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Fw: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3451 Pale Fire Canto & 2
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From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:32:14 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Canto 1 "that golden paste!"
>
> >>>But fishy? Does honey ever taste fishy?<<<
>
> My honey does.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:38:10 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Canto 1 Incest Motif
>
> >>>I found your insights stimulating. I loved them. I just didn't
agree.<<<
>
> I may not agree with myself as the text rolls on, but in response to your
> 'coincidence' I repeat:
>
> "Allied to the professional and vocational dreams are "dim-doom" visions:
> fatidic-sign nightmares, thalamic calamities, menacing riddles. Not
> infrequently the menace is well concealed, and the innocent incident will
> turn out to possess, if jotted down and looked up later, the kind of
> precognitive flavor that Dunne has explained by the action of "reverse
> memory"; but for the moment I am not going to enlarge upon the uncanny
> element particular to dreams---beyond observing that some law of logic
> should fix a number of coincidences, in a given domain, after which they
> cease to be coincidences, and form, instead, the living organism of a new
> truth" (ADA, p.361)
>
> I'm going to read ADA a third time as I go through PF. The novels seem
> intricately related to me.
>
> I'll respond in detail to your post as time permits. Thanks for
interacting
> and offering other interpretations.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:45:16 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Apologies
>
> - --- cfalbert <calbert@hslboxmaster.com> wrote:
> > I want to extend sincere apologies to the list, and Mr. Morris, in
particular
> for my shoddy attention to the schedule.......Should it be appropriate, I
will
> terminate my efforts on ONE by the end of the day......
>
> NO, no, no need to apologize or to limit your posts on Canto One at all.
The
> schedule shouldn't limit discussion, just keep it moving forward. Canto
Two
> has begun, but Canto One need not stop.
>
> DM
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:51:28 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Canto Two Synopsis
>
> >>> His observations as he proceeds with this task take on a
> macabre tone.<<<
>
> Note the location of this paring. He's 'before the window.'
>
> >>> "Flinching likenesses" of people emerge as he snips away what
> Aunt Maud called "scarf skin:" <<<
>
> That nasty Aunt Maud was a real stickler for well groomed fingers. She
> didn't mind the babes crying, but she was averse to personal pain.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 14:58:56 -0400
> From: "cfalbert" <calbert@hslboxmaster.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: CANTO ONE D. Fowler/ for Jasper
>
> > Thanks for the clarification, Charles. Given your timeline (with which
I
> > have some distant familiarity from my previous career as an English
> major),
> > I think it might be useful to ask why Shade positions himself before
> > Wordsworth. "
>
> How do you mean "before"?
>
> "Shade is a Pope scholar of course, so he is likely to be more
> > familiar or comfortable with this form, and perhaps he prefers it, but
> it's
> > certainly not cutting-edge poetry (I have a friend who may still have
> > Charles Bernstein's number and email -- maybe I'll ask him to ask for an
> > opinion)."
>
> Shade, along with Nab and Wordsworth are decidedly "retro". But beyond
> offering the Zembla excerpt (and this will become much more important in a
> few hours), Pope may not play such a large role in the "scheme" of PF.
> There is little in Pope's subject matter which conforms to the concerns of
> Shade's poems, but a remarkable congruity with Wordsworth's. That said, it
> seems to me that the "heroic couplet" form may have peaked with
Goldsmith,
> as Wordsworth opus seems to include very few examples (RESOLUTION &
> INDEPENDENCE is the only one of those offered in Norton which combines
> iambic pentameter, and couplets).
>
> " We can surmise Shade's opinion of Eliot. Is he a "retro" poet?"
>
> If I could type faster, I'd give you the entire Fowler take........see if
I
> can find the strength......
>
> > Does Shade want a return to older forms, is he an anti-modernist?
>
> I'd say you were on relative sure ground here......
>
> " Is he
> > therefore likely to be as widely accepted and lauded in 1959 as we are
> given
> > to believe?"
>
> I'm not sure Shade wrote PF with "acceptance" in mind - this may have been
a
> project intended to satisfy a more personal need.....
>
> "Also, as you say, why is the form of the poem so clearly at odds with the
> subject? Is poetry a closed ("vicious") circle to him? Is "Pale Fire"
> thematically an attempt to escape from its own form?"
>
> I don't know about "at odds", I just found it interesting that he would
> employ a poetic structure normally associated with "closure and surety"
in
> the service of a work so clearly intended to offer anything but......
>
> love,
> cfa
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 15:26:37 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Canto 1 Incest Motif
>
> Oh sure - though the progress of the discussion prods us forward; and
> thanks for reading through my typos. In any case, I'd be pleased to read
> whatever you cared to write.
>
> On the quotation below, let me just briefly note that VN seems to be
> talking about dreams of a prophetic nature rather than psychological
> revelations. His view seems to be that one can transcend material
> actuality within the space of one's dreams. (Robert Graves had similar
> ideas, and his statements about proleptic vision would be illuminating in
> this context.) I don't think his uncanny is Freud's - in fact, quickly
> googling about suggests he may actually have been famous for loathing
> Freud, for reasons that further conflict with the argument you are making.
> I wonder if the following quotation is relevant ...
>
> Best,
> Michael
>
> +*+*+*+*
>
> Mr. Nabokov, would you tell us why it is that you detest Dr. Freud?
>
> I think he's crude, I think he's medieval, and I don't want an
> elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon
> me. I don't have the dreams that he discusses in his books. I don't see
> umbrellas in my dreams. Or balloons.
