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Pale Fire
by Vladimir Nabokov
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Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN13: 9780679723424
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed--according to Nabokov's fiction--by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.
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. But 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
| Customer Reviews: |
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| Into The Maze |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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"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.
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| Perfect Combination of Poetry and Prose |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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"Pale Fire" is an early example of what is now called metafiction. It begins with a Foreward by Charles Kinbote, a scholarly native of Zembla (a fictional country). From the start, Kinbote expresses an effusive love for the famous American poet John Shade. Kinbote rents out the manor next to Shade, and whenever Kinbote can't talk to him, he spies on him. As you learn in the brief Foreward, Shade dies and Kinbote obtains the manuscript for Shade's last poem "Pale Fire." Then begins a quest for the reader to sort out Kinbote's humorous delusions over the meaning of "Pale Fire": whether it's about Shade's literary and personal interests, as it seems, or actually coded details from stories of Zembla and its exiled king that Kinbote had begged Shade to write about before dying.
The best way to read "Pale Fire" is like this: Grab two book markers, one for the poem, one for the commentary. Obviously read the Foreward first. Then read Canto I of the poem. After that, flip to the back of the book and read Kinbote's commentary on Canto I. Then flip back to Canto II and repeat the process (there's four cantos). At this point, you'll be finished with the book, but you'll want to read the poem once more without any interruptions.
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| funny, high-brow, and challenging |
| Customer Rating: 3 out of 5 |
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If Pale Fire were not so high-brow, it might be fun. This book is obviously not your everyday novel. It's a poem with a pompous, inapplicable, absurd foreword and commentary surrounding it. The fictitious poet is the late John Shade, and the notes are authored by his pesky neighbor, Professor Charles Kinbote, from the northern kingdom of Zembla. The commentary is mostly tales of Zembla, so that it's almost as if Nabokov had two ideas, one for the poem and one for the Zembla folklore, and decided to juxtapose them in this farcical fashion. The result is something like the Lennon and McCartney song "A Day in the Life," with two completely different works spliced into one. It's difficult to keep the Zembla characters straight, despite the index at the end, especially since the stories are interspersed with off-kilter observations on the poem. Plus, it would be helpful to have two copies so that you could read the poem side-by-side with the commentary, as recommended in the foreword, although actual commentary on the poem is really pretty negligible. The funniest story line, though, is that of Kinbote's relationship with Shade and his wife Sylvia. Kinbote's attempts to spy on Shade, even vacationing where he thinks Shade is going, and his disappointment at not being invited to Shade's birthday party are embarrassingly pathetic. Despite Kinbote's lack of success in persuading Shade to incorporate some Zembla stories into the poem, he draws parallels between lines of the poem and Zembla anyway. It really would be hilarious, particularly the way in which everything comes together in the end, if it weren't so challenging to read.
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| Nabokov's House of Mirrors |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
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I haven't read every important work of contemporary literature, but, in my view, Pale Fire establishes Nabokov as the brainiest writer of fiction since Joyce. I'm not sure a comprehensive reading of the book is even possible. What one can be fairly certain of is that many, if not most, of those who claim to have penetrated its brilliance are bluffing. It's an exceedingly difficult book to read, one that, for the vast majority of people, would require multiple, very concentrated readings, complete with constant cross-referencing between the poem and the notes. I gave it one read through, reading a canto, then the notes, then a canto, etc., and really just gleaned enough to discover that I was pretty far out of my depth. Admittedly, I wasn't, and am not, willing to put in the necessary work for this half-book, half-puzzle. As a traditional novel, it is somewhat entertaining, as Nabokov's characterization of the wildly eccentric, if not insane, Kinbot, is funny and insightful, but, for the casual reader, be warned: A superficial reading of Shakespeare is easier. And I'm not sure Pale Fire is worth reading unless you're willing to go all the way with it. Nabokov was a masterful chess player and he is certainly playing on a high level here. Unless you're prepared to give Pale Fire a scholarly reading, it's probably best to stick with his more accessible works.
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| Derivative |
| Customer Rating: 1 out of 5 |
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Oh, it sounds cute--to embed a novel in the form of footnotes to a meaningless poem. And one has to admit, it was well done. But there is something contrived. Of course, this was a time in which almost all literature had to be "new" in some way, and that led to all sorts of strained productions. But I think in a good novel, you need to identify with the protagonist -- even if you see him as flawed, even evil (as in Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov [see my review!]). But this narrator is just pathetic. There's no way to see this as anything other than a joke that goes on too long.
I think the reason we can't identify with him is precisely because he is so self-indulgent -- to hijack this poem which is supposed to be a tribute to his deceased friend with his own rather petty concerns. We end up wishing he would just shut the heck up and let us finish the (dreadful) poem. I know it is supposed to be humorous, but I just get mad -- what if I were to hijack these reviews to foist my own personal problems on you, the reader? I'd be betraying a sort of trust. Even though that's how Nabokov wanted it to read, I just can't take it [61--fin].
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