Pale Fire

This I first read at the suggestion of former Chicago cop and graduate English professor (of Chaucer) John McNally, with whom I also first read Dante in Italian--well, the Inferno. I taught Pale Fire a few times in modern lit courses, and it continued to delight. It's one of the few parodies of academic poets and their place in the modern university--hilarious, the academic introducer prof annoyed at sound intrusions while he writes his introduction.
The poet of Pale Fire is, as the title suggests, a pale successor to romantics like Wordsworth, but a rhyming Wordsworth. That can sum up a lot of 20C American verse, especially those well-employed by universities. Shade the poet is derivative, a pale imitation of Wordsworth, unhumorous, unwitty in order to fulfill modern America's pompous sense of verse--a kind of replacement for the religion that spawned 19C American colleges. Though John Shade is entirely original, at his back stands Pushkin's Lensky in Evgeny Onegin; if Pushkin has only borne Pale Fire and Vikram Seth's Golden Gate, he has borne 20C American literary fruit--and Pale Fire is decidedly American.

Nabokov wrote standing at a wide desk-lecturn; he translated the greatest Russian poem, Evgeny Onegin by Pushkin, but in such an idiosyncratic way that it's almost useless except as Nabokviana. His autobiography is almost as revealing as Lolita, perhaps the only 20C novel really about love, though a perverse and perverted love--maybe that's what singles it out as "the only," as well as 20C.
Я прочитал некоторые из Пушкина, и немного Набокова на русском языке, в основном из своих ранних работ.

"Pale Fire" may be the most formally perfect novel I've ever read. It's a leap over even Lolita (Everyman's Library (Cloth)) in sheer originality and inventiveness. ("Lolita"'s beauty of language keeps it maybe a smidgen ahead of "Pale Fire" overall.) It resembles a maze or a crossword puzzle: only there is real flesh, blood and pain involved. I will say I did have some difficulty with the Zemblan elements of the novel. They seemed a little far-fetched and silly to me. But again, that's where Nabokov gets you: a madman might come up with a fantasy world that is just as far-fetched. The novel is tantalizingly open to multiple interpretations. Is Kinbote insane? Or is he really the deposed king of Zembla. Or maybe he doesn't exist at all except as a literary device cooked up by the poet John Shade. Or maybe Shade is invented by Kinbote. Or maybe Kinbote and Shade were invented by the mad expatriate professor of Russian V. Botkin. Or maybe, just maybe, the ghost of the suicide Hazel Shade composed this book through her poet father. There are hints dropped all through "Pale Fire" to support every one of these theories. It's not frustrating, though, the way similar games are in the work of other writers. That's because of the remarkable wit that keeps you snickering throughout. And it's because of the sadness of the tragedy at the heart of the novel: the fate of Shade and his daughter, and the probable fate of Kinbote. As Richard Rorty writes in the introduction to this edition, maybe reading "Pale Fire" can convince the reader to be a little more compassionate and kind in a world where Nabokov's father could be assassinated in real life the same way Shade meets his destiny.

Take everything you knew or thought about Vladimir Nabokov, and stuff it in the trash. Experimental novel "Pale Fire" is a strange, haunting, magical experience, and as different from most novels as it can get. Like a textured surrealist painting, that is hard to take in on only one reading, let alone describe to someone who's never read it.
"Pale Fire" is a poem, 999 lines and divided into four cantos, written by poet John Shade. It's moving, vibrant and breathtaking. And it's posthumously annotated by scholar (and head case) Charles Kinbote, supposedly from the fictional Zembla (don't ask). In the "backwoods," Kinbote overdissects and reexamines the strange poem. Increasingly he is drawn into the web of words, stuck on the poem and believing it to be about him.
A strain of subtle, dark humor runs through "Pale Fire." Not funny-ha-ha humor, but one that only becomes apparent if you study it. In a nutshell, the humor here pokes at critics who read what they want to see into literature. Everyone has seen a passage or a line that strikes them to the soul. The entirety of "Pale Fire" does this to Kinbote, and his obsession with making it about himself is weirdly hypnotic.
Most unique (and funny) is the sort of analysis that Kinbote does of "Pale Fire." It's overblown, unlikely, and tailored to his delusions. He sees what he wants to see, and tries to turn ordinary phrases into deep allusions, and even adjust the whole point of the poem. What else do literary analysts do? It's hilarious to see Kinbote bend, twist and mangle every little phrase to fit. After all, who hasn't heard that "Lord of the Rings" is about World War II or the atom bomb? Or listened to a professor pinning a mess of Freudian theory on poor Hamlet?
The poem "Pale Fire" is the soul and core of this unorthodox novel. Perhaps only in A.S. Byatt's "Possession" does another poem so completely show the soul of a fictional character. Nabokov's poetry has the classic flavor of his prose. It's delicate and evocative without being overdescriptive. "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/In the false azure of the windowpane" is among the loveliest excerpts, from the very beginning of the first canto.
And Nabokov's narrative is both dizzying and madly brilliant. He takes us on a ride into Kinbote's very, very disturbed mind and makes the journey stranger as the book goes on. At the same time, he crafts this as a puzzle. Not a mystery, a puzzle. Hints are dropped, questions are raised, and just try to dare to overanalyze any of it.
"Pale Fire" is a book that has to be read to be believed: A satire within a poem within a novel. Unique and witty, spellbinding and avant-garde, this is a thinking reader's classic.

This is easily one of the greatest novels ever written. Very few authors attempt to play with form the way Nabokov could, and even fewer actually pull it off. This book is so incredibly readable, which is good because you will want to read it many times. The level of detail, the allusions, and the consistently high-quality humor demand that this book be read several times. I've read it at least four times and it just gets better and better each time.

I wish more authors concentrated on the craft of writing. Nabokov was overlooked for the Nobel because he didn't concentrate on social issues. How odd it is that the hierarchy of social issues before aesthetics exists.

Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire is a jewel. John Updike was spot on decades ago, describing Nabokov as the grandmaster of English prose. The story in Pale Fire, no linear tale, is told by Charles Kinbote during the course of a commentary on the poem of a renown writer, "close friend" and next door neighbor, John Shade. Shade's poem, Kinbote's commentary assures us, is about Kinbote's beloved Zembla, something of a fictional asylum posing as a nation-state. Kinbote is residing in the United States while Shade is composing the 999 lines of the four cantos of Pale Fire. On the faculty of Wordsmith College, and living at least physically proximate to Shade, Kinbote cherishes every encounter with the master poet, convinced that he, Kinbote, is implanting the grand design of what would become Pale Fire. There is just no substitute for letting Nabokov speak for himself. Almost any page will do: "The Goldworth chateau (the home at which he was staying) had many outside doors, and no matter how thoroughly I inspected them and the window shutters downstairs at bedtime, I never failed to discover next morning something sly and suspicious-looking. One night a black cat, which a few minutes before I had seen rippling down into the basement where I had arranged toilet facilities for it in an attractive setting, suddenly reappeared on the threshold of the music room, in the middle of my insomnia and a Wagner record, arching its back and sporting a neck bow of which silk which it could certainly never have put on all by itself. I telephoned 11111 and a few minutes later was discussing possible culprits with a policeman...It is too easy for a cruel person to make the victim of his ingenuity believe that he has persecution mania, or is really being stalked by a killer..." The perfect touch. Freud acknowledged that even paranoids can have real enemies. Nabokov's Kinbote fits the bill. Kinbote finds conspiracies in every event, meaning in each line. And that is surely one of the lessons of this masterpiece: No line is without meaning because, as Nabokov shows, we are so very good as instilling meaning in every line, finding a design in every image.

One of the most formally experimental novels ever written, Pale Fire is the name of a 999 line cyclical poem (the last line can be continued to the first line, ad infin). The body of the book is the `commentary' on the poem, written by Charles Kinbote, a man who is so obsessed with the poet John Shade, that he moves in next door. Even a fictional `editor' provides an explanation in the forward of this book about the poem. Of course, this is all Nabokov's invention, as he uses these `non-fictional' formal devices to elaborate the depth of this intricate masterpiece.
Each `segment' varies in length from one sentence to thirty pages, as Kinbote, the narrator, is convinced that the poem was written for him, and uncovers a strange fictional world known as Zembla (yes, a fiction within a fiction veiled as an editorial commentary- bravo Nabokov) that reads like a myth, in which King Charles is being pursued by Gradus through intra-dimensions. Slowly readers are led to suspect that Kinbote is insane, and that King Charles is really Kinbote's alter ego. When assassin Gradus enters the `reality' of Kinbote and Shade, havoc erupts. Only Shade's wife is onto Kinbote, providing some of the funniest moments in this book. As if this isn't enough, the poem itself is another `story'-that of Shade's drowned daughter, hauntingly and beautifully written.
This novel deconstructs reader's traditional orientation with `fictional reality', to a level where everything is simply in the mind of some arbitrary entity- be it the author, narrator, commenter, or reader. Just about the time when readers begin asking themselves in this literary chaos how the poem was even `published', they will discover exactly who all these faces really are.