>
> I think that the creative artist is an exile in his study, in his bedroom,
> in the circle of his lamplight. He's quite alone there; he's the lone
> wolf. As soon as he's together with somebody else he shares his secret, he
> shares his mystery, he shares his God with somebody else.
>
> (http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nab-v-freud.html)
>
> +*+*+*++*
>
>
> > I'll respond in detail to your post as time permits. Thanks for
interacting
> > and offering other interpretations.
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 12:58:08 -0700
> From: "Steve Maas" <tyronemullet@hotmail.com>
> Subject: NPPF Heading
>
> I appreciate you all (mostly) being so good about that "NPPF" heading. For
> the first time ever, and thanks to your conscientiousness, I was just now
> able to delete an entire digest without having to page through it! Kudos!!
>
> Steve Maas
>
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 13:15:01 -0700 (PDT)
>>
>> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 16:38:31 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Two -- The Butterfly of Doom
>
> ln 270: "My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blest"
>
> The Vanessa atalanta Butterfly, aka the Red Admirable, aka the Red
Admiral.
> From a 1970 interview with Alfred Appel:
>
> Appel: "That particular butterfly appears frequently in your own work,
too.
> In _Pale Fire_, a Red Admirable lands on John Shade's arm the minute
before
> he is killed, the insect appears in King, Queen Knave just after you've
> withdrawn the authorial omniscience -- killing the characters, so to speak
> - -- and in the final chapter of _Speak, Memory_, you recall having seen
in a
> Paris park, just before the war, a live Red Admirable being promenaded on
a
> leash of thread by a little girl. Why are you so fond of Vanessa
atalanta?
>
> VN: "Its coloring is quite splendid and I liked it very much in my youth.
> Great numbers of them migrated from Africa to Northern Russia, where it
was
> called "The Butterfly of Doom" because it was especially abundant in 1881,
> the year Tsar Alexander II was assassinated, and the markings on the
> underside of its two hind wings seem to read '1881.' The Red Admirable's
> ability to travel so far is matched by many other migratory
butterflies."
> (_Strong Opinions_, 170)
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 16:39:15 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Two -- Lolita
>
> Several references to _Lolita_ in Canto Two:
>
> ln 254: "In April's haze immediately behind"
>
> Charlotte and Dolores ("Lolita") Haze, not to mention Hazel Shade.
_Lolita_
> wasn't "immediately behind" _Pale Fire_ in composition dates (_Pnin_ is in
> the middle); perhaps he means in quality?
>
> ln 270: "My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blest"
>
> Vanessa Van Ness in _Lolita_ ("fat, powdered Mrs. Leigh", mother of little
> Annabel, "a certain initial girl-child.").
>
> ln 274-275: see K's "false start" following ln 274 on page 174: "I like my
> name: Shade, _Ombre_, almost 'man' / In Spanish . . ."
>
> A link to Humbert Humbert: Shade in Latin is "umbra", close to "Humbert",
as
> is "hombre", Spanish for man. "Ombre" is also a 17th century card game.
> (Okay, premature -- sorry, I couldn't help it.)
>
> ln 408: "A male hand traced from Florida to Maine":
>
> See repetition on ln 680: "Lolita swept from Florida to Maine"
>
> ln 413: "A nymph came pirouetting, under white"
>
> See pg 202 for variant: "A nymphet pirouetted"; more abstraction into art
> and the "real" world, in this case VN's own.
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 16:40:06 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Two -- Eliot
>
> ln 254: "In April's haze immediately behind"
>
> Perhaps an allusion to Eliot's _The Waste Land_?
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html
>
> ln 376-379: "(some phony modern poem that was said" etc.
>
> Definite allusion to Eliot's _Four Quartets_. The words Hazel asks about:
> "grimpen" (ln 368), "chtonic" (ln 370), and "sempiternal" (ln 372) are all
> found in that poem. From Boyd:
>
> "Peter Lubin identified the sources in his 'Kickshaws and Motley' (1970),
> 205n.7, to which Nabokov responded: 'Very beautifully he tracks down to
> their lairs in Eliot three terms queried by a poor little person in _Pale
> Fire_' (_Strong Opinions_, 291). (Nabokov's comment plays on the tracking
> down of the hound of the Baskervilles -- Conan Doyle's novel is the source
> for Eliot's word -- to its lair in Grimpen Mire.) As Foster notes
> (_Nabokov's Art of Memory, 223-24), the 'grimpen' (swamp) and
'sempiternal'
> (in Eliot's poem: 'Midwinter spring is its own season / Sempiternal though
> sodden towards sundown') anticipate Hazel's death in a swamp, as she steps
> off the ice on a 'night of thaw' when 'Black spring / Stood just around
the
> corner" (P.494-96)." (Boyd, _The Magic of Artistic Discovery_, 273).
>
> See also ln 369-370 for the rhyme "again" with "explain", making fun of
> Eliot's adopted Britishness.
>
> Question: is Shade (or VN) writing an answer to Eliot's *Christian* poem?
>
> http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 16:43:15 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Two -- Additional Notes
>
> ln 167: "There was a time in my demented youth"
>
> Perhaps a reference to Wordsworth's _Intimations of Immortality_ Ode which
> begins:
>
> "THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
> The earth, and every common sight,
> To me did seem
> Apparell'd in celestial light,
> The glory and the freshness of a dream."
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html
>
> ln 180: "Devoting all my twisted life to this"
> ln 181: "One task. Today I'm sixty-one. Waxwings."
>
> As I've suggested before, the idea or goal of immortality or life after
> death from between the borders of life represented visually through the
> number itself: 181. See also 1881 and the Butterfly of Doom (Lex Luthor's
> insect pet).
