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Boof Bonser
Jan 26, 2015

nvj is touched by your generosity!
It blew my mind to learn that this was Zembla

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novaya_Zemlya

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Groke
Jul 27, 2007
New Adventures In Mom Strength

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Ok who's readin this and who was just frontin'

Past 80% done now, it's funny as poo poo. Reading it page by page so I did the whole poem first and the commentary afterwards.

Zembla very closely resembles but is not exactly like Scandinavia. Geographically and culturally it seems like a smaller extra Scandinavia stuck somehow between the real Scandinavia and Russia. The bits of Zemblan language we get are sometimes almost intelligible as a warped Scandinavian language and sometimes not at all. Or maybe Kinbote is just full of poo poo.

Safety Biscuits
Oct 21, 2010

I've been trying to work out if we can work out where Zembla is, and I don't think it's possible to locate it on a map of this world. If it were it'd have to be a peninsula in the Baltic, not Novaya Zembla. Kinbote also presents it as picturesquely semi-Utopian and oddly untouched by the USSR until the 50s. It's populated only by loyal Karlists, evil Radicals, handsome boy-nymphets and slatternly hags - not real people at all, but the caricatures Kinbote gives us of the New Wye cast. He's clearly, to me, making it all up.

Tree Goat posted:

There is very much a narrative in the commentary, and it is almost entirely character-driven, and the emotional journeys of those characters is of central importance. I think us being glib earlier itt about the book's status as parody and/or puzzle box might give the impression that the central appeal of the book is as a serious of humorous vignettes with an optional mystery to solve and that is not a great place from which to go at Pale Fire, especially given what I know of your preferences from the TBB lit thread.

I also think that Nabokov plays a similar trick here as in Lolita, where some of the affect from the characters whose emotional arcs are arguably central (Shade, Lolita) get waylaid by the intellectually exciting narrator. Lots of people talk about Humbert Humbert as a character, but Lolita herself can be somewhat erased from the novel (as per https://newrepublic.com/article/121908/lolita-cultural-icon). Similarly, there's a tendency to focus on Kinbote and his exact reliability regarding Zembla/royalty/assassins/etc. that can serve as an emotional distraction from Shade's loss and his mourning process.

e: am I supposed to spoiler poo poo? idk how this works.

Yeah, there's tons of story floating around in Pale Fire, but it is hidden to an extent - quite a large extent if you go with the "Shade's shade inspiring Kinbote" theory. And there's the raw emotion in Canto 2. On the other hand it offers plenty of intellectual amusement too. I'm not sure either is more central than the other. Seems appropriate in a centaur like this.

blue squares posted:

I liked Canto One a lot, which surprised me, because I typically don't go for poetry. The other three I mostly just sat through, thinking that once I got to the commentary the real fun would start.

Why'd you like Canto 1 the most? I think Canto 2 is more interesting and emotionally effective. The very end is hard to read.

Another little running joke I've noticed: Kinbote keeps loving up the phrase "pale fire". There's the "pale fire of the incinerator"* in the Introduction and the "translation" of Timon of Athens bit, but he also keeps using weak imitations of the phrase in the commentary; I've noticed two or three of them. Stuff like "weak illumination" or "watery glow", though I think I've made them up.

Groke
Jul 27, 2007
New Adventures In Mom Strength

House Louse posted:

I've been trying to work out if we can work out where Zembla is, and I don't think it's possible to locate it on a map of this world. If it were it'd have to be a peninsula in the Baltic, not Novaya Zembla.

Yeah, except that Kinbote also says the northern coast is sometimes visited by "Eskimos" in traditional kayaks. Which is kind of impressive given that the Inuit never made it east of Greenland, but doubly impressive if in the Baltic. I'm leaning pretty heavily toward the "Kinbote is full of poo poo" theory.

Enfys
Feb 17, 2013

The ocean is calling and I must go

I have just started this and read the forward.

