Vladimir Nabokov

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.

Pale Fire

A novel constructed around the last great poem of a fictional American poet, John Shade, and an account of his death. The poem appears in full and the narrative develops through the lengthy, and increasingly eccentric, notes by his posthumous editor.

Conor Murphy

One might bear—a strong merciless dreamer might bear—the knowledge of her grief and pride but none could bear the sight of her automatic smile as she turned from the agony of the disclosure to the polite trivialities required of her.

I have no desire to twist and batter an unambiguous apparatus criticus into the monstrous semblance of a novel.

Everything I loved was lost But no aorta could report regret.

Pale fire

sariya

"Although I am capable, through long dabbling in blue magic, of imitating any prose in the world, I do not consider myself a true artist, save in one manner; I can do what only a true artist can do—pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation, wean myself abruptly from the habit of things, see the web of the world, and the warp and the weft of that web."

"He lived too much in his library, too little among boys and youths. Writers should see the world, pluck its figs and peaches, and not keep constantly meditating in a tower of yellow ivory."

"One can harness words like performing fleas and make them drive other fleas. Oh, sure."

"Once transmuted by you into poetry, the stuff will be true, and the people will come alive. A poet's purified truth can cause no pain, no offense. True art is above false honor."

"Come and be worshiped, come and be caressed, / My dark vanessa, crimson-barred, my blest / My admirable butterfly!"

it's like this ache beyond reason, beyond sense. we yearn chase cling to any fragment left for us or we so imagined

weli 

i think she always nursed a small mad hope

savannah eden

                                I can't tell you how

I knew - but I did know that I had crossed

And blood-black nothingness began to spin

Cells interlinked within cells interlinked

Against the dark, a tall white fountain played.

The American poet John Shade is dead; murdered. His last poem, 'Pale Fire', is put into a book, together with a preface, a lengthy commentary and notes by Shade's editor, Charles Kinbote. Known on campus as the 'Great Beaver', Kinbote is haughty, inquisitive, intolerant, but is he also mad, bad - and even dangerous? As his wildly eccentric annotations slide into the personal and the fantastical, Kinbote reveals perhaps more than he should. Nabokov's darkly witty, richly inventive masterwork is a suspenseful whodunit, a story of one-upmanship and dubious penmanship, and a glorious literary conundrum.Part of a major new beautiful hardback series of the works of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita and Pale Fire, in Penguin Classics.

i did NOT expect it to be this funny ironic and absurd LOL... 

<mild spoilers henceforth> i kept asking myself how would i react to 

 & its commentary as "real" pieces of work vs. knowing of it as a story inside a story. my real-time comments include: "ah narsis bgt nih org" (of Kinbote); "WHO THE HELLLL DO YOU THINK YOU AREE" (p. 114), etc. if it was a real work no doubt i would mark it with 2 star (or, DNF) & say that i liked the poem but complain of a Commentary that makes no sense. as its actual form here, i find it so funny that Charles thinks so lowly of psychoanalysis when we can read between the lines what he truly is like & what his actual motivations are in "befriending" his "beloved poet". <end spoiler>

 in the sense that the authors (Nabokov & Morrison) writes 

 such that, taken out of context, the lines shine on their own, but in context they're just ramblings of someone engulfed in self-delusion [of grandeur]. the distance-gap of knowing between us as a reader vs. the character saying it just permeates the whole book. 

it's such a good exercise in actually engaging with text, inherently through its form interrogating the notion of passively accepting text as 

 can you, as a reader, read between these lines? do you fully accept what Kinbote is saying? can you see the cracks forming even as he tries to polish it over? can you trust this text, his voice, the circumstances of this book?

madina

i did NOT expect it to be this funny ironic and absurd LOL... 

<mild spoilers henceforth> i kept asking myself how would i react to Pale Fire & its commentary as "real" pieces of work vs. knowing of it as a story inside a story. my real-time comments include: "ah narsis bgt nih org" (of Kinbote); "WHO THE HELLLL DO YOU THINK YOU AREE" (p. 114), etc. if it was a real work no doubt i would mark it with 2 star (or, DNF) & say that i liked the poem but complain of a Commentary that makes no sense. as its actual form here, i find it so funny that Charles thinks so lowly of psychoanalysis when we can read between the lines what he truly is like & what his actual motivations are in "befriending" his "beloved poet". <end spoiler>

this book reminds me of Jazz in the sense that the authors (Nabokov & Morrison) writes beautifully such that, taken out of context, the lines shine on their own, but in context they're just ramblings of someone engulfed in self-delusion [of grandeur]. the distance-gap of knowing between us as a reader vs. the character saying it just permeates the whole book. 

it's such a good exercise in actually engaging with text, inherently through its form interrogating the notion of passively accepting text as Truth: can you, as a reader, read between these lines? do you fully accept what Kinbote is saying? can you see the cracks forming even as he tries to polish it over? can you trust this text, his voice, the circumstances of this book?

I think perhaps pale fire walked so 'biography of x' could run

B.A. Bacigal

Evan

I don't know what I was expecting, but I don't think it was a comedy.
 
