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 donıt think Jekyll/Hyde is as complex as PF, nor do I find Stevensonıs 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