Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0008143, Fri, 18 Jul 2003 13:34:02 -0700

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Fw: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3424 Pale Fire
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From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
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Sent: Friday, July 18, 2003 12:00 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3424


> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 16:35:13 -0700
> From: "Glenn Scheper" <glenn_scheper@earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: Re: NPPF: Who's watching Gradus
>
> > In the foreword and commentary, which were both written
> > after Shade's death, we see Kinbote first concealing and
> > then revealing his identify as the King, and apparently
> > trying--not very successfully--to disguise some other
> > aspect of his personality in Gradus.
>
> The split of a personality into its good and evil parts
> happened to me on my acute psychosis. That very day, I
> knew I was Jesus Christ, despite having been an atheist
> (of convenience, regarding all religion as unscientific).
> Thereafter alternated mania for being JC and depression
> for having become unique irremediable sin, beyond grace.
>
> Often, if I got high, other dopers would seem to mutter
> "shotgun" (which may be some residual speech-like effect
> written upon them from that manner of smoking marijuana)
> which I took to mean they knew that I had blown myself.
>
> So, as with all AF reflexive hermeneutics, the shooter
> is the shot one, both slayer and sacrifice meeting as
> at the infinitely permeable boundary of a klein bottle.
>
>
> Borrowing from, and following the links of the recent
> post "Re: VLVL2 (1) Missed Communications: Beginnings":
>
> > The limiting case ... within the field of religious studies is most
> > certainly the theoretical position adumbrated by Adolf Jensen and
> other
> > members of the Frobenius School (e.g., W.F. Otto). Jensen claims that
> > all truth, meaning, an value are to be located in what he terms a
> primal
> > moment of ontic "seizure" (Ergriffenheit), a "revelation," a 'direct
> > cognition of the essence of living reality." (72)
>
> > Extraordinary privilege and priority is given to naked experience.
>
> Hey, and there's none of those difficult MLA citations required!
>
> Of course the kind I think is required is AF + psychosis.
> BTW, AF did not stop me from being homophobic, as raised.
>
> Now, Remember the schizophrenic text of Kenosha Kid?
> In Websters NW CD, adjacent to Kenosha is kenosis:
>
> Kenosha [ prob. ult. < Ojibwa ginoozhe, nothern pike ]
> city in SE Wis., on Lake Michicgan pop 80,000.
>
> kenosis n. [ Gr. kenosis, an emptying < kenos, empty}
> Christian theol. the voluntary self-abasement of the
> second person of the Trinity in becoming human - kenotic adj.
>
>
> Yours truly,
> Glenn Scheper
> http://home.earthlink.net/~glenn_scheper/
> glenn_scheper + at + earthlink.net
> Copyleft(!) Forward freely.
>>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 20:40:55 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF--status of the two author theory
>
> Paul Mackin:
>
> is there anything in the foreword itself that
> > leads us to suspect that the Kinbote edition of the Shade poem needs to
> > be the product of a single mind--that one or the other gentlemen has to
> > have invented the other? I don't recall that there is.
> >
>
>
> I think the short answer is no.
>
> The author of the foreword takes pains to present evidence that the poem
was
> written by Shade, describing the physical manuscript in careful detail.
> There are also remarks from Professor Hurley, others in the WU English
> Department, and Shade's agent that seem to confirm the existence of a work
> by John Shade and Charles Kinbote's contract to edit it and write a
> commentary.
>
> It seems one of the decisions a reader has to make in trying to sort out
the
> novel is what standard of evidence to apply. These standards change from
> page to page as the assumptions underneath them shift and flow. For
example,
> if you believe the poem and commentary were published (or at least
intended
> for publication by the writer), you might be inclined to give more weight
to
> the comments of other living people included in the text on the theory
that
> their response to their own portrayals would have some deterrent value
> against fabrications. But of course we have no way of knowing what Sybil
and
> Hurley might have said after reading the book--maybe one of them is
writing
> a letter to the New York Times Book Review right now.
>
> Then there's that "your favorite." Still a puzzle. At the time the
foreword
> was written, only the recently late Shade, Sybil, Kinbote, and presumably
> one or two people in the publisher's office knew the poem and were
qualified
> to have a favorite canto. If we can illuminate this question from evidence
> later in the book just for a moment, there's not very much second person
> address in here. Outside of conversations reproduced in the commentary,
the
> only place I can remember it happening is when Shade speaks directly to
> Sybil in the poem.
>
> The other aspect of the foreword that relates to the Single Bullet Theory
is
> the general impression that that Kinbote boy is not quite right in the
head,
> but I'll be damned if I could say which side of the ledger that goes on.
>
> D.C.
>
--
>
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> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3424
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