Well, the end is inexorably drawing nearer. By Thursday we must have decided upon a paper topic. I am torn between the perhaps more obvious choice of tracing the displacement of Classical myth in Lolita(particularly Ovid's Metamorphises), and the beginning of a screenplay version of Pale Fire. The latter is obviously a very tall order, which interested me even more that Parker of the Outback was thinking of attempting the same. Even if I weren't to attempt it for this class I still might at some point in time. Which doesn't help with my arriving at a decision but there we are.


By way of help, the theme's of N.'s work(as described by Brian Boyd) were given: parody, coincidence, patterning, illusion, work-within-the-work, authorial voice. The last two reverbarate(sic?) especially through Pale Fire, which I confess it had not occured to me to see as a displacement of The Ugly Duckling. But this is what creative fiction does, after all: we take that which is to be found in "reality" and have it serve artistic purposes. Such as Kinbote making the loathed(by him) Gerald Emerald into one the leaders of the Shadows, and Jack Grey into Gradus, the figure of Death. For what is Death, to quote from The Arabian Nights, but the destroyer of delights?


And now I know that the word psychopaumpus means "guide of souls". Is this what N. ultimately seeks to have himself be?