-------- Original Message --------
Sergey Soloviev wrote:
>what other works containing important parts written in verse and in
> prose we could compare with PF?
Do Shakespeare's plays count? How about many of the books of
the Old Testament, and the Gospel of John?
Leaving aside my fixation on /The Lord of the Rings/, I recall
that /The Dunciad/ has been brought up here. I fear to name
in this august company Robert Heinlein's sentimental sf story
"The Green Hills of Earth".
There are lots of examples in Japanese and Chinese
literature.
Some very different examples that are more recent than
/Pale Fire/: John Gardner, /Grendel/; Poul Anderson, /A
Midsummer Tempest/; Ursula Le Guin, /Always Coming Home/; Greer
Ilene Gilman, /Moonwise/ (which I didn't like much). A. S.
Byatt's novel /Possession/ might be the closest to PF, and I
enjoyed it greatly. (But I didn't just guarantee that if you
liked PF I you'll like /Possession/.
On a different PF subject, Jansy mentioned how different
reading it is now from what it must have been 45 years ago.
She was talking about what's been learned, but I'm also very
conscious of what's been forgotten. For instance, I imagine
many readers at the time recognized Edsel Ford. He may not
have had much of a reputation, but he appeared in very widely
read publications, and his name must have been superlatively
memorable, at least for Americans. I'll also bet more readers
then than now recognized Colonel Starbottle (who I thank Matt
Roth for identifying, since I never troubled to do a Web search).
On the other hand, in that note on Starover Blue I have to
remind myself that "So it goes" is not an allusion to
/Slaughterhouse-5/. On the other hand, I see that /The Tin Drum/,
my only association with "Kashube", is conceivable.
As for Col. Starbottle, I wonder whether we're supposed to
infer that Kinbote caught the reference to drinking but missed
that to Bret Harte's character.
Jerry Friedman