>
> ln 183: "The little scissors I am holding are / A dazzling synthesis of
sun
> and star"
>
> Mirror motif in the scissors, synthesis, night and day, one and many. Why
> the passive voice progressive tense?
>
> ln 185-186: "I stand before the window and I pare / My fingernails and
> vaguely am aware", ln 245: "And so I pare my nails, and muse, and hear"
>
> When asked by Alfred Appel about this apparent allusion to Joyce, VN
> replied: "Neither Kinbote nor Shade, nor their maker, is answering Joyce
in
> _Pale Fire_. Actually, I never liked _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
> Man_. I find it a feeble and garrulous book. The phrase you quote is an
> unpleasant coincidence." (_Strong Opinions_, 70-71)
>
> ln 231: see K's variant pg 167
>
> ln 316: See 183-184 for K's variant: "In woods Virginia Whites occurred in
> May"
>
> ln 343: "With a Korean boy who took my course": He shows up for Shade's
> birthday party on page 160.
>
> ln 368: "Grim Pen": Another cage.
>
> ln 419: see variant on pg 202.
>
> ln 423: "I was in time to overhear brief fame": Illusory immortality.
>
> ln 500: "Into a crackling, gulping swamp, and sank."
>
> The dead center of the poem. Hazel, like Ophelia, drowns. See also Sir
> Walter Scott's _The Lady of the Lake_, which includes the lines:
>
> "The stag at eve had drunk his fill,
> Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,
> And deep his midnight lair had made
> In lone Glenartney's hazel shade...."
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/222/0108.html
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 17:17:36 -0400
> From: "charles albert" <calbert@hslboxmaster.com>
> Subject: Re: Canto Two -- Additional Notes
>
> > ln 500: "Into a crackling, gulping swamp, and sank."
> >
> > The dead center of the poem. Hazel, like Ophelia, drowns. See also Sir
> > Walter Scott's _The Lady of the Lake_, which includes the lines:
> >
> > "The stag at eve had drunk his fill,
> > Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,
> > And deep his midnight lair had made
> > In lone Glenartney's hazel shade...."
> >
> > http://www.bartleby.com/222/0108.html
>
>
> Or Eustacia Vye in Hardy's Return of the Native?
>
> love,
> cfa
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 17:21:51 -0400
> From: T <pyramid@maxwellsdemon.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Two -- Grimpen
>
> In Chapter Seven of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Mr.
> Stapleton of Merripit House, a naturalist carrying a butterfly
> net and specimen box, addresses Dr. Watson with a laugh: "'That
> is the great Grimpen Mire,' said he. 'A false step yonder means
> death to man or beast. Only yesterday I saw one of the moor
> ponies wander into it. He never came out. I saw his head for
> quite a long time craning out of the bog-hole, but it sucked him
> down at last. Even in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it,
> but after these autumn rains it is an awful place. And yet I can
> find my way to the very heart of it and return alive.'"
> Stapleton turns out to be the villain of the story. As
> Watson reports in Chapter 12, "All my unspoken instincts, my
> vague suspicions, suddenly took shape and centred upon the
> naturalist. In that impassive, colourless man, with his straw
> hat and his butterfly net, I seemed to see something terrible--a
> creature of infinite patience and craft, with a smiling face and
> a murderous heart." *
>
>
> ==========
> The entire entry from the OED, 2nd Edition:
>
> grimpen
> [Etym. uncertain.]
> A marshy area.
> 1902 A. Conan Doyle Hound of Baskervilles vii. 153 Life has
> become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches
> everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point
> the track.
> 1940 T. S. Eliot East Coker ii. 10 In a dark wood, in a bramble,
> On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold.
> 1968 W. S. Baring-Gould Annotated Sherlock Holmes II. xxxvi. 47
> As is well known, Watson's "Great Grimpen Mire" is Grimspound
> Bog, three miles to the north and west of Widecombe-in-the-Moor.
>
> ==========
>
>
> First post -- thanks!
>
> ~ T
>
>
>
>
>
> ==========
> *
> From the note to line 402 of _Dark Ice_, 1993.
>
> ------------------------------
>> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 18:02:55 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF Canto Two
>
>
> Lines 236-44
> The elaborate reversal of the ant and the grasshopper fable seems
> clearly meant to be a portentious sign. To the Shades or to us readers.
>
> The ant dies and the grasshopper flies on.
>
> Mandible evidently refers not a the lower jaw of a mammal but to
> madibulate insect.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 15:19:04 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Canto Two
>
> >>>The ant dies<<<
>
> Yes she does.
>
> >>> and the grasshopper flies on. <<<
>
> Yes he does. At least he hop-flops on.
>
> >>>Mandible evidently refers not a the lower jaw of a mammal but to
> madibulate insect.<<<
>
> Mandibulate incest = incestual cunnilingus
>
> A proud and happy linguist = a cunning-linguist
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 23:26:34 +0100
> From: "James Kyllo" <jkyllo@clara.net>
> Subject: NPPF Canto 1 aside re the mockingbird
>
> That mockingbird's "to-wee" seems to me a close relation of the birds of
> unspecified species quoted as "poo-tee-weet" in various Kurt Vonnegut
> novels, esp "Slaughterhouse 5" and "God Bless You Mr Rosewater".
>
> A-and, according to "Breakfast of Champions", Kilgore Trout's father was
an
> ornithologist.
