Pale Fire: A Poem in Four Cantos by John Shade

I recommend the boxed edition of the "Pale Fire" poem (without the ironic footnotes, that is another story), issued by Berkeley's Gingko Press, which must have exercised attentive quality control over production. I discovered many small touches that were not obvious until I got it home and took off the plastic wrapping: like the title in blind tooling echoing the red title on the top of the book box, the recessed pasted-on illustration, the pasted on title for "Reflections" (rather like the old "Insel" books, now Insel just uses photo replicas of pasted-on titles). The book cloth is sturdy and durable, the style masculine, not at all "old lady" precious. For the $35 I paid, it is quite a bargain, a lot more than I expected. Reading the show more poem and Brian Boyd's commentary in this format is a tactile aesthetic experience, very much in keeping with the textures in the text. show less