Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery

by Brian Boyd

Pale Fire is regarded by many as Vladimir Nabokov's masterpiece. The novel has been hailed as one of the most striking early examples of postmodernism and has become a famous test case for theories about reading because of the apparent impossibility of deciding between several radically different interpretations. Does the book have two narrators, as it first appears, or one? How much is fantasy and how much is reality? Whose fantasy and whose reality are they? Brian Boyd, Nabokov's biographer and hitherto the foremost proponent of the idea that Pale Fire has one narrator, John Shade, now rejects this position and presents a new and startlingly different solution that will permanently shift the nature of critical debate on the novel. Boyd argues that the book does indeed have two narrators, Shade and Charles Kinbote, but reveals that Kinbote had some strange and highly surprising help in writing his sections. In light of this interpretation, Pale Fire now looks distinctly less postmodern--and more interesting than ever.


In presenting his arguments, Boyd shows how Nabokov designed Pale Fire for readers to make surprising discoveries on a first reading and even more surprising discoveries on subsequent readings by following carefully prepared clues within the novel. Boyd leads the reader step-by-step through the book, gradually revealing the profound relationship between Nabokov's ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, and metaphysics. If Nabokov has generously planned the novel to be accessible on a first reading and yet to incorporate successive vistas of surprise, Boyd argues, it is because he thinks a deep generosity lies behind the inexhaustibility, complexity, and mystery of the world. Boyd also shows how Nabokov's interest in discovery springs in part from his work as a scientist and scholar, and draws comparisons between the processes of readerly and scientific discovery.


This is a profound, provocative, and compelling reinterpretation of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.

Genres: Nonfiction, Criticism, Art, Literary Criticism, Literature, Russia

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Brian David Boyd is a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Auckland and a preeminent scholar best known for his definitive work on Vladimir Nabokov. After earning his PhD from the University of Toronto, Boyd was invited by Véra Nabokov to catalogue her husband's archives, leading to his award-winning, two-volume biography, The Russian Years and The American Years. His scholarship on Nabokov remains prolific, encompassing numerous edited volumes, verse translations, and the digital project AdaOnline. Beyond his expertise in Russian literature, Boyd is a pioneer in the field of "biopoetics," exploring the intersections of literature, evolution, and cognition. His landmark book, On the Origin of Stories, argues that storytelling is a biological adaptation rooted in play, applying evolutionary criticism to works ranging from Homer to Dr. Seuss. A versatile intellectual, he has also tackled the biography of philosopher Karl Popper and co-curated major exhibitions on the origins of art. In 2020, his contributions to the humanities were recognized with the Rutherford Medal, the Royal Society Te Apārangi’s highest honor.

Reviews

[Publius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boyd offers solid analysis on Nabokov as usual. This book gave tremendous insight into Pale Fire which made me update my rating for it from a 4-star book to a 5-star book. The first ~70 pages of this book would warrant five stars. However, as Boyd progresses, I feel like he goes off on tangents and finds things that simply aren't there (ironic, because that's what he accused Mary McCarthy of doing). Furthermore, he has this morbid obsession of defending Nabokov at every turn,(trying to portray him as a saint when he definitely was a controversial man) especially his ghastly translation of Eugene Onegin. 4 stars out of 5.

[Cari]

I've never read a literary critique like this "for fun," but Pale Fire begs to be understood and I knew there was no way I was going to figure out Nabokov's complex riddles on my own. My father gave me this book, and I'm making my way through it slowly and with great fascination. Honestly, I was expecting a book full of ridiculous supposition, a critic reading deep meaning into words and literary allusion (or illusion...?) and leaving me frustrated and disappointed - not only by the critique, but ultimately the book I started off loving. Not a great attitude, I admit, but fortunately, I couldn't have been more wrong. Boyd's clear and absolute respect (love would probably not be too strong a sentiment) for Nabokov's work and his depth of understanding about the literary context of this novel is a pleasure to read. He lays out the varying theories that exist about this book - all interesting in their own rights - and then proposes a new one. I'm just delving into his premise about the true narrator of this novel now, and I'll readily admit that I'm about 85% drinking the cool-aid. That said, he definitely has taken me deeper into Pale Fire than I could have imagined was possible, which occasionally brings out the skeptic in me. However, I nevertheless highly recommend this book to anyone who read Pale Fire and finished wishing for more, deeper understanding and to anyone who just loves Nabokov. I'm going to put Boyd's biography of Nabokov on my list to read. I should note that I never quite finished this book (my attention span for literary critique apparently doesn't go much beyond about 175 pages), but would still recommend it and hope to pick it up again some day.