Pale Fire -- Vladimir Nabokov
It is arguable, and debatable, whether this title or Lolita is Nabokov's masterpiece, but what is certain is that Pale Fire is once of the tightest, best-structured books of the 20th century.
Pale Fire is laid out in three parts: a Foreward written by Charles Kinbote, a Poem written by John Shade, and Commentary, also written by Kinbote.
What is prefigured in the Foreword and then made explicit in the Commentary is Kinbote's strange relationship with Shade and his equally strange past. The story is told completely through the device of the Foreword and Commentary, and in them Kinbote paints himself as a refugee from a despotic regime in a faraway land known only as Zembla. He takes up residence in New Wye, right across the street from professor and poet John Shade.
Once settled in New Wye, Kinbote embarks on an obsessive, mutedly homoerotic relationship with his poet neighbor, courting him when they are together and spying on him the rest of the time. Although Kinbote has fled his native Zembla, he dearly loves his homeland with the pain of one who knows he can never return to the land he has forsaken, and it is his dream that Shade will immortalize Zembla in a poem.
But just as Kinbote reaches for Zembla, so does Zembla reach for Kinbote. In the Commentary Kinbote brings forth a character called Gradus, who is an assassin sent from Zembla to search him out and kill him.
If the Foreword and Commentary tell the story of Kinbote, then the Poem tells the story of Shade. In only 999 lines, Shade paints a vivid picture of his past, taking us through his idyllic life in New Wye, its sudden destruction one night by death of his daughter, and his subsequent coping. In more ways than one it is the ideal complement to Kinbote's text, providing a clear, beautiful counterpart to Kinbote's unsteady rants and digressions.
However, what takes this book from mere postmodern game and transforms it to a dynamic, engrossing title is Kinbote's unreliability as a narrator and the questions surrounding who the real author of the Poem, Foreword, and Commentary is. Does Zembla really exist and has Kinbote really fled it? Is Gradus's climatic appearance the result of a government plot against Kinbote, or just another of the strange coincidences that pervade Pale Fire? Finally, is Shade's poem really Shade's, or has Kinbote written it for his own purposes? Vice versa, is Kinbote the real creative force behind the Foreword and Commentary, or is it the work of some different, other-worldly presence?
Nabokov masterfully spreads the information needed to answer these questions throughout Pale Fire, yet he does so in such a way that nothing is ever made completely explicit. Just as in all of Nabokov's best books, it is up to the reader to make that final conceptual leap, to take that final step after being carried along by Nabokov's poetic narrative.
Thus, Pale Fire is not a book that should be read only once, or quickly. It is a book that hides hints in the strangest of places (more than a couple appear in the Index), and one which cannot be completely understood the first time through. That is not to say that the first reading will not be satisfying, as Nabokov does give us a suspenseful, well-drawn narrative, but that as the reader peers back into Pale Fire she will see the book growing deeper and deeper as new items begin to pop up, like stars in the sky as evening fades to night.

This novel is a brilliantly conceived profile of two humorous literary characters, one whom we never meet but know only through a 999-line poem called "Pale Fire" he composed in the last twenty days of his life, and the other his unwelcome colleague, an eccentric man with delusions of grandeur and persecution mania, who annotates the poem. Although the novel consists of only the poem and the commentary, rest assured there is a plot, but its development is quite unconventional.
The poet is a reclusive college professor named John Shade, and his colleague is another professor named Charles Kinbote, who comes from a fictitious northern European country called Zembla. Kinbote, long an admirer of Shade's work, had rented a house adjacent to Shade's five months prior to Shade's death. Kinbote has a voyeuristic obsession with Shade, spying on his house with binoculars and prying into his work. Convinced that he and Shade had some kind of exclusive rapport during Shade's final months, Kinbote believes that much of the text of "Pale Fire" refers to information he had disclosed to Shade about recent political events in Zembla, when it is obvious that Shade's poem is strictly personal, expounding on important times in his life: his childhood, his courtship with his wife, the death of his daughter, his heart attack.
The "narration" of the novel takes place a few months after Shade's death, with Kinbote living in a motel room disturbed by noisy neighbors and writing his commentary about the poem. His commentary tends to go off on comical tangents about the political intrigue in Zembla. We learn that the last King of Zembla was imprisoned in his palace during a quasi-Bolshevik Revolution but managed to escape via a secret passage and travel incognito to America, where he was given a new identity. After the escape, the King was stalked by a heavily aliased assassin who resourcefully discovered his quarry's whereabouts, resulting in a confrontation whose outcome did not go exactly as planned.
The plot construction is diabolically clever in the way Nabokov reveals information little by little throughout Kinbote's commentary; you may have to read the book twice to see which details you missed the first time, but Nabokov's prose is so colorful and ebullient that doing so is a pleasure. Even more interesting is the doubt established by Nabokov as to whether Kinbote's revelations are reality or delusions; his sanity is questionable. Every now and then I come across a book that's so wildly creative and so much fun that it reminds me why I love to read -- "Pale Fire" is easily one of those books.

I found reading _Pale Fire_ as labyrinthian an experience as the escape passageway to a theater via the palace of King Charles of the "mythical" country of Zembla. _Pale Fire_ is also a work of great imagination, originality, and humor. The humor is most apparent in Kinbote's foolish efforts to spy on the poet and English literature professor John Shade and his wife and in the evil Gradus' various inept attempts at assassination.

Charles Kinbote wrote the forward, commentary, and index to the novel. Each of these three parts is related by Kinbote in a first person narrative form. The centerpiece of the novel is a 999 line epic poem called _Pale Fire_, which was written by the late John Shade shortly before he died. Kinbote is a colleague of Shade's at Wordsmith College and also a self-styled "friend" of Shade's. Kinbote relates that at the time when Sybil, Shade's wife, very recently became a widow, he wrangles her into agreeing to sign a contract to give Kinbote the right to publish Shade's opus. Kinbote is extremely egocentric: in his evening walks and conversations with Shade he strongly urges Shade, in his poem, to tell about the northern European kingdom of Zembla, from which Kinbote emigrated to the United State years ago.

The poem _Pale Fire_ ,itself, is wistful, very romantic and beautifully written. It is about John Shade's life long love affair with his wife and about the tragic death of their daughter. Shade also muses about the possibility of an after-life. The poem brought tears to my eyes. But, in Kinbote's commentary and to his great chagrin, Shade only mentions Zembla once in his poem.

While reading Nabokov's novel and also afterwards, I could not help compare the character Kinbote to the narrator of Dostoyevsky's _Notes From Underground_. Dostoyevsky's great novel was done as a stream of consciousness in its first part and as a first person narrative in its second part. However, it is clear in _Notes_ that the narrator is a severely neurotic and disturbed man. Nabokov leads us to believe the same of Kinbote, but I am not quite so sure of that. Kinbote's egotism and efforts to steal Shade's poem are plain. But is Kinbote's story of Zembla a crazy man's hallucinations (as we are lead to believe) or is he relating actual events of a real country in which a series of monarchs were assassinated and in which the last king, the Beloved Charles, may become the latest victim? Also, who is Charles Kinbote? These are some of the questions I asked myself while reading Nabokov's puzzling, but fascinating, book.

