Recalling some of the recent posts about the possible “real” location of New Wye, it’s interesting to note that VN, by choosing not to set the book in the recognizable 50 states, lays the ground for this being a world in which “Zembla,” too, may exist.  If the world of Pale Fire contains the states of Appalachia and Utana, the towns of New Wye and Cedarn,  why not Zembla and Onhava?  Unless we believe that Kinbote/Botkin invented these American place-names too, but surely that’s going too far.  He would have had to change Shade's poem as well -- see lines 508-09, for instance.  (And by the way, the reference by Shade here to "Yewshade, in another, higher state" is another possible indication that New Wye's equivalent location in our world -- I'm trying to avoid the word "real," obviously! -- is not New York State.  If "higher" means due north, we've run out of states.  Though I suppose New England could be considered "higher" than Ithaca.)       

 

This answers none of the vexing questions about the nature and degree of Botkin’s impersonation of Kinbote, but I do think it was a masterstroke on VN’s part to unsettle the entire geography of the novel.

 

Regards,

 

J. Morris