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Pale Fire

4.21 of 5 stars 4.21 · rating details · 15,848 ratings · 1,026 reviews

In Pale Fire, Nabokov offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures: a 999-line poem by the reclusive genius John Shade; an adoring foreword and commentary by Shade’s self-styled Boswell, Dr. Charles Kinbote; a darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry, one-upmanship, and political intrigue.

“This centaur work, half poem, half prose…is a creation of perfect beauty, sym

...more

Paperback, 272 pages

Published May 1st 2010 by Penguin Books, Limited (UK) (first published 1962)

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Mar 28, 2013 Manny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: well-i-think-its-funny, parody-homage, why-not-call-it-poetry, story-review

I¹ liked² this book³, especially the poem⁴.
____________________________________

¹ When I use the first-person singular pronoun, I am here referring to my normal persona. I have also, at various times, maintained other personas. For example, between 1999 and 2001, I used to play chess regularly on the KasparovChess site under the handle "swedish_chick".

The rest of this review is in my book What Pooh Might Have Said to Dante and Other Futile Speculations

90 likes · like · see review

Jan 25, 2013 s.penkevich rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to s.penkevich by: Scott

Shelves: innovative, parody

I. Foreword

With deepest sorrows, I regret to inform everyone to the death of fellow Goodreads reviewer, and my dear friend, s.penkevich. While he may have departed, I, Vincent Kephes, have taken upon myself the burden of collecting his notes and the half-finished reviews that he left behind in order to bestow them upon you all. I am certain beyond the shadow of a doubt that, having been close with s., this is in keeping with his wishes, and although they were never overtly expressed, I knew from...more

92 likes · like · see review

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Aubrey Stephen M wrote: "I need a time traveling device!

I was just thinking that this morning. I wish I could freeze time so I could actually get a decent ni...more
Feb 04, 2013 10:52am

s.penkevich Stephen M wrote: "I need a time traveling device!

I was just thinking that this morning. I wish I could freeze time so I could actually get a decent ni...more
Feb 04, 2013 11:57am

Sep 11, 2011 Mariel rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: a hand

Recommended to Mariel by: a foot

Now I shall spy on beauty as none as Spied on it yet.

I read Pale Fire under the bed. I didn't roll around in the sheets and get sweaty and come at the same time like all of the sex scenes on HBO tv shows. I hid under the bed and I didn't look first to see who the bed belonged to. So long as it wasn't mine... Another sweaty body did the dirty on top and I could feel the springs pushing into my back down below. Paranoid body on top and apprehensively hopeful body below. Just below, me. Jealous wiv...more

32 likes · like · see review

Nov 02, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels, borscht-and-kvass, tortured-artists, penguin-classics

Pale Fire presents a 999-line poem from murdered poet John Shade, followed by an unreliable commentary (and earlier intro) from his stalker and apparent chum Charles Kimbote. The commentator takes an arch tone to his union with shade, exaggerating and distorting his position in the poet’s life, and uses the space to expand on the history of his homeland Zembla in lieu of discussing the poem’s content. Upon a first reading I found the book something of an extended academic titterfest, albeit lard...more

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Jun 11, 2009 Zulieka rated it 5 of 5 stars

Whoop-dee-doo, five stars to Mr. Nabokov. Do you also feel silly clicking on the ratings? You throw gold stars into Pale Fire and the vanity of star-ratings is exposed.

We here are a community trying to reclaim our authority over writers who for pages have manipulated our thoughts and beings. Generals get stars, good students too, and my 2-year-old every time she uses the potty. Only the higher-ups get to hand them out, but c'mmon, is there a higher-up for Nabokov? Whoever can, hand him a real s...more

46 likes · like · see review

Aug 17, 2007 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

I loved this, especially as my copy of the book seemed to operate on a meta-meta-meta-meta-level.

The book initially appears to be an unfinished poem, 'Pale Fire', by a dead writer named John Shade, together with a foreword, detailed commentary and index by a friend of his, Charles Kinbote.

But Kinbote is less interested in the poem than he is in discussing the country of 'Zembla' and its flamboyantly gay, deposed King. It's more or less apparent, as the book progresses, that Kinbote is EITHER a)...more

40 likes · like · see review

Feb 26, 2013 Bettie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: winter-20122013, tbr-busting-2013, dodgy-narrator, poetry, published-1962, amusing, satire

Half poem, half prose.

