Jerry Frieman wrote to JM: I'm sorry
if I was unclear. There wasn't supposed to be any algebra in my most
recent post.... I didn't realize till
you mentioned it that "foreword" applies especially to something not
written by the main author. Kinbote's use of "preface" can probably
be taken as evidence in favor of a single-author reading--if it hasn't been
already. I made the unimaginative suggestion that
it could be a mistake on Kinbote's or Nabokov's part.
The Vintage Edition of /Pale Fire/ starts with the
dedication, then has the quotation from the /Life of Johnson/, then
the "Contents". I take it the table of contents is part of
the fiction--either Kinbote or good old Frank is
responsible....
JM to JF: In "Pale Fire's"
Foreword we read: Frank has acknowledged the safe return of the galleys I had been
sent here and has asked me to mention in my Preface — and this
I willingly do — that I alone am responsible for any mistakes in my commentary.
Insert before a professional. Therefore
your suggestion,
added to RSGwynn"s comments, set the ball rolling! If it were a mistake on
Kinbote's part, what would have VN intended by it? A "lapsus" that revealed a
single author?
Or
could "Preface" have been employed, as it sometimes also occurs, only
as a synonim of "Foreword"?
Does
the entire sentence about prefaces mentioning Frank imply that
what we see as a finished book was not actually the end-product of Frank's
efforts & that we are reading something else, disguised as a published book?
(it was posthumously printed, was it not? S and K were
both dead, also G - the three main characters mentioned
in the Index )
JF:
Is it possible that /Lolita/ could be published without John Ray, Jr.'s
Foreword? I'm appalled.
JM:
For me the Penguin edition with the cover: "Vladimir Nabokov The
Annotated Lolita", and how its contents are listed is as mysterious as the
absence of John Ray's foreword in the Collin's edition...