On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 10:24 AM, Jansy <jansy@aetern.us> wrote:
...
 
JM: ...One sentence struck me in particular ( related to Boyd's argument about Hazel's and Shade's survival after death which then "makes sense of the book", due to what you encapuslated in parenthesis: "...it would ruin part of the humor").
Would you consider that Pale Fire is, mainly, "a comedy,"then?  And you agree, with Boyd, that Pale Fire "makes sense" because of its subject concerning infernal shades and recurrent ghosts arriving from some kind of "future" (as in the word "hereafter"). 

Thanks for the compliments, Jansy.  My parenthesis doesn't refer to my ideas at all.  It refers to how some other people read the book, as in this essay by Jim Twiggs:

http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0612&L=nabokv-l&T=0&X=2D893A396EB15843A6&Y=jerry_friedman%40yahoo.com&P=21694

For him, Shade's belief that his darling somewhere is alive is comic and pathetic, not to be taken seriously for a second.

I probably went too far in saying "makes sense", but for me, there's something that Pale Fire does, if we read it as containing non-infernal shades and ghosts arriving from wherever, for which "makes sense" might not be a bad figure of speech.  But I've said all this before.

http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0503&L=NABOKV-L&P=R38760&I=-3&X=4AAC873AA0362455BD&Y=jerry_friedman%40yahoo.com

From a different angle:

http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0904&L=NABOKV-L&P=R2&I=-3&X=6634A329A6C94619BD&Y=jerry_friedman%40yahoo.com

http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0904&L=NABOKV-L&P=R15112&I=-3&X=6634A329A6C94619BD&Y=jerry_friedman%40yahoo.com

I'm not the first to think this.  People who have reached similar conclusions include Julian Moynahan, Brian Boyd, and Victoria Alexander.  However, I've never convinced anyone.  (That's a note to anyone who hasn't read those posts and wants to read them.)

Jerry Friedman
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