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[Fwd: Re: Nabokov & the History of the Book]
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EDITOR's NOTE. Mary Bellino is Associate Editor of _Nabokov Studies_.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Nabokov & the History of the Book
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 09:32:23 -0500
From: Mary Bellino <iambe@rcn.com>
A copy of the Arion Press Pale Fire (described by Suellen Stringer-Hye)
came on the rare-book market a couple of years ago -- I didn't buy it
($600!), but what I liked about it was that it seemed to be inspired by
Kinbote's self-serving suggestion that the reader purchase two copies of
the book so that poem and commentary could be read side-by-side "on a
comfortable table -- not like the shaky little affair on which my
typewriter is precariously enthroned now, in this wretched motor lodge,"
etc etc.
Another interesting topic, although it may not suit Juan Martinez's
purposes, is Nabokov's own use of the book-as-object theme. There is a
long tradition in the novel of the "book as found object": Don Quixote
and Pamela come immediately to mind as examples of novels that purport
to be manuscripts or letters discovered and subsequently published by an
editor or commentator. Nabokov makes increasingly baroque play with this
convention throughout his later oeuvre, and it's often useful to ask
what events must have intervened between the "writing" of the manuscript
and its actual publication. In Lolita, of course, it's evident at the
outset (of the first re-reading, at the very latest) that both Lolita
and Humbert must be dead if the reader is holding the book in his hands;
in Pale Fire, Kinbote describes his arrangements with his
publisher-to-be, and it's clear that he's writing the introduction at
the galley- or proof-stage of the book's production -- that is, after
his commentary has been completed, except perhaps for a few late
additions such as his on-second-thought "confession" that he may have
penned some of the variants himself -- and that, if he is following the
conventional publication schedule, he must have composed the index too
at the proof stage, so that we are left to decide whether the last words
he actually wrote were "it is the commentator who has the last word" or
"Zembla, a distant northern land." In Ada we are faced with a puzzle: we
have a manuscript written or dictated by Van, typed I guess by Violet
Knox (I confess I don't remember exactly how the ms was supposed to be
produced), annotated by Ada, and edited by Ronald Oranger -- and
somewhere in the course of it, Van dies, but where exactly? And how much
does Oranger contribute to the finished product after Van's death -- as
much as Kinbote, or as little as John Ray, Jr.? These extra-textual or
rather meta-textual "plots" can be found in some of the stories too --
"Signs and Symbols" and "The Vane Sisters," for example -- but it seems
to me they're most effective when Nabokov lulls (or gulls) the reader
into feeling a direct connection between the book he holds in his hands
and the imaginary character who created it.
Mary Bellino
Note new e-mail address: iambe@rcn.com
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Nabokov & the History of the Book
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 09:32:23 -0500
From: Mary Bellino <iambe@rcn.com>
A copy of the Arion Press Pale Fire (described by Suellen Stringer-Hye)
came on the rare-book market a couple of years ago -- I didn't buy it
($600!), but what I liked about it was that it seemed to be inspired by
Kinbote's self-serving suggestion that the reader purchase two copies of
the book so that poem and commentary could be read side-by-side "on a
comfortable table -- not like the shaky little affair on which my
typewriter is precariously enthroned now, in this wretched motor lodge,"
etc etc.
Another interesting topic, although it may not suit Juan Martinez's
purposes, is Nabokov's own use of the book-as-object theme. There is a
long tradition in the novel of the "book as found object": Don Quixote
and Pamela come immediately to mind as examples of novels that purport
to be manuscripts or letters discovered and subsequently published by an
editor or commentator. Nabokov makes increasingly baroque play with this
convention throughout his later oeuvre, and it's often useful to ask
what events must have intervened between the "writing" of the manuscript
and its actual publication. In Lolita, of course, it's evident at the
outset (of the first re-reading, at the very latest) that both Lolita
and Humbert must be dead if the reader is holding the book in his hands;
in Pale Fire, Kinbote describes his arrangements with his
publisher-to-be, and it's clear that he's writing the introduction at
the galley- or proof-stage of the book's production -- that is, after
his commentary has been completed, except perhaps for a few late
additions such as his on-second-thought "confession" that he may have
penned some of the variants himself -- and that, if he is following the
conventional publication schedule, he must have composed the index too
at the proof stage, so that we are left to decide whether the last words
he actually wrote were "it is the commentator who has the last word" or
"Zembla, a distant northern land." In Ada we are faced with a puzzle: we
have a manuscript written or dictated by Van, typed I guess by Violet
Knox (I confess I don't remember exactly how the ms was supposed to be
produced), annotated by Ada, and edited by Ronald Oranger -- and
somewhere in the course of it, Van dies, but where exactly? And how much
does Oranger contribute to the finished product after Van's death -- as
much as Kinbote, or as little as John Ray, Jr.? These extra-textual or
rather meta-textual "plots" can be found in some of the stories too --
"Signs and Symbols" and "The Vane Sisters," for example -- but it seems
to me they're most effective when Nabokov lulls (or gulls) the reader
into feeling a direct connection between the book he holds in his hands
and the imaginary character who created it.
Mary Bellino
Note new e-mail address: iambe@rcn.com