Pale Fire

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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

Book Description

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 and one-upmanship, and political intrigue.

Customer Reviews:

Read It First, Then Read The Reviews.......2007-09-23

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.

Nabokov's king is a queen..........2007-06-20

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 is way too high.

it's a wild ride.......2007-06-15

I may well upgrade to five stars after I read the book a third time, which may be necessary for my full understanding. This book is a struggle, but it's full of literary and emigre wit. It also exploits the strategem of the unreliable narrator to great and confusing effect. Many of the previous reviewers have captured the key points well, so I won't dwell. I very much enjoyed the late Prof. Richard Rorty's introduction in the splendid Everyman's edition. First time readers should follow Prof. Rorty's advice and convert the introduction into a post-mortem. Relative to the other Nabokov I've read (Lolita; Speak, Memory; and Pnin), PF is the most challenging. Though it lacks the fantasy, PF is probably closer to The Master and Margarita than any of VN's other works I've read. Lastly, I was happy to see that Prof. Pnin's persona is known in PF.

I will say no more other than to enjoy this book and read Prof. Rorty's comments.

My favorite novel, err..book..err...literary work, or whatever!.......2007-02-28

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!

Pale Fire.......2007-01-15

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: Novels 1955-1962: Lolita / Pnin / Pale Fire (Library of America)

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The best of Nabokov
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Nabokov: Novels 1955-1962: Lolita / Pnin / Pale Fire (Library of America)
Vladimir Nabokov
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The second in Library of America's three-volume collection of Vladimir Nabokov's novels, Novels 1955-1962 contains his most acclaimed and popular works. The short, often anthologized Pnin is included, as is Pale Fire, Nabokov's most elaborate fictional joke: it's a novel masquerading as a 999-line poem accompanied by a professorial pedant's extensive annotations. But this deluxe volume is most valuable for its inclusion of Lolita alongside the screenplay that Nabokov wrote for Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick's film is quite different from the version Nabokov intended, and Novels 1955-1962 offers the opportunity to compare Lolita's two Nabokovian incarnations with Kubrick's film and with the recent, very controversial movie directed by Adrian Lyne and starring Jeremy Irons.

Customer Reviews:

The best of Nabokov.......2004-03-29

Three classic novels and a solid screenplay adaptation -- Vladimir Nabokov's literary genius is perhaps best shown in the second volume of Library of America's collections. The classic "Lolita" is paired with its own screenplay adaptation, and the comic "Pnin" and witty "Pale Fire."

"Lolita" is the tale for which Nabokov is best known. The redundantly-named, middle-aged (dirty old man) Humbert Humbert is haunted by some teenage love he had long ago, and which he thinks he has refound in the prepubescent Delores Haze (called "Lolita" by Humbert). He sets out to seduce the unsuspecting girl, but her mom is standing in the way...

"Pnin" is a gently comic tale about Timofey Pnin, a timid, moderately neurotic Russian professor who now lives in the United States. He's amazed by technology, fussy, a bit weird about his health, and has problems with American train schedules. The unfortunate Pnin stumbles from one problem to another, trying to keep everything under control in uncontrollable circumstances.

"Pale Fire" is perhaps the best literary satire out there. Poet John Shade wrote the sprawling 999-line poem "Pale Fire," shortly before being murdered. After his death, the poem is being painstakingly dissected and annotated by his neighbor, Charles Kinbote. Except Kinbote is a nutjob, who interprets "Pale Fire" as being all about him, and will come up with weird symbolism to justify his belief.

"Lolita: A Screenplay" is almost a different version of "Lolita." Here Nabokov recounted the same events of the novel, but from an ominiscent perspective -- that of the person who would be watching the movie. Very rich, very well-adapted, very evocative for a screenplay, this is almost as good as a book in itself.

Nabokov could handle just about any kind of writing, this collection shows us. From the opulent poetry of "Pale Fire" to the solid screenplay, from the erotic drama of "Lolita" to the chuckling comedy of "Pnin," he handles it all. His writing is detailed and lush, rich almost to the point of choking. He shifts perspectives, tells a story through annotation, sees through the eyes of a pedophile, and does it all with a certain winking flair.