>
> Of course these all postdate Pale Fire
>
> James
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 23:37:06 +0100
> From: "James Kyllo" <jkyllo@clara.net>
> Subject: NPPF - Canto Two Shade's maths
>
> "We have been married forty years. At least
> Four thousand times your pillow has been creased
> By our two heads..."
>
> Forty years = 14,610 nights. So:
>
> a) he's away from home a lot;
> b) they have separate beds and haven't visited each other more often than
> not
> c) Shade's maths isn't too good
>
> "...four hundred thousand times
> The tall clock with the hoarse Westminster chimes
> Has marked our hour"
>
> It could be the maths, as
>
> Forty years = 350,640 hours
>
> but perhaps that's close enough for poetry?
>
>
> James
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 08:38:48 +1000
> From: jbor <jbor@bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Canto 1 "that golden paste!"
>
> on 29/7/03 2:42 AM, Paul Mackin wrote:
>
> > John's lameness might have been the result of rickets, which kids who
> > didn't play out in the sunshine were especially prone to--from an
> > insufficiency of natural vitamin D production.
>
> I think this is a valid insight. One of the main things about Canto One is
> how much of it is looking out into "nature" from *inside* the house. Apart
> from the favourite tree on his walk to school, a walk which he seems to
have
> repeated for the exercise of writing the poem, and the report of which
lets
> us know that he was constantly looking back to see the porch of the house
> from the lake (for reassurance?) on his way to school which is perhaps why
> it *was* his favourite spot, most of the rest of the Canto sees him
> (imaginatively) walking from room to room in the house, remembering people
> and things. Apart from this it's all very much an "indoor scene" (even the
> passage where he goes "up the hill" and claims to have "walked at my own
> risk" seems to have taken place only in his imagination), which makes his
> pretension to have been inspired and exalted by "nature" ("How fully I
felt
> nature glued to me ... !") seem somewhat grandiloquent.
>
> He writes:
>
> Then as now
> I walked at my own risk: whipped by the bough
> Tripped by the stump. (127-9)
>
> The "[t]hen as now" reinforces the irony of this because he cancels or
> curtails most of his walks with Kinbote if I recall correctly (but perhaps
> that's just because of Kinbote). But there does seem to be something very
> fishy in this assumption that Shade is a great nature poet Ю la
Wordsworth.
> He seems hardly to have ventured beyond this one house in his whole life.
>
> best
>
> ps Apparently the poem is not written in "heroic couplets". It's written
in
> what I read somewhere are called "run-on couplets"
>
> pps The only part of the Canto that I can see as referring to Aunt Maud is
> the stanza from lines 86-98.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 08:39:40 +1000
> From: jbor <jbor@bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Canto 1 Incest Motif
>
> on 29/7/03 4:27 AM, s~Z wrote:
>
> > (161) But like some lad forced by a wench
> > (162) With his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench,
> > (163) I was corrupted, terrified allured,
> [...]
> > (166) The wonder lingers and the shame remains.
>
> This is a simile. It refers to a kiss between "some lad" (NB "some") and
"a
> wench" (that is, 1. girl or young woman 2. prostitute), and Shade uses it
> to describe his moments of "sublime" blackness in those fits, what the
> doctor had called merely "growing pains" in line 165.
>
> best
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 08:38:06 +1000
> From: jbor <jbor@bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Canto One: first stanza
>
> on 29/7/03 2:32 AM, cfalbert at calbert@hslboxmaster.com wrote:
>
> > You argue that "consonant dissonance" (or some such thing) works against
Nab.s
> > purposes in the opening lines.......in the first couplet, there are TWO
> > "conspicuous" consonants, the "x" in waxwing and the "p" in
> > windowpane........these two hardly a dissonant stew generate........in
fact,
> > as MalignD suggests, and I and Boyd insist - these lines scan
exquisitely....
>
> I noted that the phrase "smudge of ashen fluff" unleashes dissonance to no
> worthwhile effect. And it's the prosaic "I was ... ", "I was ... ", which
> mars what could otherwise have been a very poetic image. Imo.
>
> But thanks for the quote from Fowler. You had previously written that
Fowler
> suggests that Nabokov had intended to respond to the excesses of Eliot in
> composing Shade's 'Pale Fire', but perhaps that isn't the case.
>
> best
>
> ------------------------------
> From: "James Kyllo" <jkyllo@clara.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Canto Two Shade's maths
>
> and whilst I'm waxing mathematical, note:
>
> "..Lochan Neck where zesty skaters crossed
> from Exe to Wye.."
>
> James
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 15:49:48 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Canto Two Shade's maths
>
> > <<"We have been married forty years. At least
> > Four thousand times your pillow has been creased
> > By our two heads..."
>
> I read this as, "In forty years we made love at least 4,000 times."
>
> The other times his head was on his own pillow.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 00:33:30 +0100
> From: "James Kyllo" <jkyllo@clara.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Canto Two Shade's maths
>
> > > <<"We have been married forty years. At least
> > > Four thousand times your pillow has been creased
> > > By our two heads..."
> >
> > I read this as, "In forty years we made love at least 4,000 times."
> >
> > The other times his head was on his own pillow.
>
> I guess that makes sense.. but their pillow discipline was a lot stricter
> than that with which I'm familiar
>
> James
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 16:36:12 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Canto Two Shade's maths
>
> >>>I guess that makes sense.. but their pillow discipline was a lot
> stricter
> than that with which I'm familiar<<<
>
> Another of many side-effects of his childhood abuse.
>
> (Doesn't Kinbote make a disgruntled aside to this bedroom reference other
> than in his commentary to these lines?)
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3451
> ********************************
>
.
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:32:14 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Canto 1 "that golden paste!"