Read by Marc Vietor & Robert Blumenfeld

Blubs: (view spoiler)...more

Half poem, half prose.

Read by Marc Vietor & Robert Blumenfeld

Blubs: (view spoiler)[Like Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire is a masterpiece that imprisons us inside the mazelike head of a mad émigré. Yet Pale Fire is more outrageously hilarious, and its narrative convolutions make the earlier book seem as straightforward as a fairy tale. Here's the plot--listen carefully! John Shade is a homebody poet in New Wye, U.S.A. He writes a 999-line poem about his life, and what may lie beyond death. This novel (and seldom has the word seemed so woefully inadequate) consists of both that poem and an extensive commentary on it by the poet's crazy neighbor, Charles Kinbote.

According to this deranged annotator, he had urged Shade to write about his own homeland--the northern kingdom of Zembla. It soon becomes clear that this fabulous locale may well be a figment of Kinbote's colorfully cracked, prismatic imagination. Meanwhile, he manages to twist the poem into an account of Zembla's King Charles--whom he believes himself to be--and the monarch's eventual assassination by the revolutionary Jakob Gradus.

In the course of this dizzying narrative, shots are indeed fired. Butt it's Shade who takes the hit, enabling Kinbote to steal the dead poet's manuscript and set about annotating it. Is that perfectly clear? By now it should be obvious that Pale Fire is not only a whodunit but a who-wrote-it. There isn't, of course, a single solution. But Nabokov's best biographer, Brian Boyd, has come up with an ingenious suggestion: he argues that Shade is actually guiding Kinbote's mad hand from beyond the grave, nudging him into completing what he'd intended to be a 1,000-line poem. Read this magical, melancholic mystery and see if you agree. --Tim Appelo

"This centaur work, half-poem, half-prose . . . is a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth. Pretending to be a curio, it cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the great works of art of this century." --Mary McCarthy

About the Author

In his afterword to Lolita he claimed: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses, the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions, which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way."

In another essay he explained?: “Teachers of Literature are apt to think up such problems as ‘What is the author’s purpose?’ or still worse ‘What is the guy trying to say?’ Now, I happen to be the kind of author who in starting to work on a book has no other purpose than to get rid of that book and who, when asked to explain its origin and growth, has to rely on such ancient terms as Interreaction of Inspiration and Combination – which, I admit, sounds like a conjurer explaining one trick by performing another.” (hide spoiler)]

Pale Fire is a 999 line poem in four cantos.

#58 TBR Busting 2013

Gently poking literary snobbishness.

FMI: find the written word - audio just doesn't do it justice.(less)

8 likes · like · see review

Mar 21, 2009 John rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009, russians

Pale Fire is ostentatious, high octane genius, almost as if Nabokov were trying to squeeze a complete showcase of his novelistic virtuosity in just over 200 pages of text (an epic poem within a story within a larger story, all of which may very well be the complete fabrication of the annotator/narrator, who is quite convincingly insane). Among other things, this is a portrait of insanity and perversity on par with Lolita, but with more literary/metaliterary pyrotechnics.

14 likes · like · see review

Aug 25, 2007 David Rim rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: smarter people than me

There really isn't any other word to describe "Pale Fire" other than brilliant. How else can you describe a novel whose story takes place almost entirely outside its own text?

In the end, I can't decide whether I'm supposed to even like the poem, which I did. I can't decide whether Nabokov even wanted me to consider this a great work of fiction or whether this is a bitter satire of readers and critics? Should I be offended? Or do I detect a hint of self-disgust? Should I laugh at Charles Kinbote...more

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Jan 26, 2009 Nikki Nielsen rated it 5 of 5 stars

After reading 'John Shade' for a time, I
Can not help but think in rhyme. Gray
Cat sits on a sunken chair; Full of
Spite and covr'd with mangy hair.

Was that the phone? I listen at the door.
Pause. Nothing. I resume vaccuming
Once more. And there's the wall of
Sound, that nightly wall. Frogs
Croak, the 'Yotes howl and frighten all.