Once upon a time, a judge named Goldsworth who lived in the college town of New Wye, Appalachia, sent a homicidal maniac named Jack Grey to an Institute for the Criminal Insane. But Grey escaped, and set out to find Judge Goldsworth and take revenge on him.
When Grey arrived in New Wye, Goldsworth was away on sabbatical. Unfortunately, Goldsworth's nextdoor neighbor, a famous poet named John Shade, resembled Judge Goldsworth a bit. At the very moment Jack Grey arrived at the Goldsworth house, Shade was on his way there. Thinking Shade was the judge, Grey opened fire on the unfortunate poet, killing him instantly with a bullet through the heart.
The reason Shade was at Goldsworth's house was that the man who was temporarily renting it while the judge was away, a Russian emigre named Vseslav Botkin, had lured him there with promises of liquor. (Shade was on the wagon, or at least trying.)
Now this Vseslav Botkin was insane. After leading a dismal life of pederasty and persecution he had retreated into a desperate fantasy in which he imagined himself to be Charles the Beloved, last king of the kingdom of Zembla. In Botkin's paraniod world, the extremists had taken over Zembla and King Charles was forced to flee to America, where he changed his name to Charles Kinbote and found a teaching job at Wordsmith University, in New Wye. Botkin believed that Grey was actually an incompetent assassin sent by the extremists to murder King Charles (i.e., him), but who murdered John Shade by accident.
The fantasies of this lunatic might be of little interest to the rest of the world, except for one thing. Botkin had been confiding his Zembla fantasies to John Shade in the hope that Shade would bring them to life in an epic poem. And in fact, Shade had been hinting to Botkin that he was writing a long poem, which Botkin crazily assumed would be his Zembla poem. On that fateful afternoon, Botkin had induced Shade to bring the almost-finished manuscript of the poem to Goldsworth's house, where Botkin (as he believed) would finally see his Zembla come to life.
When the police had left and Botkin was alone at last with "his" poem, he was horrified to find that it had nothing at all to do with Zembla. It was an autobiographical poem addressed to the poet's beloved wife, whom Botkin despised, as he despised all women. The poem was very personal, containing many intimate details of the poet's marriage. It is doubtful, in fact, whether Shade ever meant to publish it.
Undeterred, Botkin absconded with the manuscript to a motel room in a mountain town in the far west where he proceeded to write a long series of notes to the poem in which, taking off from a phrase here and a word there in Shade's poem, he detailed his "Zembla" fantasy. He even managed to find an unscrupulous publisher.
The resulting book -- Shade's poem "Pale Fire" together with Botkin's preface, table of contents, notes and index -- comprise the novel _Pale Fire_, by Vladimir Nabokov. It is an artifact of the fictional world of Nabokov's novel, created by two of Nabokov's characters, that has somehow escaped from the fictional world into our "real" world. With the possible exception of a copy of _Alice in Wonderland_ autographed by Alice Liddell herself that I once held in my hands, it is the strangest book I have ever seen in my life.
It is also filled with puzzles and paradoxes. From something as simple as the location of New Wye (somewhere in the hills of western Virgnia, judging from the butterflies that fly there), to whether the kingdom of Zembla actually exists in the fictional world of the novel (apparently not -- only where did that little Zemblan translation of Timon of Athens come from?), to the identity and motives of Shade's murderer, nothing in _Pale Fire_ is easy or obvious. Things get so complicated, in fact, that you start to wonder if maybe Nabokov didn't outsmart himself in this one. I still don't know. I do know that _Pale Fire_ is a masterpiece that deserves all the praise it gets.

Take everything you knew or thought about Vladimir Nabokov, and stuff it in the trash. Experimental novel "Pale Fire" is a strange, haunting, magical experience, and as different from most novels as it can get. Like a textured surrealist painting, that is hard to take in on only one reading, let alone describe to someone who's never read it.
"Pale Fire" is a poem, 999 lines and divided into four cantos, written by poet John Shade. It's moving, vibrant and breathtaking. And it's posthumously annotated by scholar (and head case) Charles Kinbote, supposedly from the fictional Zembla (don't ask). In the "backwoods," Kinbote overdissects and reexamines the strange poem. Increasingly he is drawn into the web of words, stuck on the poem and believing it to be about him.
A strain of subtle, dark humor runs through "Pale Fire." Not funny-ha-ha humor, but one that only becomes apparent if you study it. In a nutshell, the humor here pokes at critics who read what they want to see into literature. Everyone has seen a passage or a line that strikes them to the soul. The entirety of "Pale Fire" does this to Kinbote, and his obsession with making it about himself is weirdly hypnotic.
Most unique (and funny) is the sort of analysis that Kinbote does of "Pale Fire." It's overblown, unlikely, and tailored to his delusions. He sees what he wants to see, and tries to turn ordinary phrases into deep allusions, and even adjust the whole point of the poem. What else do literary analysts do? It's hilarious to see Kinbote bend, twist and mangle every little phrase to fit. After all, who hasn't heard that "Lord of the Rings" is about World War II or the atom bomb? Or listened to a professor pinning a mess of Freudian theory on poor Hamlet?
The poem "Pale Fire" is the soul and core of this unorthodox novel. Perhaps only in A.S. Byatt's "Possession" does another poem so completely show the soul of a fictional character. Nabokov's poetry has the classic flavor of his prose. It's delicate and evocative without being overdescriptive. "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/In the false azure of the windowpane" is among the loveliest excerpts, from the very beginning of the first canto.
And Nabokov's narrative is both dizzying and madly brilliant. He takes us on a ride into Kinbote's very, very disturbed mind and makes the journey stranger as the book goes on. At the same time, he crafts this as a puzzle. Not a mystery, a puzzle. Hints are dropped, questions are raised, and just try to dare to overanalyze any of it.
"Pale Fire" is a book that has to be read to be believed: A satire within a poem within a novel. Unique and witty, spellbinding and avant-garde, this is a thinking reader's classic.

At its simplest, Pale Fire is an examination of the 999-line poem in four cantos, 'Pale Fire' by respected Zemblan scholar Charles Kinbote, a friend of the recently deceased poet, John Shade. The novel becomes less simple when we realise that John Shade is a fictional poet, that Zembla may or may not exist, and that our friend Charles Kinbote is either the King of Zembla or insane, or perhaps both.

The novel opens, appropriately, with an introduction to the text about to be studied. Kinbote goes to great lengths to assure us that his land of Zembla and his 'great secret' are a major theme of the poem. He also repeatedly affirms his friendship with Shade, though the remainder of the text allows a severe amount of doubt as to the strength of their relationship.

John Shade, poet par excellence, is presented as an earthy, ugly man. Kinbote tries to exalt him to a higher plan at times, though textually we only ever see Shade for what he is - a poet, a great poet perhaps, but a poet. He isn't a God of letters or the Saviour of a nation, he is a man. But Kinbote has this to say of Shade's creative process: 'I am witnessing a unique physiological phenomenon: John Shade perceiving and transforming the world, taking it in and taking it apart, re-combing its element in the very process of storing them up so as to produce at some unspecified date an organic miracle, a fusion of image and music, a line of verse.'

Once the introduction has cleared, we are able to read the poem itself. It is 999 lines long: 166 for Canto One, 334 for Canto Two and Three, and 165 lines for Canto four. Kinbote tell us that the poem should in fact be 1,000 lines, with the first line of the poem repeated as the last, '...and would have completed the symmetry of the structure, with its two identical central parts, solid and ample, forming together with the shorter flanks twin wings of five hundred verses each, and damn that music.'

We are told in the introduction that the poem is about Zembla, which means that when we read Pale Fire, we are searching for references and commentary on this (presumably) mythical country. Canto One and Two incite doubt, Canto Three assures us, and Canto four confirms that there will be no references to Zembla. From the first, we are unsure of our narrator.

To the meat of the text, then. Kinbote offers to explain verses and lines, sometimes in great detail. A number of these are purely literary in explanation. He locates references, comments upon the language used (both negatively and positively), and generally acts as a normal editor would. These comments are usually clever, accurate and informed.

But the bulk of the text comes from Kinbote's other comments. As we know from the introduction, Kinbote is desperate to prove a link between the poem and himself. He is so certain of his great friendship with Shade that surely it must be inspired by his majestic Zembla? A word ('Today' on one occasion, 'parents' on another) can spark a multi-page discourse on Zembla, on Kinbote, on the perceived connections. As we read, it becomes clear the lengths that Kinbote must go to prove any connection at all. At first, this seems the enthusiastic ramblings of a friend, but as we read, it becomes clear that Kinbote is not quite sane. He spies upon Shade, he creates connections that aren't there, he believes everything is stronger than it is. Why, we are unsure. Is he a fan, become obsessed with his favourite poet?

A third story - and we are crowded with them, it seems - is that of Gradus, a man hired to assassinate the deposed Zemblan King. As the analysis of the poem approaches an end, so to does Gradus come closer to finally killing Shade. This is not a spoiler - we are told from the start that Gradus killed Shade. But what we don't know is the motive. Was it to kill the King? Or was it case of mistaken identity with a Judge? Again, we are unsure, because Kinbote is so unreliable.