Sorry if I'm being really dense and all these things are obvious, but I get the impression that Kinbote wasn't that close a friend of Shade as he makes himself out to be (or believes himself to be). He comes across a bit stalker-y with his descriptions of watching Shade's foot through the upstairs window every night and other scenes that are him describing what he saw while watching Shade rather than interacting with him.

I also get the impression Shade isn't as amazing and well-regarded as a genius as Kinbote makes him out to be.

Zorodius
Feb 11, 2007

EA GAMES' MASTERPIECE 'MADDEN 2018 G.O.A.T. EDITION' IS A GLORIOUS TRIUMPH OF ART AND TECHNOLOGY. IT BRINGS GAMEDAY RIGHT TO THE PLAYER AND WHOEVER SAYS OTHERWISE CAN, YOU GUESSED IT...
SUCK THE SHIT STRAIGHT OUT OF MY OWN ASSHOLE.

BUY IT.

Enfys posted:

I have just started this and read the forward.

Sorry if I'm being really dense and all these things are obvious, but I get the impression that Kinbote wasn't that close a friend of Shade as he makes himself out to be (or believes himself to be). He comes across a bit stalker-y with his descriptions of watching Shade's foot through the upstairs window every night and other scenes that are him describing what he saw while watching Shade rather than interacting with him.

I also get the impression Shade isn't as amazing and well-regarded as a genius as Kinbote makes him out to be.

Two for two.

Safety Biscuits
Oct 21, 2010

Enfys: you're correct.

Groke posted:

Yeah, except that Kinbote also says the northern coast is sometimes visited by "Eskimos" in traditional kayaks. Which is kind of impressive given that the Inuit never made it east of Greenland, but doubly impressive if in the Baltic. I'm leaning pretty heavily toward the "Kinbote is full of poo poo" theory.

Oh, I forgot that bit. That's proof it's a load of rubbish. Thanks.

Selachian
Oct 9, 2012

Enfys posted:

I have just started this and read the forward.

Sorry if I'm being really dense and all these things are obvious, but I get the impression that Kinbote wasn't that close a friend of Shade as he makes himself out to be (or believes himself to be). He comes across a bit stalker-y with his descriptions of watching Shade's foot through the upstairs window every night and other scenes that are him describing what he saw while watching Shade rather than interacting with him.

I also get the impression Shade isn't as amazing and well-regarded as a genius as Kinbote makes him out to be.

Yeah. I also think it comes across pretty clearly that while Kinbote presents himself as a great friend of the Shade family, Shade's wife despises and distrusts him and he returns the sentiment.

That's one of the parts of the book I found problematic, actually -- with his obsession with sexy boys and woman-hating, Kinbote is a bit of a '50s stereotype of a homosexual. Still, it's not like Nabokov was likely to know better.

(Not reading the book right now but I've read it a couple times already.)

Groke
Jul 27, 2007
New Adventures In Mom Strength
Finished; that was another good BOTM.

Since I'm a horribly nerd I now find myself wondering if Stan Lee had read this thing before creating the X-men.

Enfys
Feb 17, 2013

The ocean is calling and I must go

Have read the poem now and just started the commentary - finding it a bit baffling with all the Zembla stuff. I've had the somewhat frustrating sense from the beginning that I don't really "get" this book and it's over my head, but I'll stick with it.

Heath
Apr 30, 2008

🍂🎃🏞️💦

Enfys posted:

Have read the poem now and just started the commentary - finding it a bit baffling with all the Zembla stuff. I've had the somewhat frustrating sense from the beginning that I don't really "get" this book and it's over my head, but I'll stick with it.

Keep reading, it will become clear.

AngusPodgorny
Jun 3, 2004

Please to be restful, it is only a puffin that has from the puffin place outbroken.
There are multiple stories going on, and at the beginning you don't have enough information to piece them all together yet (for that matter, I read it all the way through and the Botkin interpretation still escaped me). Zembla is key, but what you learn about Zembla is going to come in bits and pieces as it slips through the main "story".