>
> >>>But fishy? Does honey ever taste fishy?<<<
>
> My honey does.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:38:10 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Canto 1 Incest Motif
>
> >>>I found your insights stimulating. I loved them. I just didn't
agree.<<<
>
> I may not agree with myself as the text rolls on, but in response to your
> 'coincidence' I repeat:
>
> "Allied to the professional and vocational dreams are "dim-doom" visions:
> fatidic-sign nightmares, thalamic calamities, menacing riddles. Not
> infrequently the menace is well concealed, and the innocent incident will
> turn out to possess, if jotted down and looked up later, the kind of
> precognitive flavor that Dunne has explained by the action of "reverse
> memory"; but for the moment I am not going to enlarge upon the uncanny
> element particular to dreams---beyond observing that some law of logic
> should fix a number of coincidences, in a given domain, after which they
> cease to be coincidences, and form, instead, the living organism of a new
> truth" (ADA, p.361)
>
> I'm going to read ADA a third time as I go through PF. The novels seem
> intricately related to me.
>
> I'll respond in detail to your post as time permits. Thanks for
interacting
> and offering other interpretations.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:45:16 -0700 (PDT)
> From: David Morris <fqmorris@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Apologies
>
> - --- cfalbert <calbert@hslboxmaster.com> wrote:
> > I want to extend sincere apologies to the list, and Mr. Morris, in
particular
> for my shoddy attention to the schedule.......Should it be appropriate, I
will
> terminate my efforts on ONE by the end of the day......
>
> NO, no, no need to apologize or to limit your posts on Canto One at all.
The
> schedule shouldn't limit discussion, just keep it moving forward. Canto
Two
> has begun, but Canto One need not stop.
>
> DM
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 11:51:28 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Canto Two Synopsis
>
> >>> His observations as he proceeds with this task take on a
> macabre tone.<<<
>
> Note the location of this paring. He's 'before the window.'
>
> >>> "Flinching likenesses" of people emerge as he snips away what
> Aunt Maud called "scarf skin:" <<<
>
> That nasty Aunt Maud was a real stickler for well groomed fingers. She
> didn't mind the babes crying, but she was averse to personal pain.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 14:58:56 -0400
> From: "cfalbert" <calbert@hslboxmaster.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: CANTO ONE D. Fowler/ for Jasper
>
> > Thanks for the clarification, Charles. Given your timeline (with which
I
> > have some distant familiarity from my previous career as an English
> major),
> > I think it might be useful to ask why Shade positions himself before
> > Wordsworth. "
>
> How do you mean "before"?
>
> "Shade is a Pope scholar of course, so he is likely to be more
> > familiar or comfortable with this form, and perhaps he prefers it, but
> it's
> > certainly not cutting-edge poetry (I have a friend who may still have
> > Charles Bernstein's number and email -- maybe I'll ask him to ask for an
> > opinion)."
>
> Shade, along with Nab and Wordsworth are decidedly "retro". But beyond
> offering the Zembla excerpt (and this will become much more important in a
> few hours), Pope may not play such a large role in the "scheme" of PF.
> There is little in Pope's subject matter which conforms to the concerns of
> Shade's poems, but a remarkable congruity with Wordsworth's. That said, it
> seems to me that the "heroic couplet" form may have peaked with
Goldsmith,
> as Wordsworth opus seems to include very few examples (RESOLUTION &
> INDEPENDENCE is the only one of those offered in Norton which combines
> iambic pentameter, and couplets).
>
> " We can surmise Shade's opinion of Eliot. Is he a "retro" poet?"
>
> If I could type faster, I'd give you the entire Fowler take........see if
I
> can find the strength......
>
> > Does Shade want a return to older forms, is he an anti-modernist?
>
> I'd say you were on relative sure ground here......
>
> " Is he
> > therefore likely to be as widely accepted and lauded in 1959 as we are
> given
> > to believe?"
>
> I'm not sure Shade wrote PF with "acceptance" in mind - this may have been
a
> project intended to satisfy a more personal need.....
>
> "Also, as you say, why is the form of the poem so clearly at odds with the
> subject? Is poetry a closed ("vicious") circle to him? Is "Pale Fire"
> thematically an attempt to escape from its own form?"
>
> I don't know about "at odds", I just found it interesting that he would
> employ a poetic structure normally associated with "closure and surety"
in
> the service of a work so clearly intended to offer anything but......
>
> love,
> cfa
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 15:26:37 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Canto 1 Incest Motif
>
> Oh sure - though the progress of the discussion prods us forward; and
> thanks for reading through my typos. In any case, I'd be pleased to read
> whatever you cared to write.
>
> On the quotation below, let me just briefly note that VN seems to be
> talking about dreams of a prophetic nature rather than psychological
> revelations. His view seems to be that one can transcend material
> actuality within the space of one's dreams. (Robert Graves had similar
> ideas, and his statements about proleptic vision would be illuminating in
> this context.) I don't think his uncanny is Freud's - in fact, quickly
> googling about suggests he may actually have been famous for loathing
> Freud, for reasons that further conflict with the argument you are making.
> I wonder if the following quotation is relevant ...
>
> Best,
> Michael
>
> +*+*+*+*
>
> Mr. Nabokov, would you tell us why it is that you detest Dr. Freud?
>
> I think he's crude, I think he's medieval, and I don't want an
> elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon
> me. I don't have the dreams that he discusses in his books. I don't see
> umbrellas in my dreams. Or balloons.