[Billie Pritchett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Has no other scholar explored Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire as well as Brian Boyd? I enjoyed reading this book-long essay for the most part, though I confess to reading the last third impatiently, and I find Boyd's main thesis of Pale Fire unconvincing. That said, there's much to learn from Boyd's interpretation, and it seems to me his solution to the puzzle at the heart of Nabokov's work is almost correct. Spoilers to Pale Fire follow.

Of course Boyd is entirely correct that the most superficial interpretation the intelligent reader could form of Pale Fire is that the odd neighbor of our poet John Shade is in fact the king of a faraway frozen land, living in exile in New Wye, Nabokov's stand-in for New York. At the next level of interpretation the reader will conclude that it is not the case that the neighbor is an exiled king but a mentally ill person suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, superiority complex, as well as a host of other things.

What struck me in Boyd's exploration of this second level of interpretation is the extent to which this neighbor draws from his surroundings to construct his magical frozen kingdom. The photographs on the wall of his rented home become characters in his story. Details of the outside world come from the set of encyclopedias along the walls. As for his academic colleagues (he is, after all, a professor at the same university where John Shade teaches), he transforms those into political extremists in search of his treasure, the crowned jewels.

And there is one major detailed I missed in reading Pale Fire for which I am grateful to Boyd here. The man who shot John Shade in the heart did in fact kill the man he aimed at, though not his intended target. The man who shot Shade was no assassin from a foreign land as the mentally ill neighbor believes but another mentally ill person who mistakes Shade for a man who had wronged him. This mentally ill person's name is Jack Grey, an escapee from an asylum. It is in response to this man that our neighbor extends his persecution complex and his paranoia, of which 40 per cent of his text is concerned with.

What about Boyd's central thesis? Let's state what it is first: The poem Pale Fire by John Shade and its booklong commentary provided by our unstable neighbor are in fact written by them but at the influence of the wraithish presence of Shade's daughter, Hazel, who committed suicide and who can be seen to be at the heart of the poem. What speaks against this claim? Little textual evidence, and what is called up by Boyd seems to point to a less definite conclusion that I think coheres with a more reasonable thesis.

Here is my thesis of Pale Fire, though I could be wrong. Pale Fire is a book that explores how art helps us wrestle with and can comfort us when we are faced with the limitations of our own mortality. That is awfully high-falutin' but I think it's correct and rather rich. Let's explore.

Art for Nabokov is about "turning accident into ornament," imposing meaning onto a series of what seem like random events. In particular, the poet in the novel, John Shade, is trying to come to terms with his daughter's suicide. There may or may not be life beyond the grave. There in the book, it does seem, following an extremely convincing section by Boyd, that Shade's aunt Maud is or is believed to be communicating with Hazel after death, warning her not to go on a date the night she will kill herself. It also seems, in line with Boyd's argumentation, that Hazel either is or embodies in Shade's mind reincarnated as the butterfly the Red Admirable. But the book does not demonstrate, contrary to Boyd's claim, that anyone is definitely communicating beyond the grave, though they might be. The ambiguity is what helps give body to the poem and the narrative commentary.

Let's explore the importance of accident in art a little more. Definitely life's accidents can be shaped into art, and all the better for it, because then through the art we can make sense of something that seemed as though it did not make sense. This is relevant to the work because the accidental meeting of John Shade and the mentally unstable neighbor does point to an influence they have on each other, though it's not the kind of influence our neighbor tells us it is. The neighbor would have us believe that he can find traces of his invented fairy-tale kingdom in the poem Shade wrote. In a sense, he is right. The neighbor's occasions to talk with Shade did actually appear to spark in the poet some lines of thought to pursue in the poem. One salient example: the neighbor shares that his uncle once flew in airplane into the side of a building; this reminds Shade of the time he witnessed a bird, the waxwing, crash into a windowpane when Shade was just a boy--and this is the central image that sparks the poem! The influence runs the other way as well. Shade's preoccupation with his daughter's suicide leads our neighbor to reflect on his own suicidal thoughts. Shade's assassination leads our neighbor to make up a story about an attempt on his life.

These accidental influences make the story richer, and I'm grateful for Boyd for influencing me. Now as I read Pale Fire, I see it with fresh eyes. Thank you, Mister Boyd.

