{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3943",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 3943,
    "subject": "pale fire/short sun research paper",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2003-04-17T06:27:04+00:00",
    "last": "2003-04-17T06:27:04+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0304-3206@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "maa32",
        "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu"
      },
      "date": "2003-04-17T06:27:04+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) pale fire/short sun research paper",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Since Pale Fire came up, I thought I would share with you that for the final \nproject in graduate school last year I wrote a paper which dealt in part with \nmetafictional narratives and how they actually instantiated faith in an \nultimate author no matter how hard they tried to avow a descent into nihilism.\n I used unreliable narrators, and the two biggest primary sources were \nNabokov's Pale Fire and The Book of the Short Sun.\n\nI agree with Boyd's comments on Pale Fire entirely.  (I will briefly summarize \nthem - skip if you don't want to know)\n\n\ns\np\no\ni\nl\ne\nr\n\nHe believes that the suicidal daughter of John Shade actually comes back in \nthe ubiquitous butterfly of the text to inspire Kinbote to finish the poem and \nthe commentary, and that his reveries of his mythic homeland actually DID \ninspire Shade, even though he wasn't aware of it, because the inspiration for \nthe poem (his dead daughter) and the inspiration for Kinbote's analysis (his \ndead daughter) were the same, and that she reached out to Kinbote beyond death \nin a butterfly because they were kindred spirits (he was going to kill himself \nafter finishing the commentary). There are other messages from beyond the \ngrave.  In it, I asserted that the crazy interpretation of Kinbote was \nactually correct - Pale Fire shows how even the most absurd commentary on a \ntext can actually show us something profound about reality.\nThe statement \"I am the shadow of the waxwing slain\" is the daughter speaking \nfrom beyond the grave - it is the final statement that Kinbote must complete - \nso that he can become the shadow of the waxwing slain.\n\nI argued that the same thing was going on in The Book of the Short Sun - that \nwhile the narrator believed that he was writing about searching for his idol \n(silk) and his home, he was actually the idol trying to find the man who \nworshipped him (Horn), who existed beyond death in a brute creature who aided \nSilk(Babbie).  (so I made a link between the roles of animals as a return of \nthings lost)  I talked about how the quest to find Silk became the reader's \nquest to find Horn.  Silk was never hidden.  Horn was.  The paper is great, \nbut very complicated.  If anybody is interested, I might be able to get a \ncopy.  Remember that I had to present it in front of an audience that had \nnever read Short Sun, so some things are of course simplified.  In any case, I \nwas able to tie the two texts together very nicely (somehow).\n\nOh well.  (Writing my own book now - 23,000 words finished in the last week.  \nWriting is sure hard.  I don't think I can add any criticism of Wolfe's short \nfiction - I think often they operate like roman a clefs - you just need the \nkey to unlock them -  I think he is a great, great short story writer, and \nEndangered Species is my favorite of his collections.  Heartily second \"In the \nHouse of Gingerbread\" - I love that story - but I don't necessarily like happy \nstories.  I think he is the greatest at both short and long fiction - I don't \nthink anyone can touch him - but his willful obscurity can certainly frustrate \nif you don't hit on the right detail in the text.)\n\nMarc Aramini"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}