I say unreliable, yet he is reasonably consistent within himself. Zembla is an astonishing construct, with history, geography, culture and customs. Add to that the fact of Kinbote working at a university teaching Zemblan, and we remain unsure as to the truth of, well, everything.

So, a detective story. It is horribly complicated, yet at the same time completely straight forward. All of the plot lines begin at the start of the novel and are resolved in a straight forward manner. Kinbote does not reveal himself to be the exiled King at first, but that is a simple matter of reading between the lines - he goes to no real effort to hide the fact. And Shade is dead, we know that from the start. No, the 'detective' aspect of Pale Fire is that we don't know what to believe. There are multiple interpretations for everything, but the only detailed interpretation we have is Kinbote's, and his is so fantastic that it should be automatically discredited. Yet we cannot, due to the sheer confidence with which he tells his story.

A word on the poem. It is by turns beautifully written and evocatively plotted. The Second Canto deals with Shade's daughter's death, and is very sad. The language is impeccable, as all poems must be. 'How to locate in blackness, with a gasp, Terra the Fair, an orbicle of jasp' is lovely.

Similarly, the rest of the novel crackles with inspired description and wordplay. Nabokov is known for his love of language, it is quite astonishing to realise that English was his second language. We have such gems as 'Would he have crept, pistol in hand, to where a sun-bathing giant lay spread-eagled, a spread eagle of hair on his chest?'.

There is a lot to consider with Pale Fire. The beauty of the novel is easy to enjoy, and the plot, for what it is, works. The greatest enjoyment comes from the mystery of what is real and what is not, but a side entertainment is certainly available in the form of Kinbote's literary criticism, some of which is biting. We may assume that this is Nabokov speaking, as he was known for his harsh judgment on literature.

To end, Pale Fire is complicated and complex, but the rewards are great. If the idea of a novel wrapped around the analysis of a poem is not appealing, then stay away. But if beautiful language, wonderful prose and excellent literature is to your taste, by all means, read Pale Fire.

Nabokov writes so well. His words flow or stick together so effortlessly. But at times his sink into the mire of strain, losing their way (oh Pale Fire!). The story is of Shade and his sedentary life; of little child and grieving wife. The poem, I think is the best part, aesthetically speaking; but the commentary is also held in high regard, focusing on the "editor's" relationship and his own life: more of a self-commentary than poem-analysis. But Nabokov surprises the reader with ingenious lines and the usual philosophical introspections of life, death, the such. But, all the same, very enjoyable.

Among Nabokov's very best books, few present such serious challenges to the reader as "Pale Fire". Even fewer provide such enormous rewards, especially if said reader brings an open mind and a serious attention to detail. What kind of book, exactly, is "Pale Fire", anyway? A longish poem with annotation and index? A wildly experimental novel that flaunts every convention for the sake of innovation? An elegiac reflection on days gone by or a wickedly comedic parody of scholarship and the artistic urge? It is all those things and more, a watershed in English-language literature, the apotheosis of Nabokov's craft as writer and satirist. For the record, the crazed, domineering Prof. Kinbote (mastermind or madman? You decide) is rivaled only by Humbert Humbert when it comes to delusional, obssessive narrators--talk about unreliable, not to mention fascinating beyond belief. What are we to make of his claim to be the exiled King of Zembla? Where, if not only in his over-ripe imagination, is Zembla and what, if anything, does this country have to do with the poet Shade and his dead daughter? There is the question of the hired assasin "Jakob Gradus", too, though, like Zembla, Gradus might or might not be anything more that an invention of Kinbote's (if Kinbote himself is actually Kinbote and not an imposter claiming to be a man who might be an imposter as well...you can see where this is going, can't you?) "Pale Fire" is a puzzle, one that makes strenuous demands upon the reader, one that cannot be read straight-through (there are page references in the annotation, after all--you'd do well to pay attention to them) or merely "skimmed". If you have the patience to immerse yourself in Nabokov/Kinbote's topsy-turvy world of intrigue, artistry and (perhaps?) the supernatural, you are in for a bracing read. There's no other book out there like "Pale Fire", it could only have come from the brilliant mind of Nabokov and it is splendid, indeed. A word to the wise: Read the book ALL THE WAY to the very end. What might seem like peripheral information is actually critical if you intend to crack the novel's deviously intricate code.

The man from Virginia, two reviews down from this one, is a superficial bore who relies on weasel words and inexact detail to back up his undeserved opinions. His comments are watery and suspiciously defensive. First he says he "agree[s] with much of the praise everyone has given the book ... there was at least one part where I couldn't stop laughing." But he feels guilty -- "these thrills I would compare to the time you were a kid and put a handmirror behind your back in a barber shop and saw infinite reflections of yourself. If that's all it takes to make you happy, this is the book for you." A book, in other words, for people whose standards are as low as his.
"The only real point one might derive from this book is a sense of the subjectivity of life."
This is utter foolishness. How lazy does a reader have to be to glean such a useless message from such a tremendously complex book? The points of the book are myriad, having to do with (among other things) grief, loneliness, the possibilities of reinvention, and the earthly means of achieving life after death.
For over 30 years, good, thoughtful and creative readers have found this book an endless source of delight, interest and inspiration. Read it several times with your eyes wide open and your senses alert. This is a true tour-de-force, a peerless one-of-a-kind, once-in-a-lifetime book -- not just a novel, but an adventure.

Nabokov was one of the wittiest, most elegant writers of English prose of the 20th century. That's remarkable - his native language was Russian. He's probably best known to English language readers for his novel, "Lolita," but I think that "Pale Fire" is his masterpiece. It's just plain brilliant.

"Pale Fire" is something of a literary platypus. It isn't a novel, it isn't autobiographical, it isn't prose or poetry. It has elements of all of them while being none of them. It's completely original. It's a farce and a satire, a skewering of academia, a riff on the pretentiousness of professors, a slam of postmodernism before many people were even talking about that academic development. In spirit its closest modern relatives are Alan Sokal's fraudulent 1996 article (parody) in the journal "Social Text" and a sendup of MLA procedings in "Postmodern Pooh." It consists of a foreward, a poem in four cantos, commentary, and an index. It's all supposedly written by an apparently demented academic, Charles Kinbote, except for the poem, written by his former colleague (and object of both child-like and sexual desire?), John Shade.

We learn more about Kinbote in his work about Shade's poem than we learn about the poem or its author. As far as Kinbote is concerned, everything is about him - the poem, academic intrigue, revolution in his homeland, everything. His analysis of the poem is almost an exercise in solipsism - he sees and discourses on himself at every turn. And thus, I think, was Nabokov's view of American English departments - collections of talentless, naval-gazing frauds.

This book isn't just a satire of university English departments. It's also a mystery and a puzzle, pulling us into the world of Kinbote and feeding us clues about the place so that we can form a picture of it, understand why Shade is dead and Kinbote is holed-up in a motel to finish his commentary. But it isn't a book about a mystery. It's just a really strange book, and just plain brilliant.

This is about as close to a college English review of a novel as I have encountered in 30 years. The style and the annotation are similar, if not identical, to how a long poem would be analyzed in a class.

After reading the forward, where you are told that the narrator, maybe on the sly, impounds the 999-line poem written on the death bed of his beloved rhyming neighbor. He then delivers the poem to us -- in a consistently written 10-beat rhythm -- which discusses many aspects of regicide of the late and great King of the foreign land of Zembla. Zembla's King Charles is lost, or is he the rhyming neighbor in disguise? We are never sure.

Line by line, a thorough review of what is meant by some of the unique passages is delivered to us by the narrator, who proclaims to know more than anyone what this epic poem is about. This is like college class. This is very entertaining.

Poems do not move quickly, and this one is no exception. Moreover, Nabokov's thorough usage of the English language may deliver you to the dictionary on frequent occasion as his prose is as detailed and thick as many poets.

We are toyed with by Nabokov, but what else is new? In the end, we know little more than we did in the beginning. But, it was fun.

This is a book which you may want to own. Reading it again and again is probably the correct thing to do as this novel has layers upon layers. And, that is exactly what Nabokov did on so many occasions. He was a master of multiple perspection, he delivered us fiction which could be read different ways on different occasions.

Most of the enjoyment with this book is the discovery of Nabokov's creation. Frankly, I suggest that you skip the reviews here, close your eyes for the moment and simply read the book. Read the comments later. If you want some preliminary comments, here are my observations as a Nabokov fan. By the way, I have not read Boyd's book - the Nabokov expert - but still enjoyed the read.