[Vic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting. Boyd convinced me that Hazel - in the form of a butterfly - tries to lure Shade away from his imminent murder. But Boyd's larger claim, that Shade's ghost helps Kinbote write the commentary, is as useless as the Shadean hypothesis itself. Look, Shade's poem is in part a serious attempt to deal with his daughter's suicide. The idea that Shade's ghost would actually assist a critic, Kinbote, who solely wished to impose his own story upon the poem, turns Shade from a nice guy who sympathized with the hard-to-love Kinbote into a selfless saint who wouldn't mind donating his final major poem towards Kinbote's cracked Zembla project. Boyd, like any other critic dazzled by the conspiratorial tracking of intertextual correspondence between the poem and commentary, ignores the question of plausible character motivation in arguing for his "solution" to the novel.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an outstanding exegesis of 'Pale Fire', which I highly recommended to anyone as awestruck by the labyrinthine intertextuality of the novel - and in particular its use of 'texture' as mirror - as I was. One reads Nabokov often with a sense that one is being toyed with; that a deeper artifice and more obscure shades animate and colour the exquisite surface to which we are lucidly aware. Boyd has accomplished not just the tender disassembly of this masterpiece of allusion (an act of veneration rather than discourtesy), but the finessed unveiling of successive revelations in a fashion systematised towards his theory of the novel's metaphysics. The clarity with which one begins to witness the grandeur of the novel is exhilarating, and the denouement itself is stupefying - and yet, one eventually sees, deeply hopeful, and deeply beautiful.

[Veronica · Rating 5 out of 5]

All my favorite authors are doing everything in their power to make me believe in god and /or ghosts. Pale Fire after Brothers Karamazov after Spinoza’s Ethics…. They know the way to get me

[Joseph Gillespie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boyd is such an astute reader that this book of criticism and analysis is disheartening for me. Disheartening until I realize that he has been reading Nabokov, stalking Nabokov for a decade longer than I have lived. The amount of energy that he has expended in his devotion is apparent here. He loving charts a circumlatory path the through the book. As he does the book unfolds in ways that I would have never experienced on my own. It is invaluable in this regard. As a result of this book I have enjoyed Pale Fire more than probably any other book. It shows what is possible when one lovingly devotes them self to a great work of art. The effort that one puts into this book is transmuted and returned to the reader.

[Jiahe Wang]

Is it just me or is Boyd just crazy

[Mason · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sizeable portion of Boyd’s book demonstrates an exhaustive amount of exegetical skill. The rest, while presenting a disagreeable thesis, provides at the very least an interesting phenomenology of coincidences, whether the conclusions drawn from them hold merit or not. My largest objection, besides the Shade thesis itself, was the insistent application of Popper and scientific philosophy to literary criticism, which I think is a limiting viewpoint that needlessly circumscribes and reduces the expansiveness of interpretation available from literary criticism and Nabokov.

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boyd, formerly a dedicated Shadean, re-considers the narrative structure of "Pale Fire" and deduces that the real forces behind both the poem and the commentary are Hazel Shade, acting from beyond the grave to inspire Kinbote/Botkin to make delicately allusive connections back to the poem even in the midst of his seemingly tone-deaf paranoid story of Zemblan royalty escaping over the mountains; and the dead John Shade, who inspires Botkin/Kinbote to devise the Jacob Gradus/Jack Grey story line (synchronized to the writing of the poem) to explain the absurdity of Shade's death. A most elaborate discussion, positing a rather preposterous reading, but very thoroughly argued and connected to other work by Nabokov that seems to suggest his willingness to believe in the spirit world influencing human action.
For a book-length critical commentary, it was stylistically clear and free of jargon.
I will remember Boyd's insistence that "Pale Fire" is both a joyful and amusing book to read, and one that pays off multiple re-readings to try to catch the elaborate structure of language and imagery.

[Franc · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, let me state that this must be the best single analysis of Nabokov’s marvelous work. It enhanced my enjoyment and understanding of the book — particularly Shade’s poem — and peeled layer upon layer of allusions, puzzles, and links between poem and commentary with which Nabokov accreted his finest book.

That said, there is something rather amusing and, well, Kinbotean about reading a 320 page book of commentary full of out-there theories about a 180 page insane commentary of a 999 line poem. But this is all part of the fun. Boyd is an enthusiastic teacher and the perfect guide.

