-------- Original Message --------
I'm very interested in Laurence Hochard's pointing out
the "doubling" of Kinbote's growing a beard and Shade's
persistently shaving his. This seems to be related to
the werewolf theme that Matt has seen in that passage
and also seems to be instantiated in Kinbote, the wolf
to Botkin's man, whose middle name "Vseslav" is that of a
werewolf in /The Song of Igor's Campaign/. However,
at this point I see these more as thematic echoes rather
than as hints that Shade and Kinbote are one in any sense.
If we read PF as an unreliable-narrator novel in which
we can try to reconstruct a "real story", the
encyclopedia scene seems like a very unreliable
source of evidence. Not only does it have the article
about Zembla, when Zembla is no more than possibly
"real", but it also has very strange dialogue--"nay,
sir" and the like. So I'm wary of looking for
fictional "facts" in it, though not of seeking reflections
and echoes (or of believing that Shade resembled Judge
Goldsworth).
Likewise I don't think we can say that "Nice is the
place where Disa has been banished". It's the place
where Kinbote tells us this imaginary person has been
banished. He seems to be making her up as we watch
out of Sybil and Shade's description of her, and he
could easily place her in Nice because Shade recounted
being there with Sybil. But still, of course, we
should notice the nice echo.
Finally, though, I don't want to read PF just as an
unreliable-narrator novel with a "real story". I've
promised (for my own reasons, not on anyone's suggestion)
not to talk about my reading more than once a year,
but I think I misunderstood Joseph Aisenberg and
went too far with my reply. His and my reading have
a lot of similarities, especially in noting the
analogy between the author and the Creator (to reverse
his capitals), as in Brian Boyd's book and in the article
by Victoria Alexander that Jansy recently quoted. So if
anyone missed my post in April, it's at
<http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0804&L=nabokv-l&P=1742>
--but if anyone's interested in discussing it, maybe it
should be off the list.
Jerry Friedman
P.S. Matt, maybe we can make a deal. I'll post about
your ideas and you post about mine?