Wikipedia has the following: "Nabokov authority Brian Boyd has called it "Nabokov's most perfect novel." Is it? Personally I thought "Laughter in the Dark" was his most "perfect" novel as one thinks of a conventional novel, but this might be his most original work, see: (1932) Kamera Obskura (Êàìåðà Îáñêóðà); English translations: Camera Obscura (1936), Laughter in the Dark (1938.

This 1962 book is made up of three parts: the Forward, a four part Poem, and the Commentary. Is this a brilliant novel? Not as one understands a novel, and why would we expect another conventional novel from Nabokov at this date?

I read no reviews or comments about the book before reading it cover to cover, but I had read a number of his books including Transparent Things from 1971 which is very unconventional and non-linear - in treating time and the story sequence. So, I formed my own impressions.

The present story is set in the mythical liberal arts college in Appalachia, in America, called Wordsmith College. The introduction or lengthy Forward is conventional and does not tell us that much. Nabokov does not reveal what he is doing until the poem itself. The story is narrated by a fiction professor or academic, Charles Kinbote, who seems to have an unhealthy fascination for his native land of Zemblan, a small country somewhere west of Russia, which by the way, has its own language, royal family, court intrigue, and revolution. The book is (supposedly) about his analysis of the poem.

The heart of the book is supposed to be a poem by a deceased neighbor and poet, John Shade, plus short comments by Kinbote. But once we get to the poem by Shade, the hoax is up and the reader realizes this is a spoof by Nabokov, and that is confirmed by flipping forward to the commentary. Once I got to the poem and realized the spoof, I re-read the introduction two more times looking for clues (which are there), then read the poem slowly.

The Commentary section by Kinbote has almost no relationship to the poem, but instead is filled with stories of Zemblan and his different pet theories (of Kinbote) such as in a perfect world "the rich get poorer, and the poor get richer," or Darwin's theory (according to him) is that the superior animals end up in the stomachs of the inferior, etc. Nabokov does manage to insert many references to literature in the Commentary.

So, what does it all mean? As a general reader there are many similarities with Transparent Things: part spoof and part riddle. In any case, the book is highly original; it is what we might expect from Nabokov, and it is open to various interpretations and discussions. It is a book to be enjoyed, and as Boyd has pointed out, it is filled with many subtle clues, links, and ironies, so the book can be enjoyed on more than one level.

At the end of the read one sees the story. So yes it is a novel but not conventional. 5 Stars for originality and perhaps it is Nabokov's most original longer work.

Let's put things straight from the start: this is a weird novel, practically a genre unto itself. It consists of a long poem ("pale fire") supposedly written by a fictional american poet (John Shade) and the subsequent notes/commentary, written by an equally fictional character: Charles Kinbote, a man who claims to be a scholar from the country (fictional again) of Zembla. Now, far from being a reliable annotator, Kinbote bends every word of the poem (hilariously so because it's far too evident) so as to mantain that Shade's autobiographical poem is in fact about the story of Zembla (and Kinbote's personal tragedy).
This was intended as a satire against critics who, in Nabokov's opinion, tend to see in other people poems meanings and hints that are not really there.
While the concept immediately got my attention, I feared that it might be marred by boring execution. Boy, how was I wrong... Eventually I couldn't put it down until I had finished it!

Vladimir Nabokov has always been one of my favorite writers. I've read "Lolita" twice and think I'm not quite finished yet with this book. Since I like his writing and ideas so much, I thought I should try his "Pale Fire", a book that has been highly recommended to me by many people, and that looks difficult and challenging enough for me devote my time. It turns out these impressions weren't wrong.

"Pale Fire" is brilliant, certainly one of the best books ever written in English. It is difficult. Nabokov's language, approach and style are labored enough to drive any experienced reader insane. And, despite the fact that I can't say I totally understood the book, I'm willing to tell that I loved it. Why? Because every word sounds brilliant and placed in the right place where it is supposed to be. Because his style and structure were demanding, and as a reader this is what we should look for: something different from the usual, something that would challenge our minds.

The writer toyed with the idea of hypertext much before it was a trend. Compound of a poem and its comments, reading "Pale Fire" makes the reader goes back and forth to follow the poem and its interpretation. But, this is not the only hypertext structure, in the comments, every time the writer mentions another line etc.

However strange it may sound, "Pale Fire" still has a plot. Actually many plots -- like any good many-layered book. One of the plots deal with the "Pale Fire" poem writer and his relationship with his neighbor, who happens to be the writer who is annotating the poem. There is something sick going between these two and their tacit dispute to see who is more brilliant. On another level, there is another story -- something a little magical, a little political-- involving a king.

Due to its complexity and brilliance, Nabokov's "Pale Fire" is a book (it is tempting to say `a novel', but it is not really a novel -- it is more a book of literary critic or something) that deserves multiple reading. I'm sure that every time we read this superb book we'll find something new that only proves what a genius this magnificent writer is. His words prove that he says, "True art is above false honor". "Pale Fire" certainly is one of the truest forms of art possible, and I'm willing to reread it in a couple of years.

This is a masterpiece work by Prof. Nabokov, but its treasures can only be unlocked by the effort that you put into reading it. But even at its most superficial level, it is an amusing and entertaining story of the magical lost kingdom of Zembla and of one of the most comical monarchs ever, King Charles the Beloved, bad breath and all. But don't stop reading and rereading it again and again, for its mirrors and shimmering depths have layer after layer of meanings, reflections, and depth. It's intricacies and breadth of allusions and references are simply astounding. This is my favorite modern literary work.

One correction to some of the comments, this is work in four parts, not three. It is an introdution, a poem, a commentary, and an index. Don't forget the index! There is a lot of important information there, including the hiding place of the Crown Jewels!

Reading Nabokov, it is impossible not to get the impression that this is an author who knows that he is 100 times smarter than his readers. Not only that, he also feels no shame in making that abundantly obvious with every sentence that he writes. Reading Pale Fire is the literary equivalent of turning around in circles until you get so dizzy that you fall over, punch drunk and hysterical. You feel sick and disorientated, but you also get the sense that the process was somehow fun and - dare I say - worth it.
Whether you like this book or not - and personally, I can't say that I loved it - it is hard to deny what an amazing achievement it is. Nabokov first writes a 999-line poem - the equivalent of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, in length if not in quality. He then writes a foreword to the poem, and a line-by-line commentary, as if the poem were written by someone else. And by means of the commentary he weaves an imaginative, suspenseful adventure that is so obviously fictitious that it immediately becomes real. There's no denying that this is brilliantly creative and original writing.

Who else besides Nabokov could pull this off? That's not a rhetorical question: I really want to know. Here, the Russian savant assails the conventions of the novel, and produces a work that is readable, fluid, innovative, accessible, entertaining, and astonishingly impressive on a purely intellectual level.

Joyce? The foremost big-brain of the 20th Century, perhaps, but his monoliths are, to most people, as impregnable as an eighty-nine-year-old nun.

Gide? No slouch, but his chops do not enter into radar range with ol' Vladders.

Anybody? I confess, I'm stumped.

This book would, for anyone else, be the defining career magnum opus. (Anyone besides the guy who gave us Lolita, of course.) Nabokov gives us a forward, a poem, and then a narrative commentary on the poem. All are brilliantly conceived, constructed, and created. The prose and verse are nonpareil, the characterizations apposite and hilarious, and the satire superb. (Nabokov also fulfills his penchant for tweaking sexual mores of the time by making his narrator--the erstwhile king of Zembla, and current university lecturer--a randy pansy.)

This book clocks in at #53 on the MLA 100, which underrates it enormously.

Nabakov was undoubtedly one of the best authors ever to live and grace us with his prose, and Pale Fire is the (or maybe one of the) pinnacles of his career. I'm sure the plot (so to speak) has been summarized many times, so I'll let that sit, but what I think is most noteworthy about this novel is its format. Nabakov has separated himself from straightforward plot, yet through the "footnotes" to the poem Pale Fire, we still get a complete picture of two men's lives. Pale Fire is something like the bridge between the internal investigations of Virgnia Woolf and the literary technique of the more recent post-moderns, and yet has all the signature Nabokov touches--brilliant wordplay, fascinatingly sad characters, and unapproachable beauty.
I would certainly recommend this novel simply for the joy of reading it, but it has value beyond the amazing abilities of the author, and that value is the insight on the human mind in modern times and how we all have come to work internally. This is truly high literature and art and I will be surprised if it doesn't become a world classic.

