It doesn't matter what Mr. Nabokov does with his father's manuscript. We believe in its existence; the creation is already doing its work.

The Laura manuscript is a creation designed to literally enact what Pale Fire literarily performs. It creates a vortex of literary analysis, academic speculation, controversy, theorizing and other commentary, with itself at the eye of the storm. In this way its author both distills his life's work into its purest essence and reveals an entirely new kind of literary creation.

The Laura manuscript is the purest possible fiction. It exists only in our imaginations. Perhaps the pages are blank. Perhaps they do not exist at all. Or perhaps written on the pages are the author's own description and explanation of his plan, for us all to read, analyze and discuss in perpetuity.

Whatever the case, it doesn't matter what Mr. Nabokov does with the material of his father's manuscript because it exists outside the realm of materiality, in the imagination of our culture.

Sam

Some of the theorizing I am doing is wondering if the article itself has some puzzle or game buried in it, and if other posters are involved. For example, if you're fiction, then we're in some meta-meta realm...

Anyway, having fun.

I posted this before taking the time to read the earlier posts . . . What Elmo said.

I exist in your imagination. My materiality, however, resides in a safe-deposit box in a Swiss bank. I am a joke created by my creator as a creation of pure creativity. Please don't burn my ass!

It doesn't matter whether this matter has matter.

My imagination is a liar--and a Cretan. Thanks for the pointer to the mole.
Now I must round off my little life with a sleep.

I think I remember this moorland,
The tower on the top of the tor,
I feel in the distance another existence,
I think I have been here before.

(No wonder they were friends.)

If parody is indeed a game, we are being played by a master, but, as a great work of art is always original and thus, by its very nature, should come as a more or less shocking surprise, if we assume for just a minute that a MS does exist, perhaps we should be allowed the surprise. If it is as fragmentary as Mr. Nabokov declines to confirm, then surely the game will continue just as playfully (though changing venue somewhat from a purely intellectual game to a intellectual and linguistic one).

Thank you, Atalanta, for your worthwhile post. (I despair of the very possibility of intelligent conversation in this - ok, any - medium. I wish my sleeping pills worked better. . .)

"If parody is indeed a game, we are being played by a master . . ." And wouldn't you loved to be played by Nabokov? I know I would!