What torture and yet splendid pain, Nabokov
Has inflicted on my brain! Ludricous,
I say; that I am pleased. When he's
left me feeling used and thor'ghly teased.

20 likes · like · see review

Feb 09, 2012 Conor rated it 5 of 5 stars

I couldn't write, or didn't want to write, a review after reading this. I think a couple of years on, a couple of cloth-bound versions given away to lovers as gifts, and I'm ready.

The first thing that should be noted for anyone approaching this book is that it's a commentary on editing and a novel with extremely odd form. If you're not down for that, or you don't like the idea of reading a poem, then stay away.

That said, it's still jaw droppingly amazing what this book is. It shouldn't be, but i...more I couldn't write, or didn't want to write, a review after reading this. I think a couple of years on, a couple of cloth-bound versions given away to lovers as gifts, and I'm ready.

The first thing that should be noted for anyone approaching this book is that it's a commentary on editing and a novel with extremely odd form. If you're not down for that, or you don't like the idea of reading a poem, then stay away.

That said, it's still jaw droppingly amazing what this book is. It shouldn't be, but it is. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's "original" in its style and content, and extremely well done at that.

"Original" might not sound exciting, but if you've read a lot of books, the ones that stand apart are something special. Even if you've only read text books, a radical departure in style from them (Like reading Hawking's more conversational books)leaves a mark.

As much as there are many books that mess with formatting, there are still many that just ape something else; THIS being the "why" of why (whenever I finish it and its author) I will have reviewed Tristram Shandy (1759) on here so well, and House of Leaves (2000) so poorly...there are still ways in which someone can make their own version of the novel - not just mess with formatting, as Sterne does so well and Danielewski apes so poorly, but incorporate elements of a text that are more than just the text. Elements that drive into the nature of presenting a work of fiction to people. Not just changing the format, but changing how we read the text in such a way that we have to think differently to understand it.

THIS is the primary reason I am so willing to delve into the very limited and very marginal genres of hypertext or interactive fiction. THIS is the reason that I am currently so enjoying the text of Life: A User's Manual. THIS is the reason that Italio Calvio considered that book an event in this history of the novel.

"THIS" being nothing more exciting sounding than something, anything really, that is truly "original" from a writer. Something that, one might argue, is what we expect from novelist, but also something that we rarely actually receive.(less)

8 likes · like · see review

Oct 13, 2011 Michael William West rated it 4 of 5 stars

Aside from all the strange meta-business in here, it's very, very difficult to not admire a novel that is about a fictional poet who has written (fictionally) one of the greatest masterpieces of modernist poetry, and then to produce that poem right in the middle of the book. It absolutely sends you spinning when you realise that the poem MAY NOT necessarily even be as good as you are told it is, that the whole context surrounding it is enough to warp your opinion, and then on returning to it, yo...more

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Jun 22, 2009 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As intricate, beautiful, and generous as a Cornell box, one of imaginative literature's high-water-marks.

3 likes · like · see review

Feb 14, 2009 James rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, current-reread

Reading used to be simpler. One just had to find a comfortable chair, turn on a good reading light, open the book and read. Now reading has become a project or rather, in my case, two projects.

First, I am reading The Guide of the Perplexed by Moses Maimonides (see separate review at The Guide of the Perplexed).
Second, one might think that reading a short twentieth-century poem with four cantos consisting of less than one thousand lines of verse might be a little easier. But, no.
This is Pale F...more

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Jun 27, 2008 Dusty Myers rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A novel in the form of a work of criticism. After the death of the renowned poet John Shade, his neighbor and colleague Charles Kinbote gets hold of the 999-line autobiographical poem he'd been writing; what we read are Kinbote's foreword to Shade's poem, the poem itself, and then more than 150 pages of Kinbote's commentary on the poem. Oh, and an index. What makes the text readable like a novel (and ultimately what saves Pale Fire from being merely a fun exercise in pomo intertextualities) is t...more A novel in the form of a work of criticism. After the death of the renowned poet John Shade, his neighbor and colleague Charles Kinbote gets hold of the 999-line autobiographical poem he'd been writing; what we read are Kinbote's foreword to Shade's poem, the poem itself, and then more than 150 pages of Kinbote's commentary on the poem. Oh, and an index. What makes the text readable like a novel (and ultimately what saves Pale Fire from being merely a fun exercise in pomo intertextualities) is that Kinbote for one reason or another is convinced that Shade's poem is a narrative of his (Kinbote's) motherland, Zembla—specifically its recent tragic revolution.

