Re: Kerouac and Shade / Salinger and Nabokov -Reply

Daniel Mahanty (MAHANTYD@ojp.usdoj.gov)
Mon, 17 Aug 1998 09:55:06 -0400 

Camille wrote:
>Oh GOD I have tried to perpetuate this idea SO many times and
>nobody's
>taken the bait!!! I've tried to point out on several occasions the many,
>many analogies we can draw between `Pale Fire' and not necessarily
>Salinger
>himself but definitely Seymour and Buddy Glass. For one we have the
>poet-seer (whose wife's name is SYBIL for Chrissake!), and his
>chronicler.

Hey, I hadn't thought of that - 
and, don't  a few scenes, namely John Shade in the tub remind anybody
of Buddy and Bessie? (This could be a far cry...)

>Even the eponymous poem has overtones of glass - it opens with a bird
>flying into a window, believing the reflection in the glass to be a
>continuation of the sky. I've got a whole list somewhere of
>Kinbote/Glass
>comparisons if you're interested. 

I am VERY interested!!
Seymour's Shade.

>I think it's interesting that unlike
>Salinger, Nabokov presents not only a fragment but the whole of John
>Shade's poem to us - a risky thing to do in some ways, but in others a
>very
>clever thing because it makes us rely even less on the obviously
>unreliable
>narrator - perhaps John Shade wasn't a genius at all. Salinger doesn't
>allow us to make that decision for ourselves with Seymour - having
>never
>read his work we must simply believe in Buddy's assessment.

( I realize the following is riddled with presumptions and generalizations,
so please forgive in advance...)

I think there might be  a bit of a difference here, considering "Hapworth",
unless Seymour didn't WRITE "Hapworth"... (any takers??)
However, the relationship between commentor/narrator and dead author
brings to light an interesting point about initial reader perspectives. We
seem to always believe the "first person".
With Nabokovs first person characters, one tends to initially associate,
and gradually disassociate - (the opposite being true of Humbert
Humbert, I reckon) a bit like the acquaintance who occasionally makes
one glad not to be of close personal proximity. Hence, we find ourselves
almost glad not to be able to strictly "relate" to the author.
I think that among possibilities, Shade may or may not have been a
genius, may or may not have even written the poem, may or may not
have even existed.
Anyway, I'm glad somebody else saw something of a relationship.
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if  in fact Nabokov and Salinger are (were)
fans of one anothers work.

>In related news - I'm currently reading the second half of the very
>massive
>Nabokov biography 

Just curious, anybody  read "Speak Memory"? Any comments?


>(`The American Years' by Brian Boyd) and was >interested
>to hear that in the 70's Nabokov wrote an article for the `Saturday
>Review
>of the Arts' in which he said `From a small number of A-plus stories I
>have
>chosen half a dozen particular favourites of mine'. The book says he
>`marshaled extracts from Cheever, Updike, Salinger, Gold, Barth and
>Delmore
>Schwartz, pausing each time to explain his choice or the difficulty of
>choosing from such riches.' Maddeningly it doesn't say which ones,
>which I
>would dearly love to know. Anyone have even the faintest idea about
>how to
>get ahold of this article?

Not the foggiest - but, if you get a hold of aforemetnioned, do let us
know.
Anybody plan on attending the Nabokov seminar at Cornell in Sept?
Maybe we could have some of our Salinger questions answered. If I go, I
could easily serve to proxy some questions...
Thanks-
Dan
,,
0  (A smiling "Laughing Man"??)