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Comments on Boyd's PALE FIRE
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>From: Joe aisenbergiana <hermannkarlovich@ihateclowns.com>
>No one I know is as crazy as I am on the subject of Nabby and so, having
just purchased Mr Boyd's Pale Fire book I had no one to discuss this with.
Anyway, what's the deal with this book? With all these ghosts in his
readings of N? I remember when I read his analysis of THE DEFENSE I thought
the idea that two ghosts (dad and granddad) battling in some cosmic chess
game for the fate of poor Luzhin's life--predictably in the end all
narrative paths point back to N so that the book turns out to be a
commercial for what a genius he is--was kind of garbagey. And apparently all
of his books tell us something like this, which is profund because it could
be analgous to the possibility of a real god playing the game we call life,
etc. Does Boyd Know something I don't? I got the feeling while reading his
book on PALE FIRE that the guy, Boyd, must have some inside info that we,
the average readers, aren't getting to peek at--even ten successive ultra
orangely burning perusals of old Nabby's novel could not have revealed all
those impolite immortals meddling inside N's contrived universe. I like the
way Boyd tries to make you feel like a total bum if you aren't intersted
enough in the book to try to annotate it! Also I kept wondering if he
personally believes in ghosts. Also, what does Karl Popper have to do with
anything? By the way, in justifying himself for all this interpretive
silliness Boyd repeats that old saw about elegant solutions to riddles,
something I always thought was a bit of a point bender--Nabokov is saying
that WRITING a book is like finding an elegant solution to a tricky riddle,
not necessarily READING it. And surely Boyd doesn't really think there is a
complete absence of ambiguity in N's novels! That everything in them can be
somehow critically processed and quantified into an exact meaning
corresponding to the author's intention. Now I'm no mourner at the graveside
of the author, but Boyd's getting a little goofified. And anyway, a person
could just as easily quote the stuff VN wrote Carl Proffer at the end of a
letter suggesting corrections to the KEYS TO LOLITA, where he says that the
spirit of art is intuition and inspiration, not calculation. The real
problem is that Nabokov was somewhat conflicted though he acted as if he
wasn't; Boyd distorts this further by simply taking Nabokov at his word when
the novels, interviews, the letters say different. And anyway, the idea that
everything can be interpreted and absolutely explained is inartistic,
especially when it depends so entirely on the previous work of Nabonuts (a
friendly label which I proudly bear, even if I am an amateur). Anyway, it's
getting late and I'll stop.
Joe A
>
>
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>From: Joe aisenbergiana <hermannkarlovich@ihateclowns.com>
>No one I know is as crazy as I am on the subject of Nabby and so, having
just purchased Mr Boyd's Pale Fire book I had no one to discuss this with.
Anyway, what's the deal with this book? With all these ghosts in his
readings of N? I remember when I read his analysis of THE DEFENSE I thought
the idea that two ghosts (dad and granddad) battling in some cosmic chess
game for the fate of poor Luzhin's life--predictably in the end all
narrative paths point back to N so that the book turns out to be a
commercial for what a genius he is--was kind of garbagey. And apparently all
of his books tell us something like this, which is profund because it could
be analgous to the possibility of a real god playing the game we call life,
etc. Does Boyd Know something I don't? I got the feeling while reading his
book on PALE FIRE that the guy, Boyd, must have some inside info that we,
the average readers, aren't getting to peek at--even ten successive ultra
orangely burning perusals of old Nabby's novel could not have revealed all
those impolite immortals meddling inside N's contrived universe. I like the
way Boyd tries to make you feel like a total bum if you aren't intersted
enough in the book to try to annotate it! Also I kept wondering if he
personally believes in ghosts. Also, what does Karl Popper have to do with
anything? By the way, in justifying himself for all this interpretive
silliness Boyd repeats that old saw about elegant solutions to riddles,
something I always thought was a bit of a point bender--Nabokov is saying
that WRITING a book is like finding an elegant solution to a tricky riddle,
not necessarily READING it. And surely Boyd doesn't really think there is a
complete absence of ambiguity in N's novels! That everything in them can be
somehow critically processed and quantified into an exact meaning
corresponding to the author's intention. Now I'm no mourner at the graveside
of the author, but Boyd's getting a little goofified. And anyway, a person
could just as easily quote the stuff VN wrote Carl Proffer at the end of a
letter suggesting corrections to the KEYS TO LOLITA, where he says that the
spirit of art is intuition and inspiration, not calculation. The real
problem is that Nabokov was somewhat conflicted though he acted as if he
wasn't; Boyd distorts this further by simply taking Nabokov at his word when
the novels, interviews, the letters say different. And anyway, the idea that
everything can be interpreted and absolutely explained is inartistic,
especially when it depends so entirely on the previous work of Nabonuts (a
friendly label which I proudly bear, even if I am an amateur). Anyway, it's
getting late and I'll stop.
Joe A
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>Do you hate clowns? Get Free Email at http://www.ihateclowns.com
>Get Free "i hate clowns" stuff at
http://www.ihateclowns.com/freesticker.shtml
>