-------- Original Message --------
Dear List members,
I want to thank A. Bouazza for bringing to our attention the sale of
the Arion Press <Pale Fire>.
From the Abe Books website description of what was sold, it is clear
that this is <not> a "stand alone" edition of the poem "Pale
Fore" but rather a two volume edition of the whole novel, something
quite different, in form and purpose from the forthcoming Gingko Press
edition that I wrote about in <Slate>
<http://www.slate.com/id/2261520/>
Here is the Abe Books description from their website describing the
record sale price of what they call "the book" (not "the poem" (I
wonder why the record sale, coming a week or so after my column?):
"Other items of particular note include a Nabokov book that is not
Lolita. Coming in at number five we have his Pale Fire, a fascinating
and unusual novel which takes the form of a 999-line poem, along with
notes, commentary and editorial by a fictional friend of the (also
fictional) poet throughout. This copy was #44 of a 266-copy limited
edition."
While the poem may have occupied the first volume, clearly what is
being described is a "book" of two volumes in which the poem is
embedded. The Gingko Press edition is of the poem alone, purposely
designed so that the poem will be considered separately from the book.
I wonder if the author of the triumphalist post here ("Ron Rosenbaum
was wrong") who made such a issue of the Arion Press being a stand
alone "Pale Fire" will have the grace to concede his error.
I'm somewhat disappointed by the tone the moderators of the list
have allowed, in which I have been accused of "shilling" for Gingko
Press, and described as "strange". Particularly when my own civil
disagreement with Brian Boyd on whether he has "abandoned" (my version)
or merely ignored (his version) his theory of the authorship of "Pale
Fire" (it was somehow dictated by the ghost of John Shade's dead
daughter Hazel Boyd contend in 1999) was not posted. I hope we're not
protecting favorites here. I merely asked whether any other List
members believed Boyd's theory. I re iterate the question now: does
anyone else believe Hazel Shade's ghost somehow dictated "Pale Fire"?
Ron Rosenbaum
EDNote: the "Triumphalist post" ("Ron Rosenbaum at Slate is Wrong . .
.", July 28) mentioned above was not written by a Nabokv-L subscriber,
but rather copied to the list by Sandy P. Klein from its original
location, a blog at "booktryst.com." The original post is at:
http://www.booktryst.com/2010/07/ron-rosenbaum-at-slate-is-wrong-about.html
The unpleasant tone, which RR is correct to note would not be allowed
in direct comments by list subscribers about other subscribers, was
part of that off-list post, reproduced here for documentary purposes.
As for the missing RR post (July 24)--my apologies: I did not suppress
it intentionally; an email glitch caused it to escape my notice and so
I failed to forward it. I'm pasting it in below, in hopes that it will
still spark some interest and response.
Please be aware that our policy is never to suppress a
subscriber-authored post without communicating about it with the
contributor. If a post is merely a reproduction of other web content,
sometimes we do silently suppress. Feel free to contact us if ever your
posts don't appear; glitches occur regularly, and our in-boxes can be
hectic places. Thanks for your patience.
~SB
---
As an admirer of Brian Boyd, I must say I am entertained by his
fancy footwork in his recent communication to the list about his theory
of the authorship of the poem "Pale Fire" in the novel <Pale
Fire>.
After writing an entire book centered on the conjecture that the
poem was not written by ostensible author John Shade (<Nabokov's
Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery> Princeton University
Press, 1999) but by the ghost of Shade's dead daughter Hazel, he now
writes a 30 page essay for the forthcoming stand-alone edition of the
poem, in which he fails to mention this daring but far-fetched theory.
I do not say he "repudiates" his theory in my <Slate> essay, I
just wonder why what was once a central issue to him (and all readers
of what we both agreee is probably Nabokov's greatest work) is absent
now. What happened to Hazel's shade?
Indeed throughout his essay he refers to "Shade's ideas" and tells
us that inthe poem "Shade expresses these realizations lucidly" (both
on p. 8).
Mr. Boyd tells us: "Rosenbaum is wrong to imagine my essay
repudiates my Pale Fire book. It just looks at a different flank of the
elephant, a different point of the starfish".
Is he then, elephant and starfish aside, still willing to assert
that he believes the poem "Pale Fire" was meant by VN to be taken as
written by the ghost of John Shade's dead daughter? I think this is an
important question for the foremost Nabokov biographer to help us clear
up.
And I'd be interested to see if anyone else on the list subscribes to
this theory of the poem's authorship.