Nabokov's writing is a combination of believable characterizations and rich language. Humbert Humbert, for example, is a horrendously believable person, especially since he makes constant excuses for his pedaphilic behavior -- the characterization is so good, in fact, that newcomers might even think (incorrectly) that Nabokov sympathized with the creep. At the same time, he creates the rather pitiful, absentminded Pnin, the self-serving nutcase Kinbote -- and they're all delightfully three-dimensional. You could bump into people like these on the bus at any time, and they would be just as he describes them.

Comedy, drama, satire and screenwriting are collected in the second Library of America collection of Nabokov's novels. Sexy, funny, brilliant and exquisitely written, these are among the best of Vladimir Nabokov's works.

Nabokov a hard act to follow for other serious writers.......2000-08-31

Picture Vladimir Nabokov. In the hall of mirrors that is popular culture, he is the dirty man who wrote the dirty book "Lolita," about a 12-year-old "nymphet" -- he invented the term, by the way -- and her affair with an older man.

Angle the mirror another way, and he is one of the founders of the modernist novel, which to some people -- myself included -- that's a damning phrase. "Modernist" and "post-modernist" literature seems a) self-referencing to the point of egotism; b) dedicated to the advancement of decedent themes, and to score big points as a writer, pile it on, brother; and c) obsessed with the discovery that the "arts" -- whether books, pictures or movies -- are artificial, and that we use them to create, well, books, pictures and movies.

Unless you think I am making it up, here's an example drawn from real life: a few years back, a Charlotte museum mounted an exhibition of a painter's work, one of which was a canvas whose front side was turned toward the wall, exposing a paint-stained frame. A newspaper reviewer breathlessly informed the reading public that the artist did this "to inform the viewer that most paintings are recetangular."

Now, a reasonably intelligent person could probably reach that conclusion without much effort, but discoveries like these seem to drive those who tread into the "modern" era of art.

So Vlaidmir Nabokov's reputation is caught between two very opposing poles. He either panders to the worst tastes of man, or the worst tastes of art.

Fortunately, he is neither, and the Library of America agrees. The non-profit publisher throws its reputation behind Nabokov as a writer worth reading by publishing all of his English-language novels in three volumes. The first volume covers his work from 1941 to 1951: "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight," "Bend Sinister," and his memoir, "Speak, Memory." The middle work contains the notorious "Lolita," "Pale Fire," "Pnin," and the "Lolita" screenplay Nabokov wrote for Stanley Kubrick. The concluding volume contains "Ada," "Transparent Things," and "Look at the Harlequins!"

But of these works, only "Lolita" stands alone. It is not a dirty book, and one should pity those American and British tourists who, in the mid-1950s, bought the pale olive-green two-volume paperbacks published in Paris by the notorious Olympia Press. Those expecting frankly pornographic stories like "The Story of O" and "How to Do It" would have been sorely disappointed in Humbert Humbert's self-confessed defense of his rape (not "seduction," which implies a willingness to be seduced) and exploitation of Delores Haze, "Lolita, light of my life,fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

Even Olympia's publisher was taken in, telling a mutual friend that he though Nabokov was Humbert, and that he was attempting to popularize nymphet love.

What does become apparent after reading through the volumes (and aided by an excellent two-volume biography by Brian Boyd) is that there is much more to Nabokov than meets the eye. Delving deeper in his works reveals a funhouse hall of mirrors that can lead to a definitive end, and there's not much in modernist fiction that could substantiate that claim.

What sets Nabokov off from other writers is his use of the language. Raised in Tsarist Russia, Nabokov was a child prodigy who was taught Russian, French and English at an early age. His prose is elegent, his command of English astounding. It's close to the prose of Henry James, but except for the foreign phrases, which the Library editions provide translations and explanations, far more understandable.

Descriptions pulled at random from "Lolita" ring as if English was a newly minted language, capable of expressing humor ("The bed was a frightful mess with overtones of potato chips") and snobbish anger ("Lo had grabbed some comics from the back seat and, mobile white-bloused, one brown elbow out of the window, was deep in the current adventure of some clout or clown").

Even, when Humbert meets his Lolita long after she escaped his clutches, when he believes that he still loves her, heart-rending: "In her washed-out grey eyes, strangely spectacled, our poor romance was for a moment reflected, pondered upon, and dismissed like a dull party, like a rainy picnic to which only the dullest bores had come, like a humdrum exercise, like a bit of dry mud caking her childhood."

This is not casual reading, but neither is it reading-as-masochistic exercise, with furrowed brows and an exasperated flipping of once-read pages. There is a surface meaning that is easily accessible, but there are deeper meanings, in-jokes, ironies and moral questions worthy of consideration.