[Rodney Welch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never been quite sure about Brian Boyd's solution to the riddle that is "Pale Fire," if for no other reason than that it just seems too difficult, too hard-won, too complicated, too twisty-turny, even for Nabokov. Nonetheless, this is a superb critical detective story, in which the leading expert on the great man admits, first, that he was wrong about the solution he proposed in his biography, and then offers a most imaginative (if not fully convincing) alternative view.

[Scarlett Sims · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading this book shortly after I finished Pale Fire. I wish I had managed to read the whole thing when it was fresh in my mind. I also think my understanding of the various analyses and theories would have benefitted from having read Pale Fire multiple times. Some of the things Boyd says my gut reaction is to say, whoah now, you're reading way too much into this, but then he gives some good evidence that Nabokov did put really obscure/abstruse things in his novels.

[Ohenrypacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pale Fire is one of the most incredible books ever written. Its humor, its mysteries, its poetry that is as incredible as its prose, it yearns for deeper exploration. Fortunately, scholars, including Boyd, have plumbed its depths and written eloquently about it.
I can't say that I agree with Boyd's reading of Pale Fire, but i do appreciate his thorough exploration and explication of Nabokov's masterpiece.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just read half of this as a companion to "Pale Fire." It was definitely a great place to start for unraveling the mysteries in "Pale Fire." At some point, the book got to be a little too English-majory for me... e.g. "Did the ghost of John Shade inspire Kinbote to write his Commentary?" But the beginning is well worth reading for understanding what's really going on in PF.

[Mark Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, especially the reading and rereading sections but beyond that it somewhat becomes too specific, and a little unnecessary, whereas the earlier sections elucidate and encourage rereadings/rethinkings, the latter ones come across as "look at all the lines I can draw between things".

Worth reading, just not all the way to the very end (unlike Pale Fire and its mysterious index)

[Tomj · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most interesting works of fiction I've ever encountered, Boyd offers a controversial theory of what is behind the plot. What is uncontroversial is that Boyd is an insightful, close reader. I finally read Nabokov's "Ada" about a year ago, and I look forward to re-reading "Ada" with Boyd's book about Ada at hand.

[Jared Busch]

read parts. then got to feeling like I was at UofL again and got bored. sometimes reading something and purely enjoying it, "getting" some of it but surely not every single last little bit of it, is good enough for me.

[Kit]

The first time I read *Pale Fire*, it was in a poetry class in college. One quarter of the class was devoted to Nabokov, with the rest devoted to Blake, Hart Crane and a few other texts I don't quite remember. Just as John Shade laments, there where plenty who simply didn't read the text, and plenty who gave it an amateurish reading that (speaking from personal experience) comes from an indifference to the course. University, nowadays, is about getting a diploma that becomes cheapened with every graduation. As John Shade tells us in the novel:

I am generally very benevolent [said Shade]. But there are certain trifles I do not forgive." Kinbote: "For instance?" "Not having read the required book. Having read it like an idiot. Looking in it for symbols; example: 'The author uses the striking image green leaves because green is the symbol of happiness and frustration."

I'm sure there was a fair bit of all three sins in my sophomore seminar. It is unfair to blame the poor associate prof who taught it, though. The man was rowing against the tide. He was the first one to make me care in the slightest about Poetry, and he must certainly join my other household idols for that kindling: the teacher that helped to found my love of music and the one that helped me read a decent novel.

That first reading opened many questions that were never resolved. Unfortunately, many students surely left the class with the exact wrong interpretation of Nabokov, according to Boyd: He is a smirking teaser, a prestidigitator, who wants to dazzle us and no more. I had an intuition that there was much more to this text that I was missing, but it took me until now to return.

I read Pale Fire for the second time cover to cover before reading the Boyd exegesis. The satisfaction I gained from seeing things that I had missed the first time was delicious. I am certain that my ability to read has grown in the years since first approaching Nabokov. What a blessing to be able to read and to know that greater mastery is always in your range if you will work for it. Nabokov stresses to his students that they must have the patience of poetry and the passion of science. Most people would expect those adjectives to be switched. Nabokov has it right. A line of a poem is fundamentally a unit of attention. Attention is near to drowning in the flood of symbols we live in. Writers like Nabokov and readers like Boyd give me hope that I could one day be as literate as them, and that it would be worth it. I will need to resist the deep, cozy grooves that have been etched by Netflix, Twitter etc. etc. the gol darned Internet.