Heath
Apr 30, 2008

🍂🎃🏞️💦
The dictionary of terms at the end has some important details as well.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
We need noms for next.month
Ideally I'd like to alternate in some lighter fare, maybe something free or out of copyright.

knees of putty
Apr 2, 2009

gottle o' gear!
That was quite fun. To begin with it I didn't think the literary joke would last the distance, but the fantastical narrative kept rolling on. Kinbote was so revelatory that it seems we're supposed to think that this written by someone else to discredit Kinbote, whoever he is. I guess I'll find out how dumb that is when I go through the links in the OP.

These recent books are giving me the idea that most of the world consider vegetarians as some kind of symbol of degeneracy.

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer
I started the introduction, and will start the poetry section tonight or tomorrow. My book-pile's been tipping into dangerous heights, so this has been on the back burner.

First Nabakov novel in...Nine years?

Heath
Apr 30, 2008

🍂🎃🏞️💦

knees of putty posted:

That was quite fun. To begin with it I didn't think the literary joke would last the distance, but the fantastical narrative kept rolling on. Kinbote was so revelatory that it seems we're supposed to think that this written by someone else to discredit Kinbote, whoever he is. I guess I'll find out how dumb that is when I go through the links in the OP.

These recent books are giving me the idea that most of the world consider vegetarians as some kind of symbol of degeneracy.

I feel like Kinbote very very slowly begins to accept that, outside of a single passing mention of Zembla, he had virtually nothing to do with influencing the outcome of the poem in the way he thinks he did. A couple of times he comes very close to admitting it outright and then pulls back into his nuttery. So for that reason I feel like Kinbote probably wrote it.

Mover
Jun 30, 2008


It's odd, the one thing that's been most sticking with me since I finished this a few days ago was whether the poem proper could be called a good poem or not. "Stands on its own." For a while I just wanted to call it wildly uneven--it's tremendously overwritten at points, the entirety of it done in simplistic and sometimes forced rhyming couplets. It certainly doesn't hold up stylistically or critically to Robert Frost. Truth be told it's rare for a talented novelist to also be a talented poet, so it's hard to trust one way or another where and if Nabokov intended for it to be revelatory and beautiful or whatever (and/or not). I wasn't really successful in finding much other poetry from him.

There are places get very strong. For me that was around Hazel's suicide, and the fall into a singular, incredibly strong image right at the very end.

But I don't think it has to be good or bad in the way I've been trying to understand it. Maybe it doesn't exist externally of Kinbote's commentary, the whole of the book. Maybe what I called unevenness is what lets the novel work at all.

It has to exist simultaneously as a poem that could have been written by a beloved and talented poet (though not necessarily in its final draft), a hack who was cut out to teach English poetry but not to write it, a madman trying to imitate the style of a famous poet (and maybe even a ghost obsessing over death and memories of color and light over all considerations, if one interpretation I've read is to be considered). It has to be all of these things, not at different places or points in time, but all at once.

Kinbote tried to describe the poet writing: "John Shade perceiving and transforming the world, taking it in and taking it apart, recombining its elements in the very process of storing them up so as to produce at some unspecified date an organic miracle, a fusion of image music." Taking the whole world apart, looking at the pieces from every angle, then making something new, a different whole but the same pieces. In a way, Nabokov does the opposite.

Zorodius
Feb 11, 2007

EA GAMES' MASTERPIECE 'MADDEN 2018 G.O.A.T. EDITION' IS A GLORIOUS TRIUMPH OF ART AND TECHNOLOGY. IT BRINGS GAMEDAY RIGHT TO THE PLAYER AND WHOEVER SAYS OTHERWISE CAN, YOU GUESSED IT...
SUCK THE SHIT STRAIGHT OUT OF MY OWN ASSHOLE.

BUY IT.