The best volume of the three is the second, which contains "Lolita," the screenplay he wrote for Stanley Kubrick (which was not used), the comic novel (for Nabokov at least) "Pnin" and "Pale Fire."

But good works can be found in the other volumes as well. "The Real Life of Sebastian Knight," in the first volume, is the author's account of his biographical research on his half-brother, the brilliant writer Sebastian Knight, who had died recently of a heart condition after writing a half-dozen novels. It bears all the hallmarks of the post-modernist novel replete with a self-absorption with writers, spurious biography, an unreliable narrator and ironical references. "Speak, Memory," also in the first volume, is Nabokov's memoirs about growing up in Russia.

Indeed, the only disadvantage to reading Nabokov is that it may cause a nagging niggling in the back of your head, while reading novels in the future, that they just cannot compare to those composed by the American from Russia.

Nabokov's Best.......1998-08-05

This is a compact, sturdy and high quality edition of the first novels Nabokov wrote entirely in English. It's the central volume in a three-volume set of Nabokov's autobiography and English fiction (excluding the short stories), including his finest achievements -- Lolita, Pnin and Pale Fire. The two versions of Lolita (as novel and screen adaptation) are illuminating to read together: the novel is created within Humbert's subjective and self-serving memory, while in the screenplay Nabokov reimagines the story as objective action. I was also intrigued to find that some obvious departures from the novel in Kubrick's film -- such as the opening scene of Humbert shooting Quilty, or the high school prom scene -- are ideas taken from the Nabokov screenplay (in turn fragments of the novel excised in the final version). Brian Boyd offers an impeccable text, much improved over the paperback editions, with a chronology of the author's life. This is the volume to choose if you u! nravel Nabokov's narrative patterns with your own marginal notes and comments, and want a volume that won't disintegrate in a nymphet's span of years.

Nabokov's "Pale Fire": The Magic of Artistic Discovery

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superb analysis
Nabokov's Sweet Madness
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The Mysteries of Pale Fire Explained

Nabokov's "Pale Fire": The Magic of Artistic Discovery
Brian Boyd
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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Brian Boyd has already chronicled the life of Vladimir Nabokov in two superlative volumes, one devoted to the author's silver-age youth in Russia and the other to his American maturity. Now Boyd turns his attention to the great enchanter's trickiest and most unlikely triumph in Nabokov's Pale Fire. With its oddball structure--which shackles an epic poem in heroic couplets to an increasingly loony, enveloping commentary--this 1962 novel has always been a bone of contention among diehard fans. Some consider it less a work of art than a Rube Goldberg contraption, onto which Nabokov has brilliantly bolted his favorite motifs. Others call Pale Fire the author's true masterpiece, and Brian Boyd falls quite emphatically into the latter camp, arguing that the book is no mere satire on literary parasitism:

It is a reflection on the whole history of literature, on the shift from romance to realism, from the old kind of hero with whose glory the reader is invited to identify ... to the modern image of everyman as artist, the suburban Shade, in the modest circumstances of the real, coping with courage and self-control, with imagination, curiosity, tenderness, and kindness, with the fact of his mortality and his losses past and still to come.

Boyd's study is at once a shrewd and eloquent guidebook to the intricacies of Pale Fire and a revisionist argument as to its meaning. After all, Nabokovians have spent the last three decades feuding over the ultimate authorship of this double-decker narrative: could the poet, John Shade, have created both the poem and commentary? Or should both be chalked up to that nutty exegete Charles Kinbote? As he wades into this factional war, Boyd can sometimes appear only nominally less insane than Kinbote. ("The prominence of the Shadean or Kinbotean or 'undecidable' readings had not gone unchallenged. D. Barton Johnson, attending to verbal and subverbal detail, stood largely outside the Shade-Kinbote opposition when he focused on the Botkin behind Kinbote." Help!) Yet his hypothesis--which involves a ghost feeding lines to the living like a posthumous Teleprompter--makes perfect sense. And it reminds us that for all Nabokov's vaunted irony and scientific passion, he was fascinated throughout his entire career by the afterlife. Volodya as theologian? Boyd is smart and persuasive enough to make the concept stick, and to send every last one of us back to Pale Fire--immediately. --James Marcus

Book Description

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.

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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 theworld. 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.

