Pale Fire

As has probably been said before, this is a deceptively deep work. Nabokov juggles literary ideas and allusions and makes it look supremely easy...which makes the work seem all the more impossible anyway. The pictures he creates through words are haunting and beautiful, odd and bizarre but at times wonderful. Reading it, even only once (and this is definitely a novel that deserves more than a cursory read through) and i think you'll feel as i felt reading it, being lost in a lovely maze. Now, the book isn't flawless. Nabokov uses words that i think even pynchon would have to look up, and similar to pynchon his work is exhausting. But whereas pynchon gives you eight hundred pages and two hundred of them are substance, nabokov fills every show more page, making almost every page overflow with the skill of a master. I loved this book and couldn't give it a higher recommendation. Definitely worth a read. show less

People are usually exaggerating when they say this, but I do mean it: I don't believe I've read anything quite like Pale Fire. It's a work that reels you in with the streamlined whimsy of its narrator, Charles Kinbote, but rather than taking you on the expected path, you detour a numerous amount of times through the postmodern landscape of Kinbote's mind, Nabokov's yarn unraveling toward who knows where. This is a book that's unapologetically confusing, reminiscent of the lucid madness found in Poe's stories yet much more volatile and deceptive in its presentation.

Contributing well to the strangeness of the threads of story is Nabokov's writing style, or rather, the style that he instills within Kinbote. There is a practiced lilt show more in-between caesuras; the "fancy prose style" at once believable and constant throughout the novel (and for such a heady brew of prose, it's hard to even believe that the style was maintained to such an immaculate degree, but the book is before us; a testament to negative capability). Here is one of the more memorable bits that stuck with me from inside:

"One's eyes could not follow the rapid butterfly in the sunbeams as it flashed and vanished, and flashed again, with an almost frightening imitation of conscious play which now culminated in its setting upon my delighted friend's sleeve. It took off, and we saw it next morning sporting in an ecstasy of frivolous haste around a laurel shrub, every now and then perching on a lacquered leaf and sliding down its grooved middle like a boy down the banister on his birthday. Then the tide of the shade reached the laurels, and the magnificent, velvet-and-flame creature dissolved in it."

As Borges favored his Chinese boxes, Nabokov too favors the meta technique that has since grown to be sublimated into the mainstream and used by many writers to weave their tales. However, nothing written in Pale Fire is serendipitous nor extraneous; a multitude of poetic expression builds up just enough of the book's world that not a word goes to waste. Nabokov expects nothing and everything of those who read this--to not fully comprehend every wild diversion or outlier, not even the main story in full, but to appreciate and figure out why this work is the way it is. In the wake of Nabokov's dismantling of the conventional, he's picked up the pieces and reconstructed it into fabulation fused with metered deliberation, hiding semblance and clues beneath the distracting veneer of Kinbote's genial wit and gifted speech.

Alas, there is so little time for me to dive into the aftermath of this book--i.e. essays, others' speculation, etc.--that I feel I'm doing it a disservice with such a short review. I'm going to be feeling the itch of this one for a while, for sure. And now, with a foggy head from reaching Pale Fire's end, I depart from this first foray into Nabokov, satisfied and eager to see what else he's penned upon the page. show less

I found this a tough but rewarding read, and suspect I didn't understand the half of it. Nabokovs command of the English language is incredible, and the writing is beautifully done. It's not a very linear book, consisting of a foreword, a 999 line poem, and the commentary on that poem - there is a lot of flicking back and forth from the poem to the commentary, though you increasingly realise the two are only vaguely connected. The character writing the commentary is extremely self obsessed and deluded, and is convinced the poem is about him and his secret life, though on the surface there is little evidence of this. There are various levels of reality, youre not really sure what to believe, and nothing can really be taken at face value. show more It's funny and enjoyable to read, but I constantly felt like I was missing out on literary references, and thus only reading it on a fairly shallow level. show less

It's extremely hard to describe both this book and the experience of reading this book. It is one of the most structurally inventive and unusual works I've ever come across, and on that level I found it thrilling, both as a reader and as a writer. It is one of those works that explodes a little piece of your brain, and makes you think of literature - characters and plot and genre and form - entirely differently. There are things about it that I found obnoxious, especially as a woman (most of the female characters are either irredeemably shrewish or utterly helpless), but it certainly was a fascinating literary experience. I want to be able to read it again, ideally in one sitting - it's an extremely difficult book to pick up and put show more down, reading sporadically. Worth the effort though, certainly. show less

I can't imagine how I missed out on reading Nabokov's masterpiece [Pale Fire] for all these years. I am thrilled to have made the acquaintance of this remarkable text. A shimmering puzzle of poetry and prose, it defies classification.

