;)
Mod
My bad, Jim, I totally misread you. I was good with it either way, though. :)
Someone recommended reading the book straight through, not bouncing from poem to commentary and back again. Since the poem and commentary appear to be completely unrelated, this strikes me as the way to go.
How often do you read a book whose index is funny?