This is where most of the book's comedy comes from. Line 12 contains the phrase "that crystal land" and Kinbote makes a note here that begins "Perhaps an allusion to Zembla, my dear country," though of course nothing in the line or those surrounding it appears to make any reference of the sort. In a note about Shade's use of winter imagery, he writes: "One is too modest to suppose that the fact that the poet and his future commentator first met on a winter day somehow impinges here on the actual season." (This sentence shows up in the index, under Kinbote, Charles, Dr.; "his modesty".)

Pale Fire is probably the best novel I've read all year, except maybe for one, which was a reread, which was Lolita, so it goes without saying that I need more Nabokov in my future. He's so incredibly good at exposing villainy and heroism as false, elusive things we try in vain to hold onto as readers. See his treatment of Humbert Humbert in Lolita (alluded to here and there in PF, along with Pnin), and see here his treatment of Kinbote. It's clear from the start that Kinbote is perhaps the worst person possible to edit Shade's final poem—his reading of the text is self-serving and flat-out ridiculous at parts. But by the end of the book he becomes the best and most perfect commentator for it, with his reading lifting what is otherwise a plain and sometimes boring poem (written in rhyming heroic couplets) up to something much more strange and so much more beautiful.(less)

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Dec 04, 2007 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Pale Fire is one the funniest books I have ever read. The book is structured as a foreword, a poem, commentary, and an index. I personally don't like poetry very much, but the poem was so bad that I'm pretty sure Nabokov was making fun of poetry and poetry analysis in general. As I started reading more of the "commentary" it seemed pretty clear that it really had very little to do with the poem, although each paragraph or couple of pages were supposed to refer back to a certain set of lines. Ins...more Pale Fire is one the funniest books I have ever read. The book is structured as a foreword, a poem, commentary, and an index. I personally don't like poetry very much, but the poem was so bad that I'm pretty sure Nabokov was making fun of poetry and poetry analysis in general. As I started reading more of the "commentary" it seemed pretty clear that it really had very little to do with the poem, although each paragraph or couple of pages were supposed to refer back to a certain set of lines. Instead what the reader gets is the story of the analyzer, Charles Kinbote...neighbor of John Shade, the author of the poem. From the very beginning, during the foreword, we know that Shade has died and that Kinbote has taken it upon himself to publish the 1000 line poem. Throughout the commentary we learn about Kinbote's country of birth (somewhere near Russia) where he was allegedly a king, but was exiled or is in hiding in the United States. We also learn about his short friendship with John Shade (and his intense dislike of Shade's wife Sybil) and how he tried to supply Shade with material by telling him stories of Zembla, his homeland. However, Kinbote is extremely disappointed when he reads the final draft of the poem realizing that Shade has "cut out" most of anything having to do with Zembla. However, Kinbote is still obsessed with publishing the poem, and adding his commentary so the reader can understand what "important" aspects were removed.

To the reader, it seems pretty clear that Kinbote and John Shade were not best friends. The more likely scenario is that Kinbote was a bit of a nosy neighbor who perhaps admired John, but that the admiration was not mutual. Kinbote seems tolerated at best, a bit of a nuisance. Also, all of the talk about being a former beloved king in a faraway country leads one to believe that Kinbote might not just be annoying, but possibly crazy. So you get a parody of poetry analysis, a story of a lopsided friendship, and even a bit of a mystery. Highly recommended.(less)

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Jan 10, 2013 Jeremy added it

Shelves: american-fiction

I'm honestly not sure what to make of this. Kind of like with Lolita, I felt that this was part of some weird, larger Nabakovian mystery that I'm not sure I can get at. I love the recursive way the commentary and the poetry bled into and through each other and how brilliant and teasingly written they both are (is there any style of writing Nabakov can't hijack brilliantly?) and how kinbotes manic, campy style basically hijacks everything through his own ego (maybe his own psychosis too, dependin...more

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Jun 28, 2008 Ellen Young rated it 5 of 5 stars

