...

reading Transparent Things has been a new challenge, and certainly a change in pace. This comes to me though, in the form of delight. I -and reading other blogs apparently the rest of the class- seem to really dig this new book. It brings to light an whole new voice in Nabokov's catalog. I tried to write about a couple common place moments in my last blog and i found it is almost inexplicable when talking about just why it is i like this style. becuase it doesn't really flow like what we've seen before. I think kyle mentioned that it remined him of Schenectady NY which was a wicked weird movie but still i enjoyed it to. I guess the layering both in the movie but more importantly in the book is really what set it appart. I'm still trying to grasp the reasoning behind a lot of it and maybe it's almost written, or at least some of it in a semi-dream conciousness.
like, as emily (or was it zach?) refered to in her blog, the scene with the pencil, asking: how could they know this history behind the pencil? and i was thinking the same thing,
until it dawned on me -this dawn- when i was in and out of some of the worst sleep i've ever had, that if you can remain semi-concious of your thoughts when you fall into sleep you mind sort of acts out the way that this pencil seen would. you pop into your head an object...desk...skiing...a pirates or whatever, and then your mind starts to create this story and it deepens and widens until you drift off. For me however, i could not drift off, instead once i reached that event horizon, i would snap awake-pissed off, but aware of the maze my mind had wandered, i could trace my steps backward to the initial thought, everything else was fabricated, not false necessarily for i feel the mind acts in determined steps, but i guess i was attune to the transparency of the initial, seeing through it, entering a new place...a realm, maybe its the realm where ghost like to hang out, i dont really know. maybe i'm just still really tired still.
but that's what i was thinking about anyway.

thoughts.

note: i dont what the hell is wrong with the font but its all jumbled around.
I'm sitting at the library (the front desk, should be working) so i have to keep this relatively short.
After finishing Pale Fire, I was relived from self imposed burden i felt that: i should really like this book. And I did, i did while reading it, it was uncountably great, but only after i finished the book did I realize how much i liked Pale Fire. I feel though, that I struggled through because my mind was so caught up in catching up to Nabokov that i lost sight of the material at hand. I don't know that old saying about missing the forest, but i'm sure that it is applicable here. True Pale Fire is a piece of intricacy delicate and complex as a woven shroud, but when focused on the milieu of threads, i didn't see the grandeur they as a whole created.

I enjoyed the detective work required to read Pale Fire, but i felt a longing to discuss the aesthetics. I supposes it’s not something the really needs to be discussed in that it is so obvious, but as much as Nabokov is a clever and complex writer, he is a beautiful one. And this I feel to be, at times, most important.

Anyway, now that we’re getting into Transparent Things, I realize once again the power of poetics that Nabokov presents.

I guess this would be some common place from Transparent Things- not even the best stuff, just some things I found that I’ve enjoyed-

“The receptionist (blond bun, pretty neck) said no, Monsieur Kronig had left to become manager, imagine, of the Fantastic in Blur (or so it sounded). A grassgreen skyblue postcard…… ‘he died last year’ added the girl (who en face did not resemble Armande one bit), abolishing whatever interest a photocrhome of the Majestic in Chur might have presented……what would have been a rugged, horsey, stoop belied every inch of his fantastic majesty.” –even when I try I can’t help but draw my quotes on.

Actually this is posing a serious problem, most of the quotes I want to show don’t really make sense without long lead in, and lead out, and even then they probably don’t fully flower until I have read the whole book. But I continue…

After a long series of descriptions stemming from the description of the pencil he closes, “and the tree in the forest and the forest in the world that Jack built.” A reference to the old mother goose tale (see also My Book and Heart Shall Never Part)

Again on page 517during a phone call, “ ‘You Person?’”… “yes it’s me, I mean ‘you,’ I mean you mispronounced it most enchantingly.’…… you drop your haitches like-like pearls into a blindman’s cup.’/ “Well, the correct pronunciation is ‘cap.’ I win.”