It's amazing how disturbing Nabokov books can be. In this and Lolita we get to read the memoirs of extremely disturbed minds, and it can be very scary. It makes one wonder just where Vladimir gained this psychotic insight. Speak, Memory doesn't answer this.
Anyway, this may well be the most bizarre, inventive, and deliriously pleasurable and funny book in existence. It requires way too much thought, but that's a good thing.
Interesting how the poem itself is fairly simple to understand. It is obviously an autobiographical statement, and it's amazing how Charles twists beyond all recognition to being about him. Scary, but people do this in real life.
One of the rare books that demands multiple reads for a full (or even partial) understanding. So do so. You may even have to buy two or more copies like Charles suggests. That'll make the publisher happy.

Pale Fire is a wonderfully enjoyable work of fiction, although it is not in the form of a traditional novel. The story unfolds in an introduction to, and commentary to a 999 line poem. It appears that Nabakov had great fun constructing this masterpiece and I think the reader will have fun deciphering it. The introduction and commentary are "written" by a slightly insane, slightly delusional professor, Charles Kinbote, who is perhaps a deposed king on the run, perhaps not. He believes he has inspired the poet to construct a poem about his former kingdom, but alas, the poem is about the poet's life. Kinbote is greatly disappointed, but in his commentary manages to find allusions to his former kingdom and rambles on and on about it. The results are often hilarious and always thought provoking. Nabokov has such a good time writing in English and because it is not his native toungue, he sees things in the words that native English speakers wouldn't. It's fun to watch him play with the words, as it's fun to watch him play with our conceptions of reality. The whole book plays around with what is reality, who is the narrator. Is it Nabokov pretending to be Kinbote, is it just Nabokov. One wonders what really happened in the story. Kinbote tells one version, the characters he speaks of tells another, as does our poet, John Shade, Nabokov is telling yet another. There are so many layers of story and illusion. I found myself wondering what really happened, but it's fiction, nothing happened, or everything happened. I really enjoyed this book a great deal. It even took my mind off of being in the dentist's chair. I highly recommend this book to anyone who isn't afraid of slightly experimental fiction. Fans of Infinite Jest and House of Leaves will certainly enjoy Pale Fire.

"Pale Fire" is indeed a book which repays return visits. I recently picked it up again, and noted two new aspects of interest.
First, the nutty Kinbote interpreting Shade's poem as "really" all about Zembla, or, more particularly, as all about the assassin Gradus! The poet Shade was totally unaware of Gradus and makes no reference to Zembla at all.
But does this pattern of behavior remind you of anyone?
It sure reminds me of a professor of mine, who spent weeks lecturing us on "Romeo and Juliet" as the summit of Christian symbolism! (Any extended experience of Shakespeare will convince you that Santayana was right, in noting Shakespeare's rather abnormal ABSENCE of religion.) Or another professor who dissects Hamlet in terms of his Freudian theories. Or present-day "deconstructionists" whomping on Homer in terms of their deconstructionist theories. In all cases, these academics with an axe to grind manage to overlook the actual work of art completely, while bending it to fit the Procrustean bed of their theories. No better parody of this tendency exists than Charles Kimbote's loony "commentary" on the poem "Pale Fire."
If you want to see how to do literary criticism right, take a look at Nabokov's "Lectures on Literature" or his "Lectures on Russian Literature."
Second: a remarkable number of similarities between Kinbote and Nabokov. Kinbote is the exiled king of Zembla, Nabokov was a nobleman exiled from Tsarist Russia. Kinbote's colleagues know nothing of Zembla, and Nabokov's colleagues were astonishingly ignorant of Russia. Zembla was taken over by Extremist revolutionaries, Russia was taken over by Communist revolutionaries. The assassin "Gradus" -- sent to assassinate Kinbote -- may seem melodramatic until you realize that Nabokov's father was in fact murdered by two Communist thugs, in Berlin. The Communists actually sent executioners after Nabokov's father, and they shot him dead when Nabokov was just 23. Needless to say, this was a critical point in Nabokov's life.

There are musicians who believe that perfection in performance is Everything. They will hit every note exactly on time, with exactly the right amount of pianoforte and pedal, and believe that this is the way to a performance masterpiece.

The only thing they are missing out on is emotion.

In the same way, Nabokov treated the novel as an exercise in performance while writing "Pale Fire." The whole thing is like a gigantic crossword puzzle, waiting for the right genius (or monomaniac) to untangle it. Is Kinbote the fugitive King of Zembla, or not? And, to be rude for a moment, who cares? If Nabokov did not care enough to tell us, but preferred to occupy himself with trivia such as "word golf," then one might well guess that this whole entertaining mess was written by Nabokov as a sort of "anti-Lolita" in his empty afternoons. (It is beyond any doubt that Kinbote has no use for Lolitas of any kind, but has been a devoted fan of handsome young men since he was born.)

But, even there, the novel is curiously devoid of emotion.

We have become accustomed to taking Vladimir Nabokov at his own estimation, as some sort of Great Artist. In fact, there is an argument to be made that Nabokov slaved away as a college professor until he hit on the idea of writing a piece of "artistic" kiddie-porn ("Lolita"). He really raked in the bucks from that idea, and immediately left the United States to live out the rest of his life in a high-class Swiss hotel.

Born an aristo, and died an aristo. Will we still be reading his books in a hundred years?

I don't think so.

This is a fantastic book. Of course. The wordplay is dazzling, the games intricate, the scope both ambitious and fully realized. It will ever earn five stars on Earth. That being said, in some alternate universe (Terra, perhaps?) where Steven King is Vladimir Nabokov, I would only give it four stars.
It isn't as good as Ada, Pnin or Lolita, despite being technically superior to the latter two. Why? Because Nabokov doesn't love Charles Kimbote - and hence, we don't (contrast Van, Timofey and Humbert). And - I know - with circumspection, Pale Fire can be viewed as a triple-joke - being about John Shade after all, to whom Nabokov is much more kind. Or even that Shade and Kimbote are one and the same, etcetera ad nauseum. But, in my final analysis, for all it's technical intricacy, ambition, and florid prose, this book fails to move my heart as well as dazzle my mind.
Or maybe I just don't get it. Regardless, I highly recommend it. Right behind Ada.

As someone who reads and interprets American fiction for a living (pity me), this is the first novel I've read in ages that challenged me and then rewards the reader's efforts when the depths of the multiple layers of storytelling started to show themselves. Don't think you've got it solved when you realize that Kinbote isn't who you thought he was. He's not THAT second person either. And there's ghosts -- several of them -- who take possession of the story in various ways. I don't want to wreck your delight by giving away more. I also recommend Brian Boyd's critical work on the novel, _Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery_, an amazing interpretation of the novel that blows it wide open.

Pale Fire is essentially a mystery story. It presents facts and the testimony of a deranged man, and allows the reader to do the detective work. The task presented the reader is daunting as the plots, subplots, and character sketches twist in ever tightening involutions, levels of complexity stacking one on top of another. Nabokov is kind though. Ever conscious of the novel as entertainment he allows the proccess to be fun. He gives away many of the mysteries in ways that lead the reader to believe that he or she has made the discovery. He also leaves some that are so complicated that it would take multiple rereads (or a good companion reader) to make the discoveries. This book is without a doubt my favorite of Nabokov's works, and there are few that I would not recommend it to. My only warning is that you will get out of this book exactly what you put in it. If you read straight through and put it down, you will only scratch the suface of what this novel offers and intends. Though even this will eb an enjoyable experience. The more time you invest and the more you investigate, the richer the experiece will be, and in my opinion, the more fun you will have. Pale Fire is a beautiful and entrancing puzzle capable of almost infinite entertainment.

This book is a work of genius. Inasmuch as everyone has already said what I would have liked to say, I would like to note that there are several authors who have been heavily influenced by Nabokov and other writers of his ilk, whose books might be of interest to those who like Pale Fire. First and foremost, Stepan Chapman's The Troika has the same unique approach to narrative. Also the work of the author of the Dictionary of the Kazars, as well as some work by J.G. Ballard, and the work of the little-known author Jeff VanderMeer, whose Dradin, In Love recalls Nabokov's narrative flurries.