House Louse posted:

We agree it doesn't make sense (either narratively, or because line 1 is the first half of a couplet and has nothing to do with line 999) and the person advocating this idea is Kinbote, so... I don't see how it can be. Maybe, though, 999 is the last line? It would be pretty bathetic but Canto 4 is a let-down... Or maybe we just have no idea how much is missing. Kinbote mentions other professors in the Introduction saying we don't know how long it should have been, or how reliable the text is, so he raises the possibility that he's got things totally wrong even on a basic, literal level, never mind predicting how long it should be.

A man, unheedful of the butterfly—
Some neighbor's gardener, I guess—goes by
Trundling an empty barrow up the lane—
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain.


Shade had seen the gardener before, and would see him again just before the murder, so the image allows Shade to write about his own death unknowingly (and likewise to come across that "empty barrow"...) In life, he could not have completed the poem with that line, but it makes sense when death writes it for him.

Zorodius fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Aug 23, 2016

Safety Biscuits
Oct 21, 2010

House Louse posted:

E: I just realised that Hazel is probably reading The Hound of the Baskervilles around line 370 :smith:

Oops. It's actually Four Quartets, but "Grimpen" is still a Hound of the Baskervilles reference.

Zorodius posted:

A man, unheedful of the butterfly—
Some neighbor's gardener, I guess—goes by
Trundling an empty barrow up the lane—
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain.


Shade had seen the gardener before, and would see him again just before the murder, so the image allows Shade to write about his own death unknowingly (and likewise to come across that "empty barrow"...) In life, he could not have completed the poem with that line, but it makes sense when death writes it for him.


This assumes that Kinbote is being reliable with his editorship of the poem, which isn't settled - other professors describe it as "disjointed drafts" and Kinbote mentions that he nearly added some lines and deleted others to maintain the length (comments to line 596). It's a somewhat circular argument. However, even if we assume this, it's still not a great line because it doesn't stand alone. It's half a couplet. You could say:

...A gardener with a barrow goes by.

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane.


Which would be, in my opinion, an inmprovement, but I'm not sure there's enough evidence to decide either way.

Unrelatedly, I really like the idea that Shade's ghost helps Kinbote compose the commentary. It fits the ghost theme and it adds to the theme in "Pale Fire" of art surviving or transcending death. It's just that I don't think it makes sense for Shade to see Kinbote travesty his work, his memorial to his daughter, and inspire him to add a grotesque and diarrhoea-struck assassin coming to kill him. The characterisation doesn't make any sense at all. Nor is it similar to the way the barn ghost communicates, which is more like 19th century spiritualism than unconscious influence. I don't think Pale Fire is meant to show order and symmetry to its characters, but to its readers.

Take the plunge! Okay!
Feb 24, 2007



Hieronymous Alloy posted:

We need noms for next.month
Ideally I'd like to alternate in some lighter fare, maybe something free or out of copyright.

Herman Hesse's Siddhartha? I'm always up for a reread of that one. It's on Gutenberg, as well.

Heath
Apr 30, 2008

🍂🎃🏞️💦
I just finished We Have Always Lived in the Castle a few months ago and it was really good and very short. Even reading casually you can finish it in a day. It's not free, but it's not hard to find or expensive either.

blue squares
Sep 28, 2007

Heath posted:

I just finished We Have Always Lived in the Castle a few months ago and it was really good and very short. Even reading casually you can finish it in a day. It's not free, but it's not hard to find or expensive either.

gently caress you puto this is the PALE FIRE THREAD

Heath
Apr 30, 2008

🍂🎃🏞️💦

blue squares posted:

gently caress you puto this is the PALE FIRE THREAD

I thought it would make a good BotM :(

PatMarshall
Apr 6, 2009

blue squares posted:

I liked Canto One a lot, which surprised me, because I typically don't go for poetry. The other three I mostly just sat through, thinking that once I got to the commentary the real fun would start. But after several entries, I'm bored. When I read an individual entry, often there are funny or interesting moments, but when the book is sitting closed on my desk, there is nothing pulling me back to it. I'm all about narrative, so the other novels I am reading grab my attention much more when it is reading time.