A perfect book in every way, and absolutely hilarious. I rarely laugh out loud when reading, but I laughed out loud most of the way through this. I was amazed at the audacity of the writing as well as delighted by the constant puns and jokes. What skill it took to pull this off. This is no ordinary novel, and it could have gone so wrong, or remained an interesting experiment worthy of reading just for the sake of paying homage to a popular writer of his time. But this is so much more. Nabokov go...more

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Jun 02, 2012 flannery rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

I've been so daunted by this book for so long but I love it so much. No one told me it was actually A TRANSCONTINENTAL MURDER MYSTERY featuring REGICIDE! one of my favorite literary tropes. And I forget, when I'm psyching myself out on reading serious books by canonical authors, how funny Vladimir Nabokov can be. Footnote to the word "often" in line 62 begins: "Often, almost nightly, throughout the spring of 1959 I had feared for my life", which for me matches the opening to Joseph Heller's "Som...more

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Jan 15, 2012 Soo rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

It is poetry? Insanity? A novel from start to finish? It's more like a journal that takes place in snippets of time but you have to pay attention to figure out if the snippet is real, imagined or a mix of the two. The book is an interesting stream of consciousness of a quixotically, delusional man named Charles Kinbote aka several other figures within that you should figure out for yourself.

There are brilliant lines and phrases in the story that create vivid imagery and instant emotional resona...more

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Jan 31, 2011 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

It took me two months to get through this book. I finally had to finish it because I had exceeded my limit for renewing it at the library. "Pale Fire" took me a long time to read because I could only read it when I wasn't tired, when I wasn't in the middle of a project and when I wasn't distracted. It required my full attention just to follow what was going on.

It's funny that I read this book when I did. I have been reading books on literary theory and how a conventional novel should be structur...more

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Sep 07, 2011 Laura Leaney rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I admit that I don't feel smart enough to write a proper review of Nabokov's book, but I'm unashamed at my lack of brains; like a "waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane," said brains have been dashed against the pages of an unbelievably slippery and amusing book that defies any genre I know.

"Pale Fire" is the name of a 999-line poem in four cantos by the famous poet John Shade (a creation of Nabokov). After Shade's death, Charles Kinbote (also fictitious) absconds to a cabin in t...more I admit that I don't feel smart enough to write a proper review of Nabokov's book, but I'm unashamed at my lack of brains; like a "waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane," said brains have been dashed against the pages of an unbelievably slippery and amusing book that defies any genre I know.

"Pale Fire" is the name of a 999-line poem in four cantos by the famous poet John Shade (a creation of Nabokov). After Shade's death, Charles Kinbote (also fictitious) absconds to a cabin in the Rockies with the manuscript of "Pale Fire" in order to edit and write the notes that are needed to understand the poem. Kinbote writes: "Let me state that without my notes Shade's text simply has no human reality at all since the human reality of such a poem as his (being too skittish and reticent for an autobiographical work), with the omission of many pithy lines carelessly rejected by him, has to depend entirely on the reality of its author and his surroundings, attachments and so forth, a reality that only my notes can provide." He adds: "for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word." Ah, so stupidly true AND so funny. The poem is the thing - and although I laughed at some of the lines, John Shade's poem is strangely beautiful. But, most of the book is comprised of Kinbote's commentary - which he says we can read after the we read the poem, or we can study them before we read the poem, or we can use the notes side-by-side with our reading of the poem. Our choice. The whole thing seems to me to be a stab at literary criticism, literary life, writing, reading, or/and anything related to any of that.

Kinbote forces the poem to be about him - is he really some kind of royal exile from the European country of Zembla? Did I get that right? It's possible for Shade's poem to be about him (Kinbote) because he misreads lines, finds allusions that cannot possibly exist, misses the obvious allusions, and misinterprets (or DOES he?) the meaning of the poem. I love it when he includes the phrase "unless I'm greatly mistaken" in his commentary, because we know he IS mistaken. Ye gods, he is mistaken, right? Arghhhh.

Charles Kinbote is a comic dream. In his notes, he writes down a conversation he once had with the famous poet: "A suggestion," I said, quivering. "I have at my place half a gallon of Tokay. I'm ready to share my favorite wine with my favorite poet. We shall have for dinner a knackle of walnuts, a couple of large tomatoes, and a bunch of bananas." I'm sorry........a "knackle" of walnuts? I almost choked on my sandwich when I read it. I don't know why it's so funny. It just is.