Regarding "Pale Fire":

A narrator, Charles Kinbote, who may or may not be a deposed king in hiding, proffers the reader an elliptical, line-by line commentary to an extraordinary 999 line poem, the centerpiece of the novel and itself entitled "Pale Fire", said to be authored by another character, the otherwise taciturn John Shade. Kinbote's lengthy commentary (he urges the reader to buy two copies of the book so that he may more easily refer to the poem while reading the annotations) concerns little of the actual poem but focuses instead upon an exotic northern nation, Zembla, and an evolving revolutionary conspiracy, both of which may or may not be anything more than the elaborate imaginings of his deranged mind. Meanwhile, almost disguised amongst a great variety of fantastical and artistic wanderings, one stumbles across the numerical and emotional centerpiece of the poem. These lines concern Shade's overweight teenage daughter who, rejected by a blind date, decides to go ice-walking and plunges forever into the freezing black depths of Lake Omega. Just after finishing his poem (which Kinbote fervently strains to interpret as Zemblan-inspired, but is more apparently an exquisitely prolonged biographical musing on the nature of life and death) Shade is murdered by a man who is either Gradus, an assassin attempting an ill-aimed regicide upon Kinbote, or an anonymous lunatic exacting revenge upon a judge, mistakenly thought to be Shade, who had sentenced him to a facility for the criminally insane.

Finally, in the last paragraphs, with this intricate narrative edifice on the verge of total collapse, Nabokov brutally rips down the literary proscenium, abruptly revealing his labyrinthine construct as the product of a "healthy, heterosexual, Russian professor" who muses upon his next move before signing off for good, but not before supplying us with an annotated Index.

The first lines of the poem read thusly:

"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane;

I was the smudge of ashen fluff--and I

Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.

And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate

Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:

Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass

Hang all the furniture above the grass,

And how delightful when a fall of snow

Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so

As to make chair and bed exactly stand

Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!"

Fascinating in and of itself, it is equally absorbing to speculate upon the numerous ripples of post-modernist thought Pale Fire might have generated within intellectual circles of the early sixties. For example, is it possible that Nabokov had an impact upon the visual arts? The sculptor Robert Smithson published a short piece entitled "The Crystal Land" in "Harper's Bazaar" in 1966. From another Smithson piece, written about the same time, comes the following excerpt:

"Each framework supports the reflections of a concatenated interior. The interior structure of the room surrounding the work is instantaneously undermined. The surfaces seem thrown back into the wall. "Space" is permuted into a multiplicity of directions. One becomes conscious of space attenuated in the form of elusive flat planes. The space is both crystalline and collapsible. In the rose piece the floor hovers over the ceiling. Vanishing points are deliberately inverted in order to increase one's awareness of total artifice."

Nabokov: The exquisite pleasures of the quadruple bank shot within a quadruple bank shot. The haunting impossibility of a single frame of reference, and the death of direct experience. But what a gorgeous thing he creates in their stead.

Spoilers throughout.

Pale Fire is Lolita's sister and artistic equal, and as such is one of the very best English novels of the 20th century. Both novels were created by Nabokov at the arrogant peak of his inventive and intellectual powers in the 1950`s and early sixties. Arrogant because he is the first to tell you that he thinks like a genius. More interestingly, he had unshakable ideas on what the art of literature is and heaped scorn on those whose different approach did not meet his standards: Faulkner, Dostoevsky, Mann, Eliot, Poe. On the other hand he was quite generous in his praise of those that with certain works met his criteria for real genius: Chateaubriand, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Joyce, Proust.

The inspiration for the structure of Pale Fire: Foreword, Poem, Commentary, Index: was born in Nabokov's 10 years of scholarly work (1954-64) translating Eugene Onegin into English. (Naturally, he used Onegin's commentary as a platform to rain fire on other translators, by-standing 18th and 19th century poets and writers, stupid readers and politicians. Still, he comes across as the most scholastic scholar that ever schooled.) Imitated since, this structure was first applied to the novel form by Nabokov. It is the artistic purpose of the structure that should be noted: it highlights the connections between different parts of the novel. Commentary makes connections within the Poem, Index makes connections within the Commentary. Pale Fire is a novel about connections, the links and bobolinks. I feel the Index replaces Nabokov's usual Introduction or Afterword to his novels, where he highlights the links between certain themes, like the Vanessa butterfly in this novel, that the reader may have missed.

The Poem is by Samuel Johnson look-alike John Shade, who is a stylized Nabokov. The poem is autobiographical, covering Shade's father and mother's death when he was a child, his surrogate mother's death, his love for his wife, the excruciating suicide of his only daughter and finally his own death. The pain of the earlier deaths are assuaged when Shade discovers a reasonable hope for an afterlife.

The Foreword and Commentary are by Charles Kinbote, piss-poor scholar, neighbor and lunatic. He also is a stylized Nabokov, borrowing his exile status and talent at writing prose. Although one crucial note regarding The Haunted Barn and The Nature of Electricity complement the theme of an afterlife, most of the commentary is on the surface about Kinbote's attempts to befriend Shade and have him weave Kinbote's fantasies into a poem. The fantasies are of the last Zemblan king: his youth; the death of his father, mother, friend Oleg; his impossible doomed marriage to Disa; his captivity after the Zemblan revolution; and his colorful escape to America. Another figment of Kinbote's imagination, the King's would be assassin, Gradus, is weaved in after the fact.

The poem and commentary unite in the non-existent Line 1000.

In The Art of Literature and Commonsense, Nabokov writes, "Lunatics are lunatics just because they have thoroughly and recklessly dismembered a familiar world but have not the power---or have lost the power---to create a new world as harmonious as the old." Was that the genesis of Kinbote? He is a lunatic and an artist, and ironically his artistry is sharpened by his madness. His created Zembla is a vivid and harmonious world. His powers are equal to Shade's (how could they not be?); so much so that the variants are indistinguishable from Shade and I believe lines 609-616 were created by Kinbote and inserted by him into the poem---I mean, if literary characters were real people and thereby capable of such behavior.

Lizst remarked that Shakespeare held up the mirror to Nature; Nabokov does the same, but his Nature is a great deceiver. Typically puns, charades, multiple languages, puzzles, unreliable narrators and a vocabulary beyond the usage of Mr. Parr, are his devices for deceit. Bombycilla, luciola, ingle, inenubilable---my word processor shows these all as misspelled. But there is an artistic method to it: Nabokov can hide his meaning in plain sight like a evolutionarily adapted bug. If you don't know French or are too incurious to heft a thick dictionary, you lose. Nowadays, even the laziest person can google, though, can't they? The copious allusions are another device that add to the themes while still keeping them secret (did you read Timon of Athens or Pope's disastrous Essay on Man?).

By his art, noticing the connections, Shade and I think Nabokov, hope to escape from Time, Chance and Death. This doomed attempt to see the world as "fantastically planned, richly rhymed" can make even a prickly, disagreeable fellow like Nabokov seem sympathetic. That humans can take two unrelated things and relate them as in an Eisensteinian montage, is simply a consequence of how human brains have evolved, not proof of a Grand Designer that is connecting the things for us to discover later. Anything can be endlessly redescribed, endlessly recontextualized, endlessly connected to other things. But this is a work of art, and even Kinbote's wild, idiosyncratic connections are planned and fit in with Shade's. Thus, concerning his own work, it is best to let the artist have the last word.

Afterthought #1. If the reader imagines the pretty, skipping deer as a child then The Nymph complaining for the death of her Faun becomes a poem of profound unbearable grief. I dont know how Sybil Shade could have made her way through it without a mental breakdown. Incidentally, it is the connection made in the note to Line 678 that introduced me to Andrew Marvell's genius.

Afterthought #2. Charles X telling Disa he did not love her was another extremely moving and sad part of the novel. Even Charles is haunted by something.

Nabokov's strength always lay in creating "mirror worlds" to our own; those mysterious counterparts in which resided our hopes, a little beauty, and danger.
His images are striking and evocative of the mirror world. It may not have been in this book, but I remember one image in particular: someone observes, from a bridge across a small pond in the park, a leaf falling into the crystal placid calm of the pond, rushing to meet its etheric double somewhere in between the two worlds of "real" and "mirror".
In "Pale Fire", Kinbote's land of Zembla is the mirror-world. And it isn't so much that this mirror world "exists" in the world, but that Nabokov makes it a part of our world through Shade's poem, Kinbote's fantastic stories, and in Kinbote's (our) yearning to find another world in books.
This is a brilliant explication of those forces which Nabokov saw in the literary world. Satisfyingly post-modern, hilariously contrived, and with a structure that seems to accomodate perfectly Nabokov's themes, "Pale Fire", I think, proves his old adage that, "Beauty plus pity, that is the closest definition we can have of art."
Post Script:
Some have suggested that Shade's daughter is the real focus of the story, by virtue of the fact that she is passed over, swallowed up. I don't know, but it just goes to show that any reading of this book will be a rewarding one. Keep it on your bedside table.