The reading that Boyd arrives at in this text is one that took decades of reflection and discussion. I am convinced of his major claims, which seem pretty audacious, but I'd like to see you come up with something that better explains the facts of the text. We could all learn a thing or two about reading from Boyd. I am in awe of his diligence, his patience and passion. The first two times I read the novel, I was too lazy to even look up the Shakespeare passage in Timon Of Athens. For shame. To paraphrase Marx, there is no royal road to science; you better work for it, honey.

[Leftjab · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re on a reread of the novel, I would highly recommend this. After a first-time read I feel it wouldn’t quite work – Boyd REALLY goes into the minutiae of the text but even then, there’s so much Nabokov throws at the reader that it’s not like he ruins the book or anything. Though I would wonder if Nabokov would see him as Kinboting (or is it Botkining?) his work. I loved the explication of the supernatural elements of the novel (the butterflies) – pretty mind-blowing and again was just another mirror of the act of reading the book itself – the stories (there are several!) being channeled by the reader as they create the novel in their mind.

At the very least, it just raises my love for Pale Fire, and makes me want to read it again! Though maybe in another ten years – so many books….

[Rjyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was electrified at the beginning, but got a little uneasy in the middle, even thinking more than once that we were verging on DMT trip monologue, or Charlie Day With Red Yarn Connecting Photographs territory. But Boyd always won me back and the end is pretty glorious, revealing him to be tripping on a pure, powerful love of close reading. I want to live in a universe where every author has a fan this dedicated.

[Thomas Gizbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and (mostly) convincing. Boyd writes with clarity and an obvious love for the source material (as well as a barely-surpressed distain for TS Eliot). The insights into Nabokov and his metaphysics are extremely interesting.

Does it take itself too seriously? At times, yes. But I'd recommend it to anyone looking to get a little deeper into Pale Fire.

[ASC Library]

813.54 Boy

[TJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Realism, Emergentism, Aestheticism, Modernism. Meaning is found through interpretation of the text itself, not postmodern assertions into it; Nabokov's style is complex, but doesn't impose it from above--he lets it coalesce from interaction across the book; the aesthetic beauty reflects a positive view of life; and solopsistic and relativistic readings are interpretive trends to be fought.

I expected this to be a drab read containing useful information and was delightfully surprised to find that Boyd (as best as he can in explanatory literature) attempts to mimic the stylistic elements that produce interpretive coherence in Pale Fire. Each chapter recursively builds upon the last, there's a biting and careful stylistic rhetoric, often subtly witty, and he treats intellectual process and Nabokov's writing with reverence. He also intentionally counterpoints himself regularly and draws on different fields to analogize his approach to truth, creating an interweaving and refracting kind of argumentation process that reflects the complexity of Pale Fire. He further makes a wonderful reading come to being that I fully agree with, that Nabokov's writing endorses a view that believes pattern and consciousness are meant for each other, almost spiritually, and that Nabokov emulates this in a metaphysical playfulness.

But it is still ultimately explanatory literature, a companion piece to something else. Further, his hard-line of authorial intent as the supreme compass of interpretation is a bit condescending--to let a text breathe also in individual interpretation is worthwhile if for nothing but the novel reflections and the potential positing of new associations, and symbolic readings (jungian, lacanian, marxist, freudian, etc.) can often reveal intellectually hefty arguments for unconscious patterns. And his commitment to stabilizing the text removes you from the effect of the book--the book indeed is unstable, somewhat illusory, layers of parody parodying even parody--and perhaps balancing a reveling in that kind of messiness while still seeking out the pattern might come closer to representing Nabokov's metaphysical artistic portrait. Also, he spends too much time debunking the reading that Kinbote and Shade are the same person. I think most people are on board with that being a silly proposal. But this was a good read for what it is. Usually commentary doesn't deliver anything but dry scholarship--I'm grateful Boyd over-delivered.

6/10

[Josh Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great, if you want to know what the fuck is going on in Pale Fire. Some nice general information on how to read and specifically how to read Nabokov.

[dead letter office · Rating 4 out of 5]

i was relieved to find i was not the only one made dizzy by that book. but hazel from beyond the grave? come on now. that seems shady.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

A definite nessecity in trying to find out what is REALLY going on in Pale Fire. If you love Nabokov, this is the book for you.

[Mike Askin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for those who love Pale Fire. I was not particularly persuaded by the argument he makes in the second half, but extremely well done nonetheless.

[Kit · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't buy most of the third part of his reading, but it's still entertaining and informative. Still, the affective fallacy his reading is hung on grates at times.

[William Mego · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to follow next week.