Raining again
Oh dear. Foul, miserable evening, and roads full of foul, miserable motorists, again. And I forgot my water bottle, again. But things tend to be better after 9:30, and so it proved. Since the brother removed his CD player from the car to put in his own vehicle, and reinstated the proper radio, we can't find the right code to make it work. So I amused myself by singing 'How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria' instead. Too much information?
Last-weekend-blog to come soon. I'm. Sorry. Forthe. Delay. Tothis. Service.
Last-weekend-blog to come soon. I'm. Sorry. Forthe. Delay. Tothis. Service.
posted by Z31 at 10:18 pm
7 Comments:
Sorry to keep hijacking your weblog time and again. I promise to stop doing this.There aren't too many blogs in Cambridge with the word 'quiz' in them.
Andy and Jamie, the connect I was looking for was with the mythological (the other was rather obvious) Prometheus, which would make adamantium the right answer - chains of unbreakable adamantine...
Sherry, neat!
q. X’s first writings were in his mother tongue, but he came to his greatest distinction in the English language. For this achievement, he has been compared with Joseph Conrad; yet some view this as a dubious comparison, as Conrad only composed in English, never in his native Polish. (X himself disdained the comparison for aesthetic reasons, declaring, "I differ from Joseph Conradically.")
X’s most important work Y, is at first glance the publication of a 999-line poem in four cantos by the famous American poet John Shade. The Foreword, extensive Commentary, and Index are by Shade's self-appointed biographer, Charles Kinbote, who is Shade's neighbor in the small college town of New Wye. The name of the book alludes to a metaphor about creativity and inspiration from Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. Some interpreters have noted a secondary reference to Hamlet, where the Ghost remarks how the glow-worm "'gins to ___ his uneffectual ___" (Act I, scene 5). Identify X and Y.
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov?
Nabokov, 'Pale Fire'.
Wow, you're cool but incredibly pretentious. I think I'd like you if I knew who you were.
TCH
so it is!
Beaten. But it seems we were right, if consensus is any guide.
TCH
Yeah, sorry Toby, looks like we were within a minute of each other :)
What I would say new is that a cursory google will reveal some interesting writing on 'Pale Fire' which, like 'A la recherche' or 'Tristam Shandy', is one of those novels that is so close to not being a novel that you kind of wonder whether it counts at all.
I read it as a work with a definite conclusion of madness for its supposed author, but other sources have made arguments about re-incarnation and spiritual guidance which were quite beyond me on a first reading.
It's certainly memorably metanarratival though, and I occasionally think of the image "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/ By the false azure in the window pane" when something I'd hoped for comes to nothing.
And a good night to you all.
TCH
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