Customer Reviews:

superb analysis.......2003-07-28

This book on Pale Fire is some of the best critical commentary on a great piece of literature I have ever read. Shattuck's study of Proust's novel and Stanely Fish's recent book on Milton also come to mind.

The readers who will benefit most from this book are those who love Pale Fire and are very familiar with it. The study is so good and so thorough, I worry about it spoiling the act of discovery in newcomers to the novel. I read Pale Fire only once before reading Boyd's study. Oddly enough, it almost made me ashamed because I DIDN'T follow my curiousity and see where the clues could lead me. Granted, I don't think I could have reached Browning from the "Papa pisses" reference in Pale Fire, but many other clues could have yielding satisfying discoveries.

Basically, I read Pale Fire as a "Level 1" reader: getting the jokes and appreciating the more obvious ironies about Charles Kinbote. But in this book, Boyd shows how Nabokov's novel can be seen as a super-complex, but coherent pattern of signs, signs blinking at us from the beyond.

I won't spoil any more for those readers who want to discover more about Pale Fire on their own. My only advise is to follow your curiousity!

Nabokov's Sweet Madness.......2000-10-03

For Nabokov, nothing was ever as simple as it seemed. In fact, "simple" and "sincere" were two adjectives that he despised. While teaching at Wellesley College and later at Cornell, Nabokov would give a low mark to any student who used the words, "simple" and "sincere" in a paper.

Nabokov was a writer who celebrated the complexities in life. He looked for unexpected meanings in even the most banal details of existence and the test questions he set for his students were notoriously eccentric, e.g., Describe Madame Bovary's hairdo; What sort of paper covered the walls of Anna Karenina's bedroom? for Nabokov, God was a subtle being, but tremendously inventive and perhaps a little sly.

Nabokov believed that "the unraveling of a riddle is the purest and most basic act of the human mind." He probably would have loved this remarkable book, an attempt to unravel the riddles and hidden meanings Nabokov, himself, embedded in Pale Fire.

When Pale Fire first appeared in 1962, reviewers said, correctly, that it could be enjoyed without puzzling over its hidden meanings but that it obviously hid many levels of complexity. In a now-famous article, Mary McCarthy called Pale Fire "a jack-in-the-box, a Fabergé gem, a clockwork toy, a chess problem, an infernal machine, a trap to catch reviewers..." But she also thought it was a thing of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth.

Even on a first reading of Pale Fire, we understand that Nabokov is playing a most elaborate literary game. Kinbote is hilariously mad, and his efforts to interpret Shade's poem as a commentary on Zemblan events can be seen as a satire of imaginative academics.

But Nabokov also scattered less obvious clues throughout the book. McCarthy decided that the "real" author of the commentary was yet another Zemblan who is barely mentioned, V. Botkin. And there are those who believe that Nabokov is telling us that John Shade didn't die but simply wrote the commentary under the name of Kinbote as a way of disappearing.

Boyd now interprets Nabokov's intentions in yet another way. He believes that both the poem and the commentary were inspired from beyond the grave as well as by Shakespeare's many ghosts.

Nabokov's Pale Fire is a monument to a brilliant scholar's persistent love affair with a book and its author. For more than three decades now, Boyd has made Pale Fire, and Nabokov, his obsession, much in the way that Nabokov, himself, was obsessed with butterflies. In 1990 and 1991, Boyd published his excellent two-volume biography of Nabokov and established himself as the world's premier Nabokovian.

Pale Fire, however, remained central to this thinking. When Boyd was asked to discuss Pale Fire on the Electronic Nabokov Discussion Forum, he discovered that his own views about this remarkable and original book were changing. Those views form the heart and soul of his own vibrant and energetic work. Even if we do not agree with all of his theories (and anything, at this point, must remain only a theory) we have to admire his scrupulous intelligence and dedication.

Boyd does not disdain eccentric flights of imagination. Nor is he afraid of being thought of as obsessive. There was a sweet madness in Nabokov, and quite obviously, Boyd has assimilated some of it, all to the good.

