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Further Reading on Pale Fire
----- Original Message -----
From: Carolyn Kunin
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2002 7:47 AM
Subject: Further Reading on Pale Fire
Dear Mr Langridge,
I have just read an article that takes the view point you describe (that is, that there is no there there in Pale Fire). Here it is: in the series Modern Critical Views, Vladimir Nabokov (ed. Bloom) "Reading Zemblan: The Audience disappears in Pale Fire" by Alvin B. Kernan. Personally I like Mary McCarthy's 1962 review, reprinted in her Writings on the Wall; Nabokov's Other Worlds by Alexandrov has an excellent chapter on Pale Fire. The biographies are also good places to look.
My own suggestions for further reading would include the Alice books, The Picture of Dorian Gray (in which an actress with a familiar name commits suicide unofficially), and Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (another interesting suicide). The Confessions of St Augustine is next on my own list, Dracula, and oh, yes, I think I'll take a look at Timon of Athens.
Carolyn Kunin
>> I didn't take Kurt Johnson's warning about forgetting the literature
>> personally, since he said he wasn't thinking of anyone in particular,
>> but what would participants recommend on _Pale Fire_? I've read
>> Meyer's and Boyd's books. Also, where is there material on the
>> theory that there is no "real story" and all the ghosts, multiple
>> personalities, single authors if you like them, et cetera, are part
>> of what chess problemists call the "play". If I remember correctly,
>> Alfred Appel says something similar about _Lolita_, but I find the
>> idea more satisfying in regard to _Pale Fire_.
>>
>> Jerry Friedman
>>
>> __________________________________________________
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>> Yahoo! News - Today's headlines
>> http://news.yahoo.com
>>
----- Original Message -----
From: Carolyn Kunin
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2002 7:47 AM
Subject: Further Reading on Pale Fire
Dear Mr Langridge,
I have just read an article that takes the view point you describe (that is, that there is no there there in Pale Fire). Here it is: in the series Modern Critical Views, Vladimir Nabokov (ed. Bloom) "Reading Zemblan: The Audience disappears in Pale Fire" by Alvin B. Kernan. Personally I like Mary McCarthy's 1962 review, reprinted in her Writings on the Wall; Nabokov's Other Worlds by Alexandrov has an excellent chapter on Pale Fire. The biographies are also good places to look.
My own suggestions for further reading would include the Alice books, The Picture of Dorian Gray (in which an actress with a familiar name commits suicide unofficially), and Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (another interesting suicide). The Confessions of St Augustine is next on my own list, Dracula, and oh, yes, I think I'll take a look at Timon of Athens.
Carolyn Kunin
>> I didn't take Kurt Johnson's warning about forgetting the literature
>> personally, since he said he wasn't thinking of anyone in particular,
>> but what would participants recommend on _Pale Fire_? I've read
>> Meyer's and Boyd's books. Also, where is there material on the
>> theory that there is no "real story" and all the ghosts, multiple
>> personalities, single authors if you like them, et cetera, are part
>> of what chess problemists call the "play". If I remember correctly,
>> Alfred Appel says something similar about _Lolita_, but I find the
>> idea more satisfying in regard to _Pale Fire_.
>>
>> Jerry Friedman
>>
>> __________________________________________________
>> Do you Yahoo!?
>> Yahoo! News - Today's headlines
>> http://news.yahoo.com
>>