Plus, Pale Fire seems to be entirely intellectual pleasures and not emotional ones. I take much more to books with strong emotional aspects. That's why my recent read of Aquarium was so engaging. That book was a powerful emotional experience. Pale Fire is not.

I doubt I'll finish it or even read much more.

Stop loving up all the good threads, you don't get to tell anyone to get out.

blue squares
Sep 28, 2007

PatMarshall posted:

Stop loving up all the good threads, you don't get to tell anyone to get out.

an excellent first contribution to this thread

Safety Biscuits
Oct 21, 2010

So blue squares, did you finish it? And why did you like Canto 1?

Heath posted:

I just finished We Have Always Lived in the Castle a few months ago and it was really good and very short. Even reading casually you can finish it in a day. It's not free, but it's not hard to find or expensive either.

It's a good book and has some neat resonances with Pale Fire, cool.

I was thinking an author's short stories - not a specific collection, just their stories in general - would be nice as it's as light as you want it to be, could provoke lots of discussion, and you don't have to find a specific book. Maybe Borges would be good.

Zorodius
Feb 11, 2007

EA GAMES' MASTERPIECE 'MADDEN 2018 G.O.A.T. EDITION' IS A GLORIOUS TRIUMPH OF ART AND TECHNOLOGY. IT BRINGS GAMEDAY RIGHT TO THE PLAYER AND WHOEVER SAYS OTHERWISE CAN, YOU GUESSED IT...
SUCK THE SHIT STRAIGHT OUT OF MY OWN ASSHOLE.

BUY IT.

mcustic posted:

Herman Hesse's Siddhartha? I'm always up for a reread of that one. It's on Gutenberg, as well.

I've been meaning to finish reading that.


I also meant to write something about narrator unreliability in Pale Fire. So, uh, if you're going to doubt one big thing in a story, where do you draw the line? How do you rule out something crazy like "Kinbote invented Shade"?


Speaking of crazy: Nabokov really didn't show an accurate picture of mental illness, did he? Someone mentioned the unrealistic 1950s stereotype of a homosexual, and I think you could say the same for psychosis in Pale Fire.

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer
Canto 2, as a first read on its own, has been my favorite part of reading this book so far.

Mover
Jun 30, 2008


I like to call this book "Fail Pyre" because it's bad and I think it should be thrown into a bonfire

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer

Mover posted:

I like to call this book "Fail Pyre" because it's bad and I think it should be thrown into a bonfire

Why?

Heath
Apr 30, 2008

🍂🎃🏞️💦

Mover posted:

I like to call this book "Fail Pyre" because it's bad and I think it should be thrown into a bonfire

Hey, this book is actually really good and has a lot to talk about and the fact that this thread sits ignored next to the hundreds of pages long GRRM garbage fire is enough of a humiliation, can you please take you low effort drive by poo poo posting to that thread instead? thank you

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

Zorodius posted:



Speaking of crazy: Nabokov really didn't show an accurate picture of mental illness, did he? Someone mentioned the unrealistic 1950s stereotype of a homosexual, and I think you could say the same for psychosis in Pale Fire.

In his Lectures on Literature, one of the things he talks about -- especially as regards to Jane Austen and Dickens -- is that he believed "great authors" create(d) their own reality within the world of their works; i.e., what matters isn't whether or not upper class British women of Austen's era acted and thought and behaved the way she describes them, but rather the fact that when you are reading an Austen novel, you are within Austen's reality.

So i suspect that Nabokov wasn't so concerned with "realistically" depicting homosexuality or mental illness, as he was with beautifully depicting. Of course, to a modern reader, that may result in jarring notes. . .

mcustic posted:

Herman Hesse's Siddhartha? I'm always up for a reread of that one. It's on Gutenberg, as well.


Good call.

Polyseme
Sep 6, 2009

GROUCH DIVISION

mcustic posted:

Herman Hesse's Siddhartha? I'm always up for a reread of that one. It's on Gutenberg, as well.