Nabokov's Pale Fire is more than a wonderful book; it is also a labor of love of the highest order. It can only enhance your understanding and love of both Nabokov and Pale Fire, and perhaps give you some insight into Boyd, himself.

a must for Nabokov fans.......2000-07-01

Obviously I must not be as big a Nabokov groupie as other Pale Fire enthusiasts, because when I read Pale Fire in a college seminar, most of us spent weeks admiring Nabokov's academic satire and what we then thought was a purposefully horrible poem. Now I feel somewhat shamed because Boyd seems to think the poem itself is great poetry -- I cringe because our class read out loud particularly funny lines and laughed at what a good "bad" poem Nabokov wrote. Maybe Boyd does miss some of the humor, but that is all he misses. I don't think he leaves one line, joke, pun, or obscure reference unexplained. I enjoyed the first few chapters more because they stuck to many of the more obvious discoveries Nabokov intended his readers to make. By the middle, Boyd had my head spinning with some of the leaps of analysis -- I was too confused to agree or disagree. But by the end, his overall surprises and theories come together and make sense. No matter what you make of Boyd's theory, I applaud the book for its emphasis on close reading and for its obvious love of this great writer. Nabokov is one of this century's best and deserves this kind of in-depth reading. In the final chapter, Boyd answers some of the criticisms about his theory (by Michael Wood, for instance, a Princeton prof) and almost ends up sounding like Kinbote for a moment in his defensiveness. This book is a true discovery for a devout reader because it shows how to read better and more closely, how to link (bobo-link) seemingly unrelated bits together. Hats off to a great work of Nabokov scholarship -- Boyd brought in lots of information from Nabokov's other works that proved to be quite important.

Boyd is off the hook!.......2000-04-17

Amazing! When reading this insomnia-inducing book my head kept spinning with the mirror-like mirages of Pale Fire and I felt that everything I trusted and relied on when first I read that book were crumbling around me.

I have read Pale Fire twice and still only feel that I am barely familiar with how the common household objects in the place Kinbote is housesitting helped to create that zany land of the north, Zembla.

I dont want to spoil some of the surprises in this book (Boyd has gone back on his stance of Shade being the author of both poem and commmentary which he supports in his biography of Nabokov). But let me just say that these surprises provoked me in the middle of long nights to exclaim "What is goint ON? " and pace around frantically.

A haunting question (and by the way the ghostly aspects of Pale Fire which i had only felt in a vague way are exposed by Boyd to be something richer than i would have ever imagined) is not only how much control Hazel Shade had over the commentary but also how much control Nabokov's playful shade is exerting upon Boyd. The reviewer below me is onto something.

Boyd brings to Pale Fire his thorough knowledge of Nabokov's other works - for example his thesis - anti-thesis description of chess in Speak Memory or that bizarre short story The Vane Sisters - and illustrates how they help to see into the mystery of some of Nab's more complex works.

After reading Pale Fire twice, I naively thought that i understood it (yes that Bodkin in the University was suspicious, and yes the existence of internation thug Gradus i had previosly questioned) but i was only approaching the intitial layerings of this beatifully layered world. Im not saying that i am necessarily convinced with all Boyd has to say, but he has dazzled me with his insights and made me fully realize that I am far from understanding fully this work of art. It is to Nabokov's supreme credit that he could create a world that seems as immense, varied, and impossible to appreciate fully enough as the one we live in everyday.

The Mysteries of Pale Fire Explained.......1999-12-31

It is clear that the spirit of Vladimir Nabokov, which departed his body some twenty years ago, has landed in New Zealand to take up residence, at least temporarily, in the write hand of Professor Brian Boyd. Pale Fire - that book of mirrors and riddles, the first to acknowledge that T.S. Eliot spelled backwards is "toilets" has finally met a brain'd boy clever enough to come up with many of the solutions to the most puzzling of novels and generous enough to share them in readable prose with others. It is not surprising that the professor from Achtland can guide us through the poetry of Shakespeare, Pope, Browning, and the platitudinous banker, or even that he can elucidate the meaning of the word "lemniscate", but only a spirit under the control of Nabokov's itself could guide the reader through the flying patterns of North American butterflies. Sure we knew that Hazel's last name pointed to the land of the dead -- hadeS -- but how were we to know that Disa's did as well? My rusty Russian fell short of picking up on the Gerald Emerald and hiding place references; why would the lovely Boy[d]'s be any sharper? The dedicatee of the book is surely a name considered and then rejected for a Zemblan, maybe the apprentice of Sudarg of Bokay. I hope Dimitri makes sure that his father's estate gets a cut of the royalties. An absolutely brillant book, which needs to be read and, in its Nabokovian manner, re-read.

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