>
> I think that the creative artist is an exile in his study, in his bedroom,
> in the circle of his lamplight. He's quite alone there; he's the lone
> wolf. As soon as he's together with somebody else he shares his secret, he
> shares his mystery, he shares his God with somebody else.
>
> (http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nab-v-freud.html)
>
> +*+*+*++*
>
>
> > I'll respond in detail to your post as time permits. Thanks for
interacting
> > and offering other interpretations.
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 12:58:08 -0700
> From: "Steve Maas" <tyronemullet@hotmail.com>
> Subject: NPPF Heading
>
> I appreciate you all (mostly) being so good about that "NPPF" heading. For
> the first time ever, and thanks to your conscientiousness, I was just now
> able to delete an entire digest without having to page through it! Kudos!!
>
> Steve Maas
>
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 13:15:01 -0700 (PDT)
>>
>> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 16:38:31 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Two -- The Butterfly of Doom
>
> ln 270: "My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blest"
>
> The Vanessa atalanta Butterfly, aka the Red Admirable, aka the Red
Admiral.
> From a 1970 interview with Alfred Appel:
>
> Appel: "That particular butterfly appears frequently in your own work,
too.
> In _Pale Fire_, a Red Admirable lands on John Shade's arm the minute
before
> he is killed, the insect appears in King, Queen Knave just after you've
> withdrawn the authorial omniscience -- killing the characters, so to speak
> - -- and in the final chapter of _Speak, Memory_, you recall having seen
in a
> Paris park, just before the war, a live Red Admirable being promenaded on
a
> leash of thread by a little girl. Why are you so fond of Vanessa
atalanta?
>
> VN: "Its coloring is quite splendid and I liked it very much in my youth.
> Great numbers of them migrated from Africa to Northern Russia, where it
was
> called "The Butterfly of Doom" because it was especially abundant in 1881,
> the year Tsar Alexander II was assassinated, and the markings on the
> underside of its two hind wings seem to read '1881.' The Red Admirable's
> ability to travel so far is matched by many other migratory
butterflies."
> (_Strong Opinions_, 170)
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 16:39:15 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Two -- Lolita
>
> Several references to _Lolita_ in Canto Two:
>
> ln 254: "In April's haze immediately behind"
>
> Charlotte and Dolores ("Lolita") Haze, not to mention Hazel Shade.
_Lolita_
> wasn't "immediately behind" _Pale Fire_ in composition dates (_Pnin_ is in
> the middle); perhaps he means in quality?
>
> ln 270: "My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blest"
>
> Vanessa Van Ness in _Lolita_ ("fat, powdered Mrs. Leigh", mother of little
> Annabel, "a certain initial girl-child.").
>
> ln 274-275: see K's "false start" following ln 274 on page 174: "I like my
> name: Shade, _Ombre_, almost 'man' / In Spanish . . ."
>
> A link to Humbert Humbert: Shade in Latin is "umbra", close to "Humbert",
as
> is "hombre", Spanish for man. "Ombre" is also a 17th century card game.
> (Okay, premature -- sorry, I couldn't help it.)
>
> ln 408: "A male hand traced from Florida to Maine":
>
> See repetition on ln 680: "Lolita swept from Florida to Maine"
>
> ln 413: "A nymph came pirouetting, under white"
>
> See pg 202 for variant: "A nymphet pirouetted"; more abstraction into art
> and the "real" world, in this case VN's own.
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 16:40:06 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Two -- Eliot
>
> ln 254: "In April's haze immediately behind"
>
> Perhaps an allusion to Eliot's _The Waste Land_?
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html
>
> ln 376-379: "(some phony modern poem that was said" etc.
>
> Definite allusion to Eliot's _Four Quartets_. The words Hazel asks about:
> "grimpen" (ln 368), "chtonic" (ln 370), and "sempiternal" (ln 372) are all
> found in that poem. From Boyd:
>
> "Peter Lubin identified the sources in his 'Kickshaws and Motley' (1970),
> 205n.7, to which Nabokov responded: 'Very beautifully he tracks down to
> their lairs in Eliot three terms queried by a poor little person in _Pale
> Fire_' (_Strong Opinions_, 291). (Nabokov's comment plays on the tracking
> down of the hound of the Baskervilles -- Conan Doyle's novel is the source
> for Eliot's word -- to its lair in Grimpen Mire.) As Foster notes
> (_Nabokov's Art of Memory, 223-24), the 'grimpen' (swamp) and
'sempiternal'
> (in Eliot's poem: 'Midwinter spring is its own season / Sempiternal though
> sodden towards sundown') anticipate Hazel's death in a swamp, as she steps
> off the ice on a 'night of thaw' when 'Black spring / Stood just around
the
> corner" (P.494-96)." (Boyd, _The Magic of Artistic Discovery_, 273).
>
> See also ln 369-370 for the rhyme "again" with "explain", making fun of
> Eliot's adopted Britishness.
>
> Question: is Shade (or VN) writing an answer to Eliot's *Christian* poem?
>
> http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 16:43:15 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <jasper@hatguild.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Two -- Additional Notes
>
> ln 167: "There was a time in my demented youth"
>
> Perhaps a reference to Wordsworth's _Intimations of Immortality_ Ode which
> begins:
>
> "THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
> The earth, and every common sight,
> To me did seem
> Apparell'd in celestial light,
> The glory and the freshness of a dream."
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html
>
> ln 180: "Devoting all my twisted life to this"
> ln 181: "One task. Today I'm sixty-one. Waxwings."
>
> As I've suggested before, the idea or goal of immortality or life after
> death from between the borders of life represented visually through the
> number itself: 181. See also 1881 and the Butterfly of Doom (Lex Luthor's
> insect pet).
