Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0013760, Wed, 25 Oct 2006 18:43:40 +0100

Subject
Re: JM to MR back to Sergei: reading by VN's "intertexture"
Date
Body
On 22/10/06 07:01, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:

>
> //snip
> One more voice, here added "inter-texturely": Why not examine more and go
> beyond "PF and Commentary"?
> For example. In "ADA" we find Van's treatise on "Texture of Time"and his
> insight on the interval between events. Now, ADA begins, on Chapter 1, part
> One, with:
>
> "All happy families are more or less dissimilar; all unhappy ones are more or
> less alike" (a great Russian writer)
>
> If we should turn to Pale Fire, Commentary to line 894, when CK quotes JS
> denying Zemblan re-semblances ( initially CK had changed the "subject" saying
> "all Chinese look alike") we end with:
>
> "Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different
> similarities and similar diferences" .
>
> Various voices seem to be chiming in at various points in a diastema of
> different textures along distinct works...
>
> Jansy: the Œvoices¹ I often hear include large doses of VN mocking those
> trite, paradoxical aphorisms that we so readily take as ineffable wisdom ‹
> sometimes characterized as the ³Less is More; More is Less² school.
>
> Consider Dan Lloyd¹s book ³Radiant Cool: A Novel Theory of Consciousness² (MIT
> Press, 2003). I¹ve read only Jerry Fodor¹s scathing critique (LRB, Mar 4,
> 2004) so I¹m not sure if the title is a conscious reversal of ³Pale Fire??²
> Temperature markers are forever changing: nowadays the hottest songs and
> microchips are the coolest.
>
> As the pun on Œnovel¹ indicates, Lloyd¹s epistemological philosophies are
> presented in dramatic narrative form (contrary to VN¹s advice?). Lloyd uses
> the Dickensian and Nabokovian character- and place-naming tricks we¹ve been
> discussing (there¹s a Prof Max GRUE, and you are expected to know the infamous
> Grue paradox (qv!) that disturbs the very foundations of scientific induction;
> the café is called GODOT to allow the obvious joke with the waitress: ³How
> long have you been waiting for Godot?²) YET finally, as Fodor, anxious to
> debate actual theories of consiousness, concludes: ³YOU CAN¹T ARGUE WITH A
> NOVEL!²
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle


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