Pale Fire (1962)

dazzling play, a view of the self from a point above it, which is magic. ( )

One of my favourite books. I've lost track of how many times I've read it over the years, but I always find something fresh.

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov is one of the most playful and intriguing postmodern novels of the twentieth century. Read my review here.

https://www.johncadamsreviews.com/single-post/pale-fire-by-vladimir-nabokov

#PaleFire #VladimirNabokov #literature #postmodern #JohnCAdamsReviews #JohnCAdams #MondayMusings #book #Review #Reviews #bookreview #bookreviews ( )

I think the format was very elegant and it was honestly really mindblowing but I felt like the whole side story was sort of too out there for ths type of book but ARGUABLY there's a reason for it to be so but at the same time I don't know what I was expecting this was lit ( )

31. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
published: 1962
format: 303-page Paperback
acquired: May
read: Jun 30 – Jul 12
time reading: 13:43, 2.7 mpp
rating: 4
locations: an eastern American college and Zembla (“a distant northern land)
about the author: 1899 – 1977. Russia born, educated at Trinity College in Cambridge, 1922. Lived in Berlin (1922-1937), Paris, the US (1941-1961) and Montreux, Switzerland (1961-1977).

Had I known what I was getting into, and done a little mental prep, I would have enjoyed this novel a lot more than I did. Instead, in the midst nice reading flow, I found myself unexpectedly in hundreds of pages of commentary of a 1000-poem. To follow along the reader has to constantly cross-check the poem and the commentary, and, as the commentary has little to do with the actual subject of the poem, keep cross checking to try to read between the lines...and that's just to make surficial sense.

Charles Kinbote acquired exclusive rights to his colleague John Shade's 1000-line poem, nearly finished before Shade's untimely death. This book is the poem and Kinbote's commentary, kept free of any editorial oversight of any kind. Kinbote is in full control. He provides an introduction, oozing with unnamed classical references, telling a little of context of Shade's poem. Shade, who's name is a reference to the word used to describe souls in Dante's Divine Comedy, is presented to us as an overshadowed Petrarch, who, when first met in frozen winter, could not get his car tire "out of a concave inferno of ice". Shade, like Petrarch, provided notes on the dates he started sections of his poem, but not on the the endless editing done until his death. A farce first exposed when we quickly realize Shade only worked on his poem a month. This makes Kinbote an equivalent of an early Petrach commentator... but who? Anyway, this Virgil/Dante/Petrarch nonsense gets dropped out of our introduction, which closes with Kinbote advising us not read Shades poem next, but to read his own commentary on its own first, then read Shades poem, and then read the commentary again. Amused at Kinbote's need to overshadow his subject, I considered this a moment. There are 226 pages of commentary. I read the poem first.

The poem, of course (?), has it's own farcical aspects, but is also a touching and curious autobiographical exploration of Shade's life, marriage, his daughter's suicide and his own hard atheism confronting her ghost. It's all in rhyming couplets. It opens with a couplet now often referenced, "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/ By the false azure of the windowpane;". When I finished reading the poem I was looking forward to some explanative commentary, but should have known better. It takes Kinbote two sentences to switch from Shade to himself. Kinbote is consumed with thoughts on his home country, his fictional Zembla, "a distant northern land", with its own language. Kinbote had talked to Shade extensively about Zembla, none of which Shade put in his poem. So, Kinbote inserts it all in his commentary, and adds Shades death, contriving dark prophetical aspects on this out of Shade's poem - like in that first line.

This is all, in theory, good fun. Critics at the time either praised its elaborate complexity, and criticized its more fundamental simplicity. But whatever it may be, I have left it mostly unresolved in my own head, my extensive cross checking actually kept to a minimum. So I found it a mildly amusing but very frustrating read. I guess it's a classic case of YMMV, or maybe of the idea that the more you put into it, the more you get out of it, and therefore the less...etc.

2021
https://www.librarything.com/topic/333774#7558529 ( )

We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read?

Charles Kinbote simply tosses off little observations like this for almost no reason as he wanders through his spiraling story, weaving himself back and forth in time, unfolding the death of John Shade.* It is these moments of piercing clarity amidst the chaos that make this work much more than its story, more than its craft. The hints of sorrow and fear that occasionally ring through our narrator, suggesting that he knows the truth, are what make this heartbreaking. The sparkling, joyful hideousness of Kinbote, even (especially) when he is fully invested in his own tale, is what makes it fun. (That and the fact that it's a novel written in the end notes to a poem. And the whole book is part of the story. And it is holding hands with all the author's other books. I have a thing for things like this, you see.)

Truthfully, in terms of sheer enjoyment, this one is probably about a four for me; I loved it, but not it-took-over-my-life kind of loved. I take that to be a factor of where it falls in my own reading history; having already enjoyed its literary descendants, I am hungry for a more postmodern level of complexity. Unless it's Shade? If it's Shade, I seriously missed it. Damn, what if it's Shade? Onto the reread shelf with you! This is just one of the ones I wish I had encountered much sooner, before those other things. On the other hand, if I had read it sooner, I probably would not have recognized the sheer genius apparent in Nabokov's seemingly effortless writing. The clear, astounding language itself is the star here.

I would like to say something more significant, but I'm coming up short. So many others have reviewed this so much better than I could already. If you haven't read this one yet, give it a go. Then come back and read the first several reviews on the book's first page on GR. They're better than mine. (I especially like Manny's review.)

*Things that happen on the very first page (the very first sentence in fact) do not qualify as spoilers. And, yes, this is one of those books where you read the foreword. And of course the end notes. And the index. The whole book, Goodreaders. Read the whole book.

Personal note: Read in [b:Novels, 1955-1962: Lolita / Pnin / Pale Fire / The Lolita Screenplay|7807|Novels, 1955-1962 Lolita / Pnin / Pale Fire / The Lolita Screenplay|Vladimir Nabokov|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347492521s/7807.jpg|10855], reviewing separately. (If I end up reading the whole omnibus I'll go back and fix all the shelving to get the book and page counts right, but right now I'm mostly planning on just reading this one. Mostly.) ( )