I'll have to read this again in order to understand it completely, but for now it gets 4 stars for wit and hilarity.
(less)

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May 03, 2009 Mark Desrosiers rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

On the one hand, I agree with D.J. Enright, who called this sort of thing "farting a tune through a keyhole" -- very clever, but is it worth the effort? I only "got" about a third of the trilingual puns and paleo-Baltic in-jokes -- and I'm certain I have no idea which unreliable narrator hiding behind which curtain is the "real" author of this work -- I still grooved on Vlad's trickster erudition and cinematic (or rather GIS) eye for space and place.

Is it worth all the effort? No, probably not....more

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Aug 21, 2008 Ryan rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is the third Nabokov book I've read (the Defense and Lolita being the others) and maybe because of it's formal inventiveness, the remark I've seen about hearing the clatter of surgical tools in Nabokov's prose seemed more apt here. And compare that metaphor with Nabokov's own description of Dickens in 'Lec on Lit' -

"All we have to do when reading Bleak House is relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between our shoulder blades. T...more This is the third Nabokov book I've read (the Defense and Lolita being the others) and maybe because of it's formal inventiveness, the remark I've seen about hearing the clatter of surgical tools in Nabokov's prose seemed more apt here. And compare that metaphor with Nabokov's own description of Dickens in 'Lec on Lit' -

"All we have to do when reading Bleak House is relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between our shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and it's tingle."

If only PF were that easy to enjoy. It has undeniable pleasures, mostly in the form of Kinbote, an extremely funny creation, mostly because of his complete pompous self-delusion. Nabokov's hatred of all things Freudian comes through in an especially funny note. And never has diarrhea been described so high-falutin'. But it was a very difficult book for me, requiring constant jumping back and forth and a dictionary within arm's length.

I wish I could give this book 3.5 stars, because ultimately I 'really like' what it's trying to, but I only 'like' what it does.

So what do I think of it? It's can be a hilarious send-up of any literary commentary, a sort of inversion where the commentator takes credit for everything the poet himself has done. But the greatness of this book, I think, lies in the questions you find yourself constantly asking about the point of view. Like Lolita, this book is a masterwork of the unreliable narrator. I don't buy the 'Kinbotean' or 'Shadean' points of view about what's actually going on here. Bryan Boyd notwithstanding, I believe the theory that this book is really the ravings of the mad Russian professor - Botkin - who's only hinted at in the book. Mostly because that sounds more like what Nabokov would write.

But I can't escape the annoyance of dealing with Nabokov and his puzzles. I just feel as if I'm on some type of literary game show with revealing doors and oblique clues that only the most anal retentive would remember and piece together. Literature is in some senses the art of manipulation, but with Nabokov, the feeling of manipulation is much stronger than most. And ultimately, that takes away from that "spinal" enjoyment that Nabokov seems to respect so much in Dickens, and which I find to be the best part about great literature.(less)

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Mar 01, 2010 Matt Evans rated it 5 of 5 stars

1/2010: I think I'm converted to the Rothian interpretation of PF in light of RLS's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." In this interpretation, Shade, Kinbote and Gradus are all the same person; rather, each is a different personality residing in the same body. However, the novel is still populated with 'real' people -- i.e., people other than the diffracted personalities. I'm still mulling this over, though; but I'm open to it.

The author's son, Dmitri, singled out this novel as his favorite (of all time...more 1/2010: I think I'm converted to the Rothian interpretation of PF in light of RLS's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." In this interpretation, Shade, Kinbote and Gradus are all the same person; rather, each is a different personality residing in the same body. However, the novel is still populated with 'real' people -- i.e., people other than the diffracted personalities. I'm still mulling this over, though; but I'm open to it.

The author's son, Dmitri, singled out this novel as his favorite (of all time). This is actually two books in one: the poem, "Pale Fire," written by John Shade, and the commentary to the poem, written by one Charles Kinbote, who may or may not also be the exiled King Charles of Nova Zembla.

