Dear Jansy,
I hope I didn’t annoy you by addressing both you and Caroline with the question of whether multiple personalities are a neurotic or psychotic disorder. The question occurred to me when I read Caroline’s message of Monday, 3 p. m. which began with a salutation to you but also with a quote from you about a comment by me. I was attempting an all-inclusive greeting that would satisfy my newly-raised standards of forum-posting etiquette.
As for multiple personalities, I’ve decide to proceed on the belief that this is a psychotic disorder.
In writing to Jerry, I had no humorous intentions toward absent-minded seniors, which I think would be unkind. I defy anyone to display more absent-mindedness than me. My concern was a writerly feeling that Shade’s versipel reference marked the start of a new series of imagery rather than the conclusion of the list of nouns attaching to being groomed, shod, and fed.
The dying Kibotkin paragraph got messed up in migrating from my mind to the page; I didn’t mean it to be serious as it sounds. What I was getting at was a notion I had that Botkin had metamorphosed completely into “Kinbote” by sating himself and driving himself mad in the process of digesting and commentating Shade’s mawkish epic The Daughteriad aka Pale Fire.
In the end it is the finally failing fly Botkin who calls Canto Three “your favorite” referring to Sybil.
But that’s just conjecture.
Best,
Andrew B.
On 10/10/06 12:53 PM, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
Dear Andrew, Jerry, AB, SKB, etc
You addressed both me and Carolyn to ask us to": Please forgive my intrusion here, but wouldn’t multiple personality disorders be categorized more as forms of psychosis than neurosis?"
The expert is Carolyn. I have not the slightest idea about mpd, except from watching American movies.
You wrote to Jerry Friedman: "I can't convince myself that versipel was meant by VN to conclude the sequence of morphing comb, shoehorn, spoon." Not even as a fenomenologically accurate image, but filled with humor about absent-minded senior citizens?
You seem to see John Shade as a very sweet scholarly bumbbling guy while "the dying Kibotkin dreamily emits words to his victim’s wife with the blind automaton-like action of a possessed worm." Like the botfly ( it seems to have wooed both of us last night?) but you take it more seriously than I do. I rather like Kinbote and I even wish it had been he the author of Pale Fire, not that other mawkish character.
Anthony Stadlen wrote that in Strong Opinions we can find "VN's positive statements.. about Shade's emotional-spiritual life (doesn't sound like what you would say about one half of a split) and about Kinbote's being a madman who will kill himself shortly after finishing work on the book." Fortunately he added that "DN told us that VN denied the single-author theory of "Pale Fire"? and now I feel free to favour one over the other without feeling guilty towards VN, who created both...
Stan K-B confessed that he is convinced that Jansy M and Carolyn K are complementary images of one
and the same person. Who has ever seen them together in the same room at the same time? Further, the letters J and C have an undeniable sans-serif chirality that defies ... (cont. page 666). Oh, dear! What the devil does he mean by that?
I wish I could speak English as perfectly as CK and cultivate gorgeous roses - although I wouldn't like to be as certain of her views as she is about "Pale Fire". I hope K-B sees me as closer to Kinbote, though.
Jansy
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