Without Lifting A Finger

I was talking to a friend of yours last night, I said drily. I mean Mr. Trellis. He has bought a ream of ruled foolscap and is starting on his story. He is compelling all his characters to live with him in the Red Swan Hotel so that he can keep an eye on them and see that there is no boozing.

Biographical reminiscence, part the first: It was only a few months before composing the foregoing that I had my first experience of intoxicating beverages and their strange intestinal chemistry. I was walking through the Stephen’s Green on a summer evening and conducting a conversation with a man called Kelly, then a student, hitherto a member of the farming class and now a private in the armed forces of the King. He was addicted to unclean expressions in ordinary conversation and spat continually, always fouling the flowerbeds on his way through the Green with a mucous deposit dislodged with a low grunting from the interior of his windpipe. In some respects he was a coarse man but he was lacking in malice or ill-humour. He purported to be a medical student but he had failed at least once to satisfy a body of examiners charged with regulating admission to the faculty. He suggested that we should drink a number of jars or pints of plain porter in Grogan’s public-house. I derived consid...

—You are a native, I suppose? —No, no. No indeed. Mick toyed with his glass, showing nonchalance. —My own little trip to Skerries, he remarked, isn’t really for the purpose of holiday. I came here looking for somebody who’s in the town, I believe. —A relative? —No. A man I admire very much, a writer. —Ah. I see? —My good sir, I will not be so presumptuous as to ask you your name. Instead, I will tell you what it is. The weak eyes seemed to grope behind their glass walls. —Tell me . . . my name? —Yes. Your name is James Joyce. It was as if a stone had been dropped from a height into a still pool. The body stiffened. He put a hand about his face nervously. —Quiet, please! Quiet! I am not known by that name here. I insist that you respect my affairs. The voice was low but urgent. —Of course I will, Mr Joyce. I shall mention no name again. But it is a really deep pleasure to meet a man of your attainments face to face. Your name stands high in the world. You are a most remarkable writer, a...

It was after seven when he entered a rather poky establishment on the periphery of the harbour. One drink and the use of eye and ear told him there was nothing there. There was a big enough assembly, mostly of strangers, but they were loud and rowdy, and well on the highroad to a late night. No quiet, sardonic novelist loitered there. Yet was there any unhurried nook deemed seemly for a writer’s presence? Or was Joyce a recluse tucked away in chimney corner, avoiding all occasions of public concourse, fearing and despising the people and keeping to himself?

‘I can give you a question as good as that,’ he responded. ‘Can you notify me of the meaning of a bulbul?’ ‘A bulbul?’ ‘What would you say a bulbul is?’ This conundrum did not interest me but I pretended to rack my brains and screwed my face in perplexity until I felt it half the size it should be. ‘Not one of those ladies who take money?’ I said. ‘No.’ ‘Not the brass knobs on a German steam organ?’ ‘Not the knobs.’ ‘Nothing to do with the independence of America or such-like?’ ‘No.’ ‘A mechanical engine for winding clocks?’ ‘No.’ ‘A tumour, or the lather in a cow’s mouth, or those elastic articles that ladies wear?’ ‘Not them by a long chalk.’ ‘Not an eastern musical instrument played by Arabs?’ He clapped his hands. ‘Not that but very near it,’ he smiled, ‘something next door to it. You are a cordial intelligible man. A bulbul is a Persian nightingale. What do you think of that now?’ ‘It is seldom I am far out,’ I said dryly. He looked at me in admiration and the two of us sat in sil...

Plaque to Brian O'Nolan/Myles Na Gopaleen/Flann O'Brien in Strabane , a photo by Strabanephotos on Flickr.

Had the boiled Irish meal over the weekend, so tonight it's pizza and Smithwick's (instead of Guinness). I also want to throw de Selby into the mix: he deserves a footnote. * De Selby is a fictional character originally invented by Flann O'Brien for his novel The Third Policeman . In this novel the character is known as "de Selby", with the latter capital D appearing in use in O'Brien's The Dalkey Archive . De Selby does not actually appear in the plot of the novel, but only in references and frequent footnotes, where his unorthodox theories and areas of research are, however tenuously, linked to the plot. [ 1 ] De Selby is heavily referenced in footnotes in this book, the longest of which takes up the bottom halves of eight pages and ends on a completely different note from the one on which it began. De Selby has a host of critical analyzers – the narrator among them – many of whom have highly conflicting opinions of his esoteric thoughts. Alth...

Of course I only imagine an easter egg. What if Nabokov somehow had a sneakpeek at O'Brien's masterpiece? From Pale Fire : After the last guest had gone (on bicycle), and the ashtrays had been emptied, all the windows were dark . . . The imagined easter egg is buried in the deep grass of a parenthetical: on bicycle . * Speaking through Shade and Kinbote, Nabokov reveals loads about his personal tastes and intolerances. For example, here is Shade (poet/prof) discussing with Kinbote the grading of students' papers. "I am generally very benevolent [said Shade]. But there are certain trifles I do not forgive." Kinbote: "For instance?" "Not having read the book. Having read it like an idiot. Looking in it for symbols; example: 'The author uses the striking image green leaves because green is the symbol of happiness and frustration.' 

I think I can answer the first question now: Yes, Pale Fire is very much connected to Nabokov's work in translating "Eugene Onegin." I dug up this lengthy essay (by Molly Lehman) pointing to that conclusion rather quickly: http://mollylehman.wordpress.com/literary-criticism/vladimir-nabokovs-pale-fire-and-the-role-of-the-literary-annotation-in-reading/ A quote from her text: We can begin to see, then, how Nabokov’s exploration of the literary footnote in Eugene Onegin could expand itself into a fictional work like Pale Fire. The novel appeared in print for the first time in 1962, five years after he finished the translation, and indeed, John Lyons has noted that “He [Nabokov] worked on his edition of Eugene Onegin and Pale Fire simultaneously, and no doubt the first was in large part the inspiration of the second.”  For Nabokov, spurred by his work on Eugene Onegin to experiment further with the possibilities of literary annotation, Pale Fire seems to have been a wa...

Question #1: Did the lengthy commentary of "Eugene Onegin" inspire, plant the seed for,  Pale Fire = Poem + Commentary? Questioin #2: Did Flann O'Brien's De Selby (whose footnotes eventually dominate the page) contribute to the genesis of  Pale Fire ? Answers: I have none. Rereading Pale Fire brought these questions to mind. I have no idea if there's evidence out there to take a stab at the answers. Certainly Nabokov liked to claim: No influences. I'll get back to it if I can dig anything up.