Here's the plot: John Shade was shot dead, through the heart, by a mad man on the day that he finished his poem, "Pale Fire," which consists of 999 lines of heroic couplets (do the math), in iambic pentameter. Charles, a "heterosexual man of action" (Charles actually used this term to describe an acquaintance of his), was present when Shade got shot. Thinking quickly, Kinbote took the poet's roughdraft and hid it away; he subsequently wrote the commentary to the poem -- without which commentary we wouldn't have the poem at all. Here's the problem: the commentary barely has anything to do with the poem itself; instead, it consists of increasingly flimsy references to the poem itself and serves instead as a platform for Kinbote to talk about his (very swishy, frequently hilarious) life in Nova Zembla.

The novel, rather Kinbote's commentary to same, may also manifest influences from Shade and his daughter, Hazel, both dead, both of whom express themselves by influencing Kinbote's very thoughts, probably by means of sympathetic vibration; e.g., a phenomenon whereby one string, unstruck, vibrates when its neighbor is plucked, so to speak.

Joshua Ferris (author of "And Then We Came To An End"), who named "Pale Fire" as his #2 "Most Influential Novel in last week's Newsweek (8/30/08), had this to say about the novel:

"Is it such a crime for a lonely bachelor to install two Ping-Pong tables in his basement?" (http://www.newsweek.com/id/156367/out...)

A rather plaintive little question, no? Indeed.

In conclusion, I leave you the first stanza of "Pale Fire", quoted wholly without permission:

"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain,
By the false azure in the window pane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff -- and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky."
(less)

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Apr 07, 2008 Dfordoom rated it 4 of 5 stars

Pale Fire takes the form of a long poem, supposedly written by a respected recently deceased American poet called John Shade, and an even longer commentary on the poem. The commentary is supposedly written by Dr Charles Kinbote, a neighbour and a close friend of the poet in the last part of his life. Kinbote is an exile from Zembla, a mythical Scandinavian country whose king is on the run after being deposed in a revolution. Kinbote tells the story of this exiled king to the poet, and believes t...more

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Mar 03, 2008 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

I adore books that change and grow as you read and reread them. Nabokov's Pale Fire definitely fits the bill. This novel really exemplifies the excessive amount of freedom within Nabokov's creative process - it is boundless, performative and very much alive. It's almost as if Nabokov makes his very own strict set of literary rules and then turns right around and breaks them for no other reason then purely enjoying smashing boundaries into infinite pieces and reworking them into a unique masterpi...more

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Dec 16, 2008 Jason Jefferies rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have read every Nabokov novel besides his last, but Pale Fire still remains my favorite, as it continues to cast its shadow on everything I write myself (perhaps too strong of a shadow...). In a close run for second is "Ada or Ardor", followed by "Invitation to a Beheading", and perhaps "The Defense".

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May 20, 2010 Mara rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

(Not a real review, mind you, for I am still staggering, just:
1. How did I not know VN was FUNNY?
2. One suspects all literary critics and annotators are apophenic.
3. There is joy in having to look up words, and more joy when those words seem to have been used only by VN in the last fifty years.. Inenubilable!
4. I am getting better at books that take three bookmarks to read for the flipping back and forth. And I opened Baker's Mezzanine tonight to thrill to the sight of all of the footnotes my he...more

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Apr 21, 2008 Joseph rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who like the insane critiques of fictional poets

Recommended to Joseph by: Matt B.

Shelves: ok-reads

This was recommended by a co-worker who suggested I check it out. All I can say is that the poem was good. I enjoyed it and it flowed nicely. The Charles Kinbote portion following the poem reads like a critique with strange undertones of insanity. If that's what Nabokov was going for, cool, but reading fictional notes on a poem by a fictional character is not really my thing. Of course, reading notes on what some critic thinks of an artist's work doesn't thrill me either. Perhaps Nabokov was pok...more

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About Vladimir Nabokov

Russian: Владимир Владимирович Набоков

Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist. He also made significant contributions to lepidoptery and had an interest in chess problems.

Nabokov's Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as his most important novel, and is at any rate his most widely known one, exhibiting the love of intrica...more

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“Dear Jesus, do something.” — 151 people liked it

“All colors made me happy: even gray.
My eyes were such that literally they
Took photographs. ” — 111 people liked it

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