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Loading... Pale Fireby Vladimir Nabokov
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. 920 Pale Fire A novel, by Vladimir Nabokov (read 21 Sep 1967) This book was not memorable for me, and I was not moved to do a post-reading note on it so I have no memory of it. Wikipedia has an extensive article on the book. (  )  Schmerguls | Oct 19, 2009 |  Lush, pulpy, purple prose ladled onto a fragile bird-boned skeleton of a plot. God, what utterly delicious, virtuoso writing. Granted, the entire conceit of the novel (and god, what a douchebag, pretentious conceit) is smirking and satisfied and showy, but Jesus what a show. Nabokov rolls out the plushest, most decadent phrases in the English language. I should probably re-read this with tabs to Wikipedia flying out all over the place. (  ) nohablo | Oct 9, 2009 | Groundbreaking in its time, but this postmodern trope has been much improved on. Wandering, shallow, and quick to offer up the goods. ( ) snarkhunt | Oct 8, 2009 | The second finest English-language novel. Bested only by Ada by dear Volodya. (  ) majoraphasia | Sep 20, 2009 | Too Post Modern for my taste. The book is excellently written and could be enjoyable except for all the word games, pomo tricks, allusions, and so forth that I was constantly stumbling over as if Nabokov were little Jack Horner, declaring what a smart boy am I. Not my cuppa. (  )1  geneg | Jun 22, 2009 | 
The integration of events described in the index into the text of Pale fire clearly qualifies this index as an example of indexes as fiction. The complex trail of cross-references by which the whole book may be alternatively read makes it possible also to regard this novel as an example of fiction as index.  In fact, “Pale Fire” is a curiosity into which it is agreeable to dip rather than a book which can be read straight through with pleasure.
Amazon.com (ISBN 0141185260, Paperback)Like Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire is a masterpiece that imprisons us inside the mazelike head of a mad émigré. Yet Pale Fire is more outrageously hilarious, and its narrative convolutions make the earlier book seem as straightforward as a fairy tale. Here's the plot--listen carefully! John Shade is a homebody poet in New Wye, U.S.A. He writes a 999-line poem about his life, and what may lie beyond death. This novel (and seldom has the word seemed so woefully inadequate) consists of both that poem and an extensive commentary on it by the poet's crazy neighbor, Charles Kinbote.According to this deranged annotator, he had urged Shade to write about his own homeland--the northern kingdom of Zembla. It soon becomes clear that this fabulous locale may well be a figment of Kinbote's colorfully cracked, prismatic imagination. Meanwhile, he manages to twist the poem into an account of Zembla's King Charles--whom he believes himself to be--and the monarch's eventual assassination by the revolutionary Jakob Gradus. In the course of this dizzying narrative, shots are indeed fired. But it's Shade who takes the hit, enabling Kinbote to steal the dead poet's manuscript and set about annotating it. Is that perfectly clear? By now it should be obvious that Pale Fire is not only a whodunit but a who-wrote-it. There isn't, of course, a single solution. But Nabokov's best biographer, Brian Boyd, has come up with an ingenious suggestion: he argues that Shade is actually guiding Kinbote's mad hand from beyond the grave, nudging him into completing what he'd intended to be a 1,000-line poem. Read this magical, melancholic mystery and see if you agree. --Tim Appelo (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:02 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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