I enjoyed "Pale Fire" quite a bit. In terms of its structure, I think it's a very impressive feat to see something like this play with its medium in its time. To me, anything existing this "meta" before the Internet is immediately worthy of praise. It's very unique and having read "House of Leaves" earlier in my life, there's simply no doubt that drew inspiration from this. I find it amusing that critics at the time called it "a total wreck" and "unreadable". The Internet has made this book quite tame.
 
In terms of its story, I will say I feel a tad disappointed. Not horribly so, as I give it 4 stars, but I just feel like the story doesn't live up to the incredible structuring. It's pretty easy to predict what is going on with Kinbote; I suppose part of the narrative is just deciding how much of this obviously unreliable narrator is to be trusted.
For me, Kinbote was as honest as the smug prick could be. I didn't care much for Shade's poetry -- though I think this is pretty intentional as I'd guess it wasn't for me -- I think "Pale Fire" was at its best when Kinbote was really letting loose about someone or something and letting his emotions get the better of him. He's a very funny character, and while he's supposedly trying to play an academic, he lets his feelings get the better of him pretty often. These outbursts, however brief, were my favorite part of the story.
 
I see why this book was chosen as an integral part of "Blade Runner 2049"'s plot. I see a lot of 'You're not the main character' energy, here.
 
I enjoyed "Pale Fire" and would recommend it to a patient reader who enjoys a certain type of sardonic humor.

Poem was great. Nabakov succeded in painting the portrait he intended, but it was not a pleasant ride. The character of Kinbote felt very real and I think anybody who reads this will agree on the type of person he is, which was Nabakov's intent. However, this book was almost agonizing to read at times, and I did not find the significant message I expected. It's written fantastically, the poem is amazing, and the characters feel real, but overall I didn't feel this was worth the pain of getting through it.

Leo Valentine

Dang Nguyen

"It is the writer's grief. It is the wild".
A timeless masterpiece. One of the most atypical novel in which distinctive elements of wording combine. There's a sense of thematic structure with deep, prosperous nuances lying beneath the ground of every poem.

D D D 

honestly didn’t really like this one. maybe not in the headspace for this. I did love the poem though

Andrew John Kinney

Since there are hundreds of reviews of Pale Fire, and over 80 books that have been written about Nabokov's masterpiece, I'll avoid too much analysis and focus on the way I approached this book. If you've read Lolita, you know Nabokov likes unreliable narrators, and Kinbote is the classic Nabokovian example. I tried reading the book by delving into Kinbote's "notes" and referring back to the lines of the poem they referenced, but I quickly realized that Nabokov was having a bit of fun with readers who take such a literal approach, so then I read the book straight through, and like Lolita, it is, most of it, a galloping romp. The constructed world of Zembla is so detailed and interesting; now I look forward to reading Speak, Memory to hear the true account of Nab's upbringing. 

There is so much going on below the surface here that I will absolutely need to read parts of the book again. Thanks to Lori for pointing out the importance of reading the Preface, and for encouraging me to finish when I got frustrated with flipping back and forth between "notes" and lines of the poem. There is so much to say about Pale Fire, that I'll confine myself to this: don't worry about all the theories about who the real narrator is, or who Botkin is, or the role of Hazel's ghost, etc. The book stands alone as a good read; once you've read the surface story, you can go back to dig into the undercurrents. This is a book to return to over and over.

Ben Burns

I had read that Pale Fire was the best of Nabokov, and I wanted to go in without knowing much more than that.  And I was excited to get back into his beautiful prose.  I didn't realize, though, that this was going to be written in such a similar voice to Pnin and Lolita.  Pale Fire was still full of those delicate, original sentences that make his books worthwhile, but overall it didn't really draw me in, so it took me a while to finish. 

Don't get me wrong: the poem-and-commentary device was impressively intricate, and it was fun to refer back and forth and find connections. And a lot of individual sentences were works of art worth highlighting. But I didn't enjoy the experience of being slightly annoyed by the narrator, and the unreliable-narrator reveal was too blatant (or too opaque, apparently, depending on which critic you believe).

Christopher McCaffery

But can one ever really finish reading this?

Nicholas Hanemann

Truly disappointing. As a puzzle, it isn't stimulating; as a character study, it's not evocative. The poem is quite good though.

a novel

Simon Elliott Stegall

Amazing book. I can't believe it's not more well known. 

Despite the fact that English was Nabokov's third language, his writing is better than 99% of books I've ever read. Gorgeous and hilarious prose, a huge vocabulary, and eloquent and surprising metaphors.

Also the story is mysterious, intense, and wonderfully satirical of the academic English Department practice of "commenting" on other writers' works. I love this book and will probably reread in years to come.

Nathan Griffin

Interesting way to tell a story and Nabokov's prose is really, really, good. I liked it overall, but didn't love it. I wish Goodreads allowed half stars, but since Nabokov was a fussy man and threw lots of shade at Dostoevsky, it gets 3 stars.

Tara King

Ouch. This completely broke my brain. Not as accessible as Lolita, but fascinating all the same. Thanks again, Nabokov.

Erica

This was the first book by Nabokov that I ever read, and I fell in love with his writing straight away. He's simply brilliant.

Pale Fire

Reviews

Highlights