>
> ln 183: "The little scissors I am holding are / A dazzling synthesis of
sun
> and star"
>
> Mirror motif in the scissors, synthesis, night and day, one and many. Why
> the passive voice progressive tense?
>
> ln 185-186: "I stand before the window and I pare / My fingernails and
> vaguely am aware", ln 245: "And so I pare my nails, and muse, and hear"
>
> When asked by Alfred Appel about this apparent allusion to Joyce, VN
> replied: "Neither Kinbote nor Shade, nor their maker, is answering Joyce
in
> _Pale Fire_. Actually, I never liked _A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
> Man_. I find it a feeble and garrulous book. The phrase you quote is an
> unpleasant coincidence." (_Strong Opinions_, 70-71)
>
> ln 231: see K's variant pg 167
>
> ln 316: See 183-184 for K's variant: "In woods Virginia Whites occurred in
> May"
>
> ln 343: "With a Korean boy who took my course": He shows up for Shade's
> birthday party on page 160.
>
> ln 368: "Grim Pen": Another cage.
>
> ln 419: see variant on pg 202.
>
> ln 423: "I was in time to overhear brief fame": Illusory immortality.
>
> ln 500: "Into a crackling, gulping swamp, and sank."
>
> The dead center of the poem. Hazel, like Ophelia, drowns. See also Sir
> Walter Scott's _The Lady of the Lake_, which includes the lines:
>
> "The stag at eve had drunk his fill,
> Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,
> And deep his midnight lair had made
> In lone Glenartney's hazel shade...."
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/222/0108.html
>
> Jasper
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 17:17:36 -0400
> From: "charles albert" <calbert@hslboxmaster.com>
> Subject: Re: Canto Two -- Additional Notes
>
> > ln 500: "Into a crackling, gulping swamp, and sank."
> >
> > The dead center of the poem. Hazel, like Ophelia, drowns. See also Sir
> > Walter Scott's _The Lady of the Lake_, which includes the lines:
> >
> > "The stag at eve had drunk his fill,
> > Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,
> > And deep his midnight lair had made
> > In lone Glenartney's hazel shade...."
> >
> > http://www.bartleby.com/222/0108.html
>
>
> Or Eustacia Vye in Hardy's Return of the Native?
>
> love,
> cfa
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 17:21:51 -0400
> From: T <pyramid@maxwellsdemon.org>
> Subject: NPPF: Canto Two -- Grimpen
>
> In Chapter Seven of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Mr.
> Stapleton of Merripit House, a naturalist carrying a butterfly
> net and specimen box, addresses Dr. Watson with a laugh: "'That
> is the great Grimpen Mire,' said he. 'A false step yonder means
> death to man or beast. Only yesterday I saw one of the moor
> ponies wander into it. He never came out. I saw his head for
> quite a long time craning out of the bog-hole, but it sucked him
> down at last. Even in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it,
> but after these autumn rains it is an awful place. And yet I can
> find my way to the very heart of it and return alive.'"
> Stapleton turns out to be the villain of the story. As
> Watson reports in Chapter 12, "All my unspoken instincts, my
> vague suspicions, suddenly took shape and centred upon the
> naturalist. In that impassive, colourless man, with his straw
> hat and his butterfly net, I seemed to see something terrible--a
> creature of infinite patience and craft, with a smiling face and
> a murderous heart." *
>
>
> ==========
> The entire entry from the OED, 2nd Edition:
>
> grimpen
> [Etym. uncertain.]
> A marshy area.
> 1902 A. Conan Doyle Hound of Baskervilles vii. 153 Life has
> become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches
> everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point
> the track.
> 1940 T. S. Eliot East Coker ii. 10 In a dark wood, in a bramble,
> On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold.
> 1968 W. S. Baring-Gould Annotated Sherlock Holmes II. xxxvi. 47
> As is well known, Watson's "Great Grimpen Mire" is Grimspound
> Bog, three miles to the north and west of Widecombe-in-the-Moor.
>
> ==========
>
>
> First post -- thanks!
>
> ~ T
>
>
>
>
>
> ==========
> *
> From the note to line 402 of _Dark Ice_, 1993.
>
> ------------------------------
>> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 18:02:55 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF Canto Two
>
>
> Lines 236-44
> The elaborate reversal of the ant and the grasshopper fable seems
> clearly meant to be a portentious sign. To the Shades or to us readers.
>
> The ant dies and the grasshopper flies on.
>
> Mandible evidently refers not a the lower jaw of a mammal but to
> madibulate insect.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 15:19:04 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Canto Two
>
> >>>The ant dies<<<
>
> Yes she does.
>
> >>> and the grasshopper flies on. <<<
>
> Yes he does. At least he hop-flops on.
>
> >>>Mandible evidently refers not a the lower jaw of a mammal but to
> madibulate insect.<<<
>
> Mandibulate incest = incestual cunnilingus
>
> A proud and happy linguist = a cunning-linguist
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 23:26:34 +0100
> From: "James Kyllo" <jkyllo@clara.net>
> Subject: NPPF Canto 1 aside re the mockingbird
>
> That mockingbird's "to-wee" seems to me a close relation of the birds of
> unspecified species quoted as "poo-tee-weet" in various Kurt Vonnegut
> novels, esp "Slaughterhouse 5" and "God Bless You Mr Rosewater".
>
> A-and, according to "Breakfast of Champions", Kilgore Trout's father was
an
> ornithologist.
