Alex’s Reviews > Pale Fire > Status Update

Nabokov is great at shaping your impressions of his mysteries in very subtle ways, through attitudes and turns-of-phrase that give just enough away to - maybe not even at the moment you read it - go, "hmm." And so later when those impressions are actually addressed (not answered) it almost feels clumsy, until you recognize the successful subtlety with which your thoughts on the subject have already been steered.

I bought this years ago with an amazon gift card, alongside Herzog and Infinite Jest. This was before I read as obsessively as I do now (the book that set me off would be IJ). It's interesting to me now because I have no trouble imagining Pale Fire as the genesis of DFW's endnote style, and at the time I bought both works my mindset was essentially "oh, look at these books written in goofy ways..." I had no idea...