Pale Fire is, I think, a brilliant parody of Literary Criticism. However, it's barely a novel and it hardly warrants it's 200 pages, so I don't think it should make the list.
The structure of Pale Fire is unique. It contains a long poem by "John Shade" & then 200+ pages of commentary on the poem by "Charles Kinbote". Kinbote emerges as a complete lunatic over the course of his commentary, reading meanings into Shade's work that are obviously unsupportable.
Nabokov, thus, shows that critics bring such a subjective perspective to the works they critique, that they can hardly be considered an appropriate prism through which to view the original work. I heartily agree with the point, but it becomes somewhat labored when stretched to this length.
GRADE: B

This novel/poem works on so many levels it definitely requires more than one read. A friend once described reading James Joyce's ULYSSES like trying to juggle a hundred balls at once, you will never achieve that in one sitting, but with each reading your appreciation deepens. While Palefire may not contain one hundred balls to juggle, Nabokov has packed this work with enough angles and double and triple entendres to joyfully occupy readers on all levels. This book should occupy a unique place in twentieth century literature. It can be at once a hilarious comedy, a deeply troubling psychological tragedy, a historical thriller, and simply a work of lyrical and lingusitic beauty.
This ios the book that convinced me of Nabokov's genius. What he has accomplished is this: disguised a masterpiece as a frivolous, pompous, poorly written, often unorganized, almost schizophrenic teenage attempt at "great literature".
READER PLEASE DO NOT BE FOOLED. If you find yourself having any of these reactions to the book, the joke is on you, and Nabokov, I am sure, would have wanted that anyway.

An obsessive tour de force; the story of a "famous" poet's death, told by a narrator whose aspirations to literary critic lead him to narrate his own story through what is alllegedly an analysis of the poet's final work. The 999-line poem, an account of the dead poet's daughter's suicide (oh yes), dwindles in importance as the endnotes take over. By the end it stops figuring in the notes altogether.

Our narrator's derangement gets clearer as the book goes on. Parodying critical glosses (especially Norton's, which are so pedantic and sometimes so bizarre), the "critic's" notes stray farther and farther from the poem. At one point the word "often" in the poem is glossed, at the end, with a lengthy account of the critic's youth, beginning "Often, when I was young...."

Amazing language. The poem is pleasantly awful. A surprisingly quick read. Overall, an utterly bizarre and wonderful journey; this books has the kind of structure that can only be done once. It's original in the way "Being John Malkovich" is original. Wonderful, twisted, complete with a cat wearing a bowtie.

Nabokov, that Grand Master, has constructed an elaborate puzzle here.
Chess as a metaphor for life itself. Black and white: black letters on a white page, moieties, the two players that mirror each other like lovers caught up in an almost infinite game of possibilities and permutations, the two parts of the text itself and the syzygy of sun and moon.
But as one reads and rereads the novel, immersing oneself in the substance of the text one realizes that at heart Pale Fire is about the transmutation of grey. The grey of shades, shadows, indeterminate hues (hazel!), fumbled moves, grades and degrees, obfuscation and hesitation is gloriously transformed into the texture of life itself.
And as the game begins and the players cross the invisible line of the mirror and make incursions into foreign territory or surround each others pieces in ever-changing arabesques, the two-dimensional black/white grid morphs into a three-dimensional matrix with interstitial spaces and other facets reclaiming their position in the light. Gray is now about resonance and reflection, refraction and submersion, give and take. Text is now enmeshed in texture, the syzygy of sun and moon is now immersed in the waters of the ocean.

A key feature of this book is its unconventional construction, which I hesitate to discuss so that it may unfold as intended before the new reader. Those who have been taken by other Nabokov creations will cheer as the story skips off down a wacky road, gathers speed, and gallops with full imaginative dementia. As always, Nabokov's use of language is stunning.

Jump right in. Don't read the other reviews, don't read the jacket cover - if you do, you lose the sense of discovery inherent in this book. See, Nabokov is a nut, and it takes a good 100 pages before you even realize this thing is a novel, who the characters are, and where it's going. And when you do, the jokes get funnier, and you want to go back to read the first half again. This is great later Nabokov.

A key feature of this book is its unconventional construction, which I hesitate to discuss so that it may unfold as intended before the new reader. Those who have been taken by other Nabokov creations will cheer as the story skips off down a wacky road, gathers speed, and gallops with full imaginative dementia. As always, Nabokov's use of language is stunning.

Jump right in. Don't read the other reviews, don't read the jacket cover - if you do, you lose the sense of discovery inherent in this book. See, Nabokov is a nut, and it takes a good 100 pages before you even realize this thing is a novel, who the characters are, and where it's going. And when you do, the jokes get funnier, and you want to go back to read the first half again. This is great later Nabokov.

Reclusive American poet John Shade composes a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire" and finishes it on the day of his death. One of his fellow professors at Wordsmith University, Dr. Charles Kinbote, is given the poem in rough draft form by Shade just minutes before his death and decides to publish it.
What follows is the story of the poem, but told in a unique fashion. The foreward and commentary to the poem are told by Dr. Kinbote, who idolizes Shade. He's a bit disappointed, though, because he was trying to direct Shade's thoughts, to have him write about his homeland of Zembla; instead, Shade took the poem in a different direction. Kinbote's commentary is filled with his attempts to sway Shade with stories of King Charles II of Zembla's exile, of his preference for young men, his own interpretations of what Shade must have been thinking when writing the lines, and as the reader soon discovers, Kinbote's own secret truth about King Charles.
It's an interesting study into idol-worship (Kinbote's for Shade) and has some political intrigue thrown in to make it interesting and told in a unique way.

For a metaphor: 'Pale Fire' is a sea-bed - almost invisible, the wonders it witholds are glimpsed only through the parting of the frenzied seas, when a light of sanity can pervade the diffraction provided by the watery madness. Interesting comparisons might be made with Faulkner's 'The Sound and the Fury'.

1. Do not read the introduction. 2. Stick with this book to the end at all costs, like I did. A good friend said it was a great book and I stayed with it. 3. If you are confused and unsure when reading this, your discomfort will be rewarded 100-fold. 4. Consider that Engish was Nabokov's second (or third language)and be awed by the prose. 5. Resist whatever temptation you have for reading reviews that even begin to suggest what this story is about. Please don't do it. I urge you. Read the reviews only after you read the book. A completely naked take on this book was in the end what made it most gratifying for me.

This is the greatest novel of the 20th Century: in the same way that Last Year at Marienbad is the greatest film. It is as superior to Ulysses as Marienbad is superior to Citizen Kane. It cannot be accidental that both artworks, book and film, were produced at almost the same point in time, circa 1961-63. Commentary is superfluous. If you don't agree with what I've said so far, I'm not going to attempt to convince you. Some things just are.

Me ha encantado el comentario de "A reader from Switzerland and Cagnes-sur-Mer, France", y estoy de acuerdo con él en todo, además su exposición me parece muy clra y lúcida. Por mi parte, espero que escribir en español no sea un impedimento para enviar un comentario. Todo lo de Nabokov me gusta muchísimo y lo único que lamento es no poseer los suficientes conocimientos de inglés como pra poder leer fluidamente a un escritor cuya prosa es tan complicada. Lo que sií me gustaría es poder comparar el original inglés del poema "Pálido fuego" con la traducción al español que tengo. ¿Habría alguien tan amable que me lo enviara? Un saludo muy cordial a todos los nabokovianos
Estrella

A story within a story, a madman reworking and annotating another's poetry and attributing minute details as if they were secret references of his life. How perfect a story Nabokov has written. A jewel of a book.

This is one of the most amazing works of literature of all time. It is both a parody and a work of amazing intricacy and depth. It stands in a category all its own. The 999-line poem upon which the book is supposedly based is a great piece of literature all by itself. Don't skip over it! There are belly laughs interspersed throughout the book. I wish Pale Fire had been on the reading list in one of my college lit courses to provide some comic relief.

Brilliant book that pushes the boundaries of what fiction can be. So refreshing in the face of so many formulaic, hackneyed plot structures. You may not like this book, but its importance is undeniable.