The book purports to be the annotated posthumous publication of poet John Shade's final four cantos, an autobiographical poem that explores the meaning of life and art. The notes are written by a neighbor in the insulated university town where Shade lived and works. The poem's notes quickly dispense with any pretense of explicating the poem and instead recount the commentator's life and his relationship with the poet and his wife. The commentator casts himself as the exiled ruler of the northern kingdom of show more Zembla. He believed his epic tale to be worthy of commemoration and, as he ardently pursues a friendship with the poet John Shade, he hopes Shade will find the words to frame his story and praise the beauties of his glorious land. His growing frustration at Shade's autobiographical poem, which fails to capitalize on the brilliant material he has supplied, builds throughout the notes.

The book is rife with word play, characters leading double lives and outright lies in places. At many junctures, Nabokov's presence is palpable and the reader is left to wonder which fictional characters and which fictional events are imaginary and which are real … quite a feat for a work of fiction. The bizarre commentary and index at the end of the book give the careful reader many clues that only raise more questions and leave the reader anxious to start unraveling the puzzle all over again. show less

Up until this point in my life, Vladimir Nabokov had been my literary nemesis. Having never read any of his books, I was only familiar with what he had to say about other writers, and I hated every last bit of it. I hated what he had to say about Dostoevsky. I hated what he had to say about Chekhov. I really hated what he had to say about Lermontov, and I really didn't get much out of his thoughts on Kafka, either. To be perfectly honest, when I started to read Pale Fire, I desperately wanted to hate it. I wanted to teach him a lesson (if it's really possible for an anonymous angry guy on the internet to teach a famous dead Russian a lesson) for bluntly dismissing so much of the literature that I've come to appreciate over the past few show more years.

Unfortunately for me, this was a lot of fun.

You don't have to be insane to tell a good story, but people who do happen to be insane usually spin a good yarn. What I've always loved about the stories crazy people tell is the wild passion with which they are told. Real nuts allow themselves to get carried away and fall in love with the people and places of their stories all over again (whether or not any of it ever happened), and Charles Kinbote is no exception. Throughout his commentary on John Shade's poem, the 999-line Pale Fire in Four Cantos, Kinbote weaves his analysis together with the saga of the former King of Zembla (also named Charles) and his escape from his country after he was overthrown. Much of it reads like a fairy tale (maybe with a bit more sodomy than the usual Grimm brothers fare) and in this context, I really enjoyed that aspect of it. If there's one thing literary criticism could use, it's whimsy.

Shade's poem was also great. I don't read poetry, but this was easy to follow for a novice, even before you read the parts of Kinbote's commentary that actually cover the content of the poem. I'm tempted to think that Nabokov put this whole thing together just to prove how versatile he was, but none of it feels forced or manufactured, and that's incredible for a book like this.

The Wikipedia page for Pale Fire has an "Interpretations" section that I highly encourage you to avoid. Having somebody else, even Nabokov, tell you how you should think about the big questions in the novel ruins half the fun. Is Charles really the king of Zembla? Is Zembla a real place? Is Charles even a real person? Those are questions that shouldn't have definite answers. Enjoy the process of wading through hints and half-hints and don't come to any conclusions just because of what the dumb author said a few years later. The book isn't his anymore.

I'm still getting through my issues with Nabokov, but good writing blows right past personal biases. Give me a story about an assassin with violent diarrhea in a library, and I'll give it a thumbs up. show less

I am thoroughly convinced Nabokov was a literary genius.

This satirical take on the dissection of a poem really speaks to me, as I have always detested the arrogance of English teachers discussing a poem or story, and insisting that "This is what the author meant", even when the author has gone on record saying they meant no such thing (Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea springs to mind as a particularly well-abused example.)
Sometimes authors and poets mean things literally. Sometimes they use a word because it happens to rhyme, or because it was literally the first thing that popped into their head. Maybe his use of "down comforter" wasn't because of some deep seated need to feel safe and looked after... They may just have been show more cold.

So Pale Fire came as an absolute breath of fresh air to me, using a poem by a fictional poet, and having the actual - hilarious - story (of his deranged stalker neighbour) take place in the footnotes. All the while ripping apart the idea of people reading far, far more into what has been written than was ever intended.

Sheer. Bloomin'. Genius.

Why then only three stars? It was a little too much of a good thing for me. About 2/3 of the way through it was getting old. In a slightly shorter format, this would have been sheer perfection (again, that is my personal preference. YMMV). show less