These are just some random things…
I know nothing. At least I didn’t. The other day in class when Parker came up and discussed how Kinbote essentially sucks, it really made me stop. And then I thought. I knew Kinbote was crazy, and wicked sketchy, but when I heard Parker talking about him, I at first felt offended, that I had to defend kinbote: he’s my boy even if he is crazy. Then i realized that I can’t really defend something that I don’t understand, or have really even read. Before Thursday I had read a good amount of pale fire, but I realized I was just reading it to get through it, not really to get into it. And this was wrong. We discussed the rungs of the literary ladder, and I saw that I was barely holding on to the bottom with oiled hands. It was a very humbling experience
So I decided to start over, and read it again. And I started to find stuff all over the place: Kinbote does indeed suck, but I realized too, that maybe I can start to defend him. He’s sort of become this George Kastanza character for me: a skeethy little bastard, but what a genius of one. He’s really tying the story together. And it’s hilarious in that Larry David sort of way.
Page 81in recalling advice given to Shade: “ ‘discussed making recordings of my voice for his use’” –this obviously would bug me, but in reading it, it cracks me up.
“ the famous avenue of all the trees meantioned by Shakespeare, a distant droning sound, the hint of a haze, the turquoise drone of the Observatory, wisps d pale plumes of cirrus, and the poplar-curtained Roman-tiered football field, deserted on summer days except for a dreamy-eyed youngster flying-on a long control line in a droning circle— a motor-powered model plane.
Dear Jesus, do something. (92-93)”
I bring this passage up because there was one line which I actually misread (but I suspect that this may have been intentional) : “a distant droning sound, the hint of a haze” I my head I read it drowning sound, the hint of haze.
The rest of the passage I think is significant too, I’m not sure in what way (anybody?) but it was hard to find a proper place to stop.
Just a little common place…
“crass banalities circulated by the scurrilous and the heartless—by all those for whom romance, remoteness, sealskin-lined scarlet skies, the darkening dunes of a fabulous kingdom, simply do not exist. But enough of this. (85)”
and this is my waxwing, i have the suspicion it looks like everyone else's
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