>
> Of course these all postdate Pale Fire
>
> James
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 23:37:06 +0100
> From: "James Kyllo" <jkyllo@clara.net>
> Subject: NPPF - Canto Two Shade's maths
>
> "We have been married forty years. At least
> Four thousand times your pillow has been creased
> By our two heads..."
>
> Forty years = 14,610 nights. So:
>
> a) he's away from home a lot;
> b) they have separate beds and haven't visited each other more often than
> not
> c) Shade's maths isn't too good
>
> "...four hundred thousand times
> The tall clock with the hoarse Westminster chimes
> Has marked our hour"
>
> It could be the maths, as
>
> Forty years = 350,640 hours
>
> but perhaps that's close enough for poetry?
>
>
> James
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 08:38:48 +1000
> From: jbor <jbor@bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Canto 1 "that golden paste!"
>
> on 29/7/03 2:42 AM, Paul Mackin wrote:
>
> > John's lameness might have been the result of rickets, which kids who
> > didn't play out in the sunshine were especially prone to--from an
> > insufficiency of natural vitamin D production.
>
> I think this is a valid insight. One of the main things about Canto One is
> how much of it is looking out into "nature" from *inside* the house. Apart
> from the favourite tree on his walk to school, a walk which he seems to
have
> repeated for the exercise of writing the poem, and the report of which
lets
> us know that he was constantly looking back to see the porch of the house
> from the lake (for reassurance?) on his way to school which is perhaps why
> it *was* his favourite spot, most of the rest of the Canto sees him
> (imaginatively) walking from room to room in the house, remembering people
> and things. Apart from this it's all very much an "indoor scene" (even the
> passage where he goes "up the hill" and claims to have "walked at my own
> risk" seems to have taken place only in his imagination), which makes his
> pretension to have been inspired and exalted by "nature" ("How fully I
felt
> nature glued to me ... !") seem somewhat grandiloquent.
>
> He writes:
>
> Then as now
> I walked at my own risk: whipped by the bough
> Tripped by the stump. (127-9)
>
> The "[t]hen as now" reinforces the irony of this because he cancels or
> curtails most of his walks with Kinbote if I recall correctly (but perhaps
> that's just because of Kinbote). But there does seem to be something very
> fishy in this assumption that Shade is a great nature poet Ю la
Wordsworth.
> He seems hardly to have ventured beyond this one house in his whole life.
>
> best
>
> ps Apparently the poem is not written in "heroic couplets". It's written
in
> what I read somewhere are called "run-on couplets"
>
> pps The only part of the Canto that I can see as referring to Aunt Maud is
> the stanza from lines 86-98.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 08:39:40 +1000
> From: jbor <jbor@bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Canto 1 Incest Motif
>
> on 29/7/03 4:27 AM, s~Z wrote:
>
> > (161) But like some lad forced by a wench
> > (162) With his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench,
> > (163) I was corrupted, terrified allured,
> [...]
> > (166) The wonder lingers and the shame remains.
>
> This is a simile. It refers to a kiss between "some lad" (NB "some") and
"a
> wench" (that is, 1. girl or young woman 2. prostitute), and Shade uses it
> to describe his moments of "sublime" blackness in those fits, what the
> doctor had called merely "growing pains" in line 165.
>
> best
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 08:38:06 +1000
> From: jbor <jbor@bigpond.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Canto One: first stanza
>
> on 29/7/03 2:32 AM, cfalbert at calbert@hslboxmaster.com wrote:
>
> > You argue that "consonant dissonance" (or some such thing) works against
Nab.s
> > purposes in the opening lines.......in the first couplet, there are TWO
> > "conspicuous" consonants, the "x" in waxwing and the "p" in
> > windowpane........these two hardly a dissonant stew generate........in
fact,
> > as MalignD suggests, and I and Boyd insist - these lines scan
exquisitely....
>
> I noted that the phrase "smudge of ashen fluff" unleashes dissonance to no
> worthwhile effect. And it's the prosaic "I was ... ", "I was ... ", which
> mars what could otherwise have been a very poetic image. Imo.
>
> But thanks for the quote from Fowler. You had previously written that
Fowler
> suggests that Nabokov had intended to respond to the excesses of Eliot in
> composing Shade's 'Pale Fire', but perhaps that isn't the case.
>
> best
>
> ------------------------------
> From: "James Kyllo" <jkyllo@clara.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Canto Two Shade's maths
>
> and whilst I'm waxing mathematical, note:
>
> "..Lochan Neck where zesty skaters crossed
> from Exe to Wye.."
>
> James
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 15:49:48 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Canto Two Shade's maths
>
> > <<"We have been married forty years. At least
> > Four thousand times your pillow has been creased
> > By our two heads..."
>
> I read this as, "In forty years we made love at least 4,000 times."
>
> The other times his head was on his own pillow.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 00:33:30 +0100
> From: "James Kyllo" <jkyllo@clara.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Canto Two Shade's maths
>
> > > <<"We have been married forty years. At least
> > > Four thousand times your pillow has been creased
> > > By our two heads..."
> >
> > I read this as, "In forty years we made love at least 4,000 times."
> >
> > The other times his head was on his own pillow.
>
> I guess that makes sense.. but their pillow discipline was a lot stricter
> than that with which I'm familiar
>
> James
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 16:36:12 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF - Canto Two Shade's maths
>
> >>>I guess that makes sense.. but their pillow discipline was a lot
> stricter
> than that with which I'm familiar<<<
>
> Another of many side-effects of his childhood abuse.
>
> (Doesn't Kinbote make a disgruntled aside to this bedroom reference other
> than in his commentary to these lines?)
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3451
> ********************************
>
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