Life imitates Art? Are TOoL readers
really invited to "play Nabokov"? [ Cf. Leland de la Durantaye (Boston
Review, Nov., 2009) on TOoL's first edition
in English: “The result lies halfway between a scholarly edition
and a children's book....the facsimiles are also perforated, so the reader can
remove them, fold them, file them, and, should he or she wish, play
Nabokov.”]
I'm thinking about
"Pale Fire" and Shade's last, unfinished line, with
the scattered notecards, after Gradus reached him at
last. Suddenly I got the feeling that,
while plundering TOoL's cards, I was not "playing Nabokov" at all: I
had become Charles Kinbote!