From a few seconds of Googling, it looks neat. Besides, I need a decent book to not fall too out of practice with modern German. That said, I never have enough time to really participate in these.

Mover
Jun 30, 2008


Hieronymous Alloy posted:

We need noms for next.month
Ideally I'd like to alternate in some lighter fare, maybe something free or out of copyright.

Due to some quirks of copyright law, some of the PG Wodehouse books are public domain in the US (not necessarily in other countries though). Right Ho, Jeeves would be easy to get for US goons and is hilarious + easy reading.

e: Stephen Fry and John le Carre both love the book and Fry once said,

quote:

The masterly episode where Gussie Fink-Nottle presents the prizes at Market Snodsbury grammar school is frequently included in collections of great comic literature and has often been described as the single funniest piece of sustained writing in the language. I would urge you, however, to head straight for a library or bookshop and get hold of the complete novel Right Ho, Jeeves, where you will encounter it fully in context and find that it leaps even more magnificently to life.

Mover fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Aug 30, 2016

Borneo Jimmy
Feb 27, 2007

by Smythe

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

We need noms for next.month
Ideally I'd like to alternate in some lighter fare, maybe something free or out of copyright.

If you are looking for free and light

She by H. Rider Haggard
The 39 Steps by John Buchan
Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007
August is over but I read this a while back and just want to drop my favorite passage here:

quote:

I'm ready to become a floweret
Or a fat fly, but never, to forget.
And I'll turn down eternity unless
The melancholy and the tenderness
Of mortal life; the passion and the pain;
The claret twilight of the dwindling plain
Off Hesperus; your gesture of dismay
On running out of cigarettes; the way
You smile at dogs; the trail of silver slime
Snails leave on flagstones; this good ink, this rhyme,
This index card, this slender rubber band
Which always forms, when dropped, an ampersand,
Are found in Heaven by the newlydead
Stored in its strongholds throughout the years.

"Why yes, that is a brief rumination on the transcendence of mortality captured in a series of elegant images descending from the cosmic to the typographical, in a 1000-line poem composed as an incidental detail to a story about the nature of reader engagement and constructed narratives, in a language other than my native tongue. My name is Nabokov and I am obnoxiously brilliant."

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Safety Biscuits
Oct 21, 2010

Zorodius posted:

I also meant to write something about narrator unreliability in Pale Fire. So, uh, if you're going to doubt one big thing in a story, where do you draw the line? How do you rule out something crazy like "Kinbote invented Shade"?

This article: https://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/boydpf1.htm touches on that. His logic, for this particular example, is that Kinbote is too narcissistic and unable to empathise with other people to be able to write convincing characters. He disposes of "Shade invented Kinbote" with the argument that Shade would not have travestied his daughter's death in this way, although I think his argument winds up being self-defeating when he argues that Shade posthumously inspired Kinbote, which seems to do the same thing.

In general, arguments like that seem to be arbitrarily declaring some part of the novel more reliable than the rest, which is pretty unsatisfying and boring.

quote:

Speaking of crazy: Nabokov really didn't show an accurate picture of mental illness, did he? Someone mentioned the unrealistic 1950s stereotype of a homosexual, and I think you could say the same for psychosis in Pale Fire.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

In his Lectures on Literature, one of the things he talks about -- especially as regards to Jane Austen and Dickens -- is that he believed "great authors" create(d) their own reality within the world of their works; i.e., what matters isn't whether or not upper class British women of Austen's era acted and thought and behaved the way she describes them, but rather the fact that when you are reading an Austen novel, you are within Austen's reality.

So i suspect that Nabokov wasn't so concerned with "realistically" depicting homosexuality or mental illness, as he was with beautifully depicting. Of course, to a modern reader, that may result in jarring notes. .

Mental illness can take many forms, so I'm less upset about that than the gay padeophile characterisation. It's not beautiful (I don't think you argued it was, HA) - it's just a cliché. As for a text creating its own reality - okay, but that reality must relate to this one.

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