Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0013986, Wed, 8 Nov 2006 19:21:17 +0000

Subject
Re: Fw: Traveling to Pinsk thru Minsk and a shagbark tree
Date
Body
On 7/11/06 18:55, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:

> Dear List, Victor, Carolyn, A.Stadlen:
>
> The question about Shade's shagbark, like many other similar doubts -- such as
> Kinbote's various misprints, false misprints and misguided cross-references--
> reminded me of a particular strategy that entranced the "Viennese quack".
> Freud, in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, retells the joke about
> two Jews who meet on a train:
> "Where are you going?" one asks. "I'm going to Pinsk," the other replies. To
> which the first answers, "You say you are going to Pinsk, because you want me
> to think you are going to Minsk. But I know you are going to Pinsk. So why are
> you lying to me?"
>
> Someone asked me if Kinbote's "gilt key" would lead me to "guilt key". Like
> the reference to "primal scene" and "lockless doors" it may indicate an
> erotic, traumatic subtext lurking in Shade's poem.If we remember that Nabokov
> not only reviled Freud but insistently so, returning to him over and over, I
> now ask
> Would that old Jew be really travelling to Pinsk?
> Jansy
>
> Jansy: I was brought up with a FUNNIER version of Freud¹s ancient joke ‹ note
> the added NOT which makes ALL the difference.

"Where are you going?" one asks. "I'm going to Pinsk," the other replies. To
which the first answers, "You say you are going to Pinsk, because you want
me to think you are NOT going to Minsk. But I know you are going to Pinsk.
So why are you lying to me?"
>
> BUT, like VN¹s version of the wonderful Chapman¹s Homer joke, you either GET
> IT and giggle, or you start quibbling about the exact baseball SCORE (which is
> totally IRRELEVANT) and then hunt the newspaper archives.
>
> There¹s another be-whiskered baseball yarn about the NY Phil string section
> that gets drunk during a peformance of Beethoven¹s Choral symphony: ³Yankee
> Ba[s]ses loaded at the bottom of the 9th.² (NO, I don¹t know if this REALLY
> happened.)
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle


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