EDNote: here's a message that fell through the cracks a few days
ago--sorry! -SB
-------- Original Message --------
That is a very interesting point (that the poem might not truly be
finished), and I am glad to see imaginative speculation in this
direction
rather than the usual ones (i.e. one guy is the other guy is the same
guy is
ghosties posting...) which seem to regard character motivation in Pale
Fire
as a sort of optional consideration compared to the all-important
dictates
of textual association.
I like to imagine coming across Kinbote's kidnapped edition, a dusty
item
from a long lost publishing house, languishing in the stacks of a
university
library, and saying what the hell is this? Of course, "Pale Fire" (the
poem) is far more easily available in Shade's "Collected Poems," the
whole
Botkin alias Kinbote episode only a sordid footnote to the official
Shade
story. Officially well-regarded, Shade himself is as little read these
days
as Mark van Doren; is, in fact, better remembered for having been "the
poet
who was shot."
Meanwhile, an ever growing cult following for the increasingly expensive
Kinbote edition - never republished after a deluge of negative reviews
and a
successful injunction by the Shade estate, although parts of it were
copied
into zines in the 90's - finally leads to unauthorized republishings on
the
internet and at least one influential short essay hailing his
commentary as
an exemplary instance of true outsider literature.
Vic Perry