Hey Jerry - if you like Nabokov's Pale Fire, check out Boyd's "Pale Fire - The Magic of Artistic Discovery" - he says that both Shade and Kinbote are equally inspired by the same source: the Vanessa butterfly that is actually Shade's daughter, who sympathizes with Kinbote because of their mutual loneliness and exclusion from society - it is cool because I like the idea of the two obviously incompatible narratives being used by a supernatural being in order to produce a homage to her life - in other words, she directly inspires the fantasies of Kinbote, which then actually did influence Shade in the composition of the poem which was really about his daughter. Pretty weird. I like it because it reminds me of my Horn in Babbie idea. In any case, whether you buy the primary thesis or not, the book really, really has a lot of good explanatory information that really makes sense of the book. Sorry if this doesn't make sense. I got a bad concussion yesterday
- everything is bright and blurry (I admit, I've been skimming the list for the past two days, but I will go back and read everything thoroughly when I feel smart again.) Marc Aramini