Where is New Wye?
What cicada broods tell us about the location of the college town in Pale Fire
In Summer 2021, I was re-reading Pale Fire as the cicadas from Brood X were emerging. Given that cicades make a couple of appearances in Pale Fire, it dawned on me that we could use the geography and timing of historical brood emergences to home in on the location of New Wye, the fictional college town in the novel. I am re-posting the twitter thread I posted at the time here below. I think substack is actually a better medium for this, but I have preserved the original Twitter thread format.
My conclusion in 2021 was “somewhere near the border of TN, NC, and VA. If you give more credence to cicada habitats, it’s most likely in NC, maybe TN. The distance from NYC makes VA more likely.”
Tomorrow, I see how Claude Sonnet 4.6 can help build on the original analysis and find further clues about the location of New Wye. My hope is that this can serve as a real example of the use of LLMs in scholarship (though, to be clear, I am a total amateur) and as a test of my argument in “The Work of Humans”.
Here is the original thread:
This is a thread about cicadas in Nabokov’s Pale Fire and the clues that cicadas give us about the location of New Wye, Appalachia – the setting of Pale Fire. (1/16)
I’ve been re-reading Pale Fire. Cicadas play a supporting role. Since it’s the Spring/Summer of Brood X, maybe it is only natural for me to obsess about the role of the cicadas in the novel and the clues that they give us?? (2/16)
As its readers know, Pale Fire (the novel), takes the form of a narrative poem, “Pale Fire,” by the poet/prof John Shade along with a forward, commentary, & index by (or apparently by) Shade’s mad neighbor/colleague, Charles Kinbote. (3/16)
Both novel & poem are preoccupied with life, death, & the hereafter, as well as with patterns, cycles & metamorphoses in nature. Cicadas emerge from the ground & seemingly spring to life in 13 or 17-year cycles. They fit the theme.(4/16)
Near the beginning of Canto Two, Shade’s poem says, “Today I am sixty-one. Waxwings are berry-picking. A cicada sings.” A couple of pages later, referring to the day his Aunt Maud died, Shade writes of seeing a cicada’s “empty emerald case.” (5/16)
Natural questions (literally!) arise: Which cicada brood sang for John Shade’s birthday??!! And to what brood did the cicada’s emerald case belong? And what do those deductions tell us (if anything)? (6/16)
Nabokov was a serious entomologist. Cicada broods are not something he would screw up. We SHOULD assume the novel is consistent with the natural world (other than a possible ghost or two). (7/16)
Kinbote’s commentary even quotes Shade complaining that his students did not know the difference between a cicada (a type of cricket) and a locust (a type of grasshopper). (8/16)
We know from the novel that John Shade turned 61 on July 5, 1959. Brood XIX (The Great Southern Brood) was the only brood out in 1959 and could have been the only cicadas singing. (9/16)
If you map the 420 counties of Appalachia (in red and purple) against the 180 Brood XIX counties (in blue and purple). We see there are only 28 counties (n purple) in common, mostly in eastern TN & western NC. (10/16)
Brood XIX probably did have wider distribution in 1959. The current habitat has shrunk due to environmental factors. But the area of intersection had to be in the southern portion of Appalachia (i.e., VA, NC, TN, GA, AL, MS).(11/16)
What about the cicada’s “empty emerald case” observed when Aunt Maud died? We know from Kinbote that Aunt Maud died in 1950. That likely means the case would have belonged to a cicada that had emerged in 1949 or 1950. (12/16)
The possibilities in ’49 & ’50 include Broods VI, VII, XXII, & XXIII. Brood VII (the Onondaga Brood) is too far north. Brood XXII (the Baton Rouge Brood) is too far south. And Brood XXIII (the Mississippi Valley Brood) is too far west. (13/16)
That leaves Brood VI whose habitat mainly extends from the GA-SC border past Asheville, NC along the east side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Again, that probably puts New Wye in western NC, maybe eastern TN. (14/16)
Other clues – Kinbote’s road trip to Washington, the 400-mile distance cited from NYC to the nearish city of Exton, Shade’s killer catching a ride to Roanoke, VA to get to New Wye – help us home in on New Wye. (15/16)
So where is New Wye? My best guess is somewhere near the border of TN, NC, and VA. If you give more credence to cicada habitats, it’s most likely in NC, maybe TN. The distance from NYC makes VA more likely. I’m listening to the cicadas. (End)