Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0013190, Mon, 28 Aug 2006 16:23:19 -0800

Subject
Re: Kunin reply to A.S.Brown on PF
Date
Body
It was in an early reading of Jekyll/Hyde that I found the roots for a lot
of what fascinated me not only in literature, from Dracula to the many
filmed stories (often by Hitchcock) in which a personality known as benign
and ³normal² to some is revealed as menacing or even psychotic to others.
But I did not find that this quality extended to Pale Fire,

. I don¹t think Jekyll/Hyde is as complex as PF, nor do I find Stevenson¹s
prose aped by VN.


Dear Andrew,

Then we disagree - - I think that Shade is revealed as menacing and
psychotic. It was the hardest block I had in coming to the interpretation
that I did. Like Pnin, Shade is a wonderful invention and it was hard to
accept that he was a fraud.

By the way, I didn't say that Jekyll and Hyde is more complex than Pale
Fire, I said its structure was more complex. I was referring to the
complexity of its sets of narratives.

I perhaps overstated the case when I said that VN aped RLS's prose. But he
certainly does make references to the strange case in Pale Fire. And I found
that among the many red herrings of other literary references, this key
turned in the lock.

Carolyn


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