Mr. Stadlen's response to my comments is generous, and I will take advantage of the opportunity he gives me to clarify my thoughts. The father does imply that the prince will have to be addressed in the decision to remove the son from the sanatorium. Perhaps the prince's concern is money. But it might also be concern for his brother and sister-in-law's peace of mind, and perhaps their health.
 
Here is the experience behind my views. When I was 24 my best friend experienced a prolonged psychotic episode while living with me and a few other friends in a Midwest college town. Our friend's condition, which at that time was categorized as paranoid schizophrenia, had been concealed from us by our friend's parents. They later, after a considerable tragedy, informed us that they had kept Rick's health problems secret because they believed it would reflect badly on the family. I'm not making this up. Rick's condition became apparent to me on a night when he and I were alone in the house, and he came to my room to tell me that his girlfriend was a witch who belonged to a coven that surrounded the town. Further, she was at that very moment listening to our words from her house, down the street. She could hear everything. That's why she had to die. To prove his point, Rick revealed the diabolical messages he had  received from the coven. He showed me a handful of the crayon pictures I had watched him draw over the past few days.
 
To make a long story short, Rick was in and out of the hospital for a few months until the night I called him at home and reminded him that he had invited me over to watch TV with him. Rick begged off, said he was tired and was going to bed early. The next morning he took most of a prescription of valium, tied a plastic bag over his head, and suffocated to death. I think that I share the humane disinclination to accept what Mr. Stadlen describes as:
 
    "the jargon of clinical psychiatric generalisation, medicalisation,
reification, dehumanisation, and hopelessness ... Or is it the case that VN saw
through psychoanalysis but did not see through the far worse insult to human
dignity that is presented by clinical psychiatry"
... but I have seen one of the alternatives. Let me repeat that Rick was my best friend. That was 25 years ago. I still miss him. I know that Rick didn't like being in the hospital. One of his main objections was that all the other patients were robots. He was not being metaphorical. So, "How is the son supposed to feel about that?" Pretty bad. But better than having a stomach full of valium and a plastic bag over his head.
 
Now, let's move onto less grim, more literary matters. 
 
"Or are we simply supposed to take it, as we have to according to Mr Brown, because we must
treat the narrator as "omniscient"...
 
I'm not calling the narrator omniscient, or ordering anyone to so designate him. I'm saying that a story written from a point of view that encompasses the view points of all characters, and yet is not the view point of any of the dramatis personae appearing on the page is called an "omniscient" narrator. Fiction is an art, and this is one of its conventions. And it is required of readers -- educated readers -- to recognize and acknowledge that tennis played without a net is tennis that would not have appealed to VN. I could be wrong.

"If the narrator told us the earth was flat, would we have to accept that?"
 
If the story was science fiction, yes, you probably would. Stories are not essays. They are fiction. They are "made up." They come from the imagination.
 
If the narrator started spouting Freudian jargon would we have to accept that?
 
If that was the writer's choice, yes. Art can be an ugly business.
 
We would surely take it that there was a tension between author and narrator, if
the author were VN.
 
Not necessarily. I suspect VN enjoyed every minute of writing the narratives of Humbert Humbert and Charles Kinbote, although he himself had nothing in common with either character.
 
"Why should we accept, just because it is poetically presented, the jargon of clinical psychiatric generalisation, medicalisation,reification, dehumanisation, and hopelessness? Or is it the case that VN saw through psychoanalysis but did not see through the far worse insult to human dignity that is presented by clinical psychiatry?"
 
VN does not strike me as a man who would enjoy seeing people who are a danger to themselves and others set loose in a world that is many times harder than life in most institutions. And the elderly couple in this story do not strike me as suitable attendance to an extremely troubled young man. I think VN was both more compassionate and more practical than that.
----- Original Message -----
From: Donald B. Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2004 12:33 PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: Signs and Symbols



----- Forwarded message from STADLEN@aol.com -----
    Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2004 05:46:09 EST
    From: STADLEN@aol.com


Andrew Brown makes some good points. I withdraw my statement that it was
presumably because of "embarrassment" that the son was deposited in the
sanatorium. Nevertheless, the father does imply that he is going to have to
justify to
"the Prince" removing his son from the santorium .

The couple have a two-roomed flat with only one bedroom, but it is evidently
expensive to keep their son in the sanatorium. The implication is that,
although the money for the sanatorium might have been used to rent a
two-bedroomed
flat, the couple has had no expectation, perhaps for four years, that the son
will ever return home. How is the son supposed to feel about that? Or are we
simply supposed to take it, as we have to according to Mr Brown, because we must
treat the narrator as "omniscient", that the son has no "desires" in this
matter?

If the narrator told us the earth was flat, would we have to accept that? If
the narrator started spouting Freudian jargon would we have to accept that? We
would surely take it that there was a tension between author and narrator, if
the author were VN. Why should we accept, just because it is poetically
presented, the jargon of clinical psychiatric generalisation, medicalisation,
reification, dehumanisation, and hopelessness? Or is it the case that VN saw
through psychoanalysis but did not see through the far worse insult to human
dignity
that is presented by clinical psychiatry?

Anthony Stadlen

----- End forwarded message -----

Andrew Brown makes some good points. I withdraw my statement that it was presumably because of "embarrassment" that the son was deposited in the sanatorium. Nevertheless, the father does imply that he is going to have to justify to "the Prince" removing his son from the santorium .

The couple have a two-roomed flat with only one bedroom, but it is evidently expensive to keep their son in the sanatorium. The implication is that, although the money for the sanatorium might have been used to rent a two-bedroomed flat, the couple has had no expectation, perhaps for four years, that the son will ever return home. How is the son supposed to feel about that? Or are we simply supposed to take it, as we have to according to Mr Brown, because we must treat the narrator as "omniscient", that the son has no "desires" in this matter?

If the narrator told us the earth was flat, would we have to accept that? If the narrator started spouting Freudian jargon would we have to accept that? We would surely take it that there was a tension between author and narrator, if the author were VN. Why should we accept, just because it is poetically presented, the jargon of clinical psychiatric generalisation, medicalisation, reification, dehumanisation, and hopelessness? Or is it the case that VN saw through psychoanalysis but did not see through the far worse insult to human dignity that is presented by clinical psychiatry?

Anthony Stadlen