Again I realize how futile it is to express my glee and enjoyment of these lines without simply rewriting the entire thing. I sort of feel like I’m telling one "you had to be there stories", which no one person of your audience enjoys. But hopefully you get it too, because this is awesome.

messy notes that almost lead somewhere

(I learned how to use a scanner so I'm abusing its power)
-this is a copy of my notes to a phrase on page 246 (click the image to get a clearer view)
the name Fra Pandolf got me got me researching (wikiing) and i came up with the painter who painted the portrait discussed in Robert Browning's My Last Duchess. Which was interstingly refferd to on page 240, but Kinbote seems to be mistaken in that Shade's appears nowhere in Browning's Untamed Seahorse My Last Duchess. I started to look deeper into Browing and his wife, stuff about ties to Shelly and his drowning death, Poe. One interesting thing that i couldn't really follow up on but my wiki wandering led me to a point in reference to Elizabeth Brownings Aurora Leigh and how it's Nine books were significant in that Nine is the woman's number in reference to the Nine books of Sybil. And that tied back to the 900 years of family legacy that King Alfonso ( the speaker of Browning's My Last Duchess) gave to his wife- though she cared not for it. I found all sorts of these threads that i thought would go somewhere but ended up not really amounting to much. It was fun, though disappointing, but i thought i would show you guys what it's often been like reading Pale Fire: a lot of these mad ideas that grow from the text but don't always seem to fruit.
you can see it all here on my messy notes (again click the image to see a better view) so some cool stuff, but i don't really think any of it was intended. I think i'm trying to find a zembla that sadly was not meant to be.

john shade?

this is bad,i know. but it took me so long to figure out how to set up a scanner i had no time to draw.

in response to chris...

(I tried to just comment on your last post chris but for some reason it won't show up in the comments), Is Pale Fire a lesser work? I don't really know, im not exactly in the position to say either. As i have yet to finish Pale Fire - i fell very guilty about this fact (bad student) but almost done- But maybe why Lolita is more highly praised is for the very same reasons Nabokov seemed to love Ulysses a didn't like Finnegan's Wake (so he has said) reffering to it as cold pudding. Now i wouldn't say that at all about Pale Fire, but it certainly takes more of a laborious role to read. And i think this is why it is not as highly claimed because the reader is required a more active participation. It's not a bad thing to have this asked of us, but people are flawed, and often dont do what they are asked. More over most people don't have a chance to discuss this in a productive way.
But anyway, I am curious as to why you enjoy Pale Fire more? Right now i enjoyed Lolita more, but again we shall see when i do what i should have already been done with. And i know other people have said they like Pale Fire a lot more too. why is that?

It can be really tough keeping up on blogs. I continually try and set aside time to get some good work in, but continually I find myself at odds with my planned schedule. Now I’m sitting here without proper internet and missing nearly all my books –loaning books to friends though rewarding in sprit, is devastating to my library- My room is freezing and that damn music from the other room. I am becoming Kinbote. Except I don’t have nearly as much to say. But here are a couple things despite my bloggers-block.

In one of my earlier posts I cited a common place passage simply because found the prose to be aesthetically beautiful. Little did I know I was straddling a black and white (red/green) contrasting, crevasse of Kinbotes consciousness. It is at this moment we are exposed to not only the reality of John Shade’s Killer, the intention therein, but more importantly the surreality of Kinbote’s mind. I also believe that this passage and solely this passage reflects kinbote’s acknowledgment of said surreality. It as almost as if we the reader and Kinbote himself are touching the void.

“He did not bring up, my sweet old friend never did, ridiculous stories about te terrifying shadows that Judge Goldsworth’s gown threw across the underworld, or about this or that beast lying in prison and positively dying of raghdirst (thirst for revenge)—crass banalities circulated b 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. Let us turn to our Poet’s windows (Page 85).”

This is Quixoteism in Nabokovian fashion. He knows it’s a fantasy! He is admitting that everyone around him (post murder) are saying these “crass banalities” -drab bitter bland truths- about Shade’s murder. They threaten his own realty thus exposing its vulnerability. He won’t come out with it completely but we are exposed to the abyss. We sit upon the event horizon. I guess I am wrong to be critical and I don’t mean to be if I seem so, because even if Kinbote is crazy among other things. I still haven’t decide whose world I like more. Which one I’d like to subscribe to…those sealskin-lined scarlet skies seem to call to me. I know that with the Don I wanted the road to go on forever, so the party would never end. And this party’s just starting to get rowdy.

For anybody who likes the Highwaymen (Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Wallen Jennings) this is a link to the song The Road Goes on Forever and the Party Never Ends the only thing that plays this has a stupid stick figure movie but it’s still wicked cool.

various crumbs...

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.

And now for something completely different:

“ 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