Rating: 
Summary: only because i can't give 6 stars
Review: hands down, my favorite nabokov novel of all (with the hallucinogenicly poetic "invitation to a beheading" a close second). this book operates on so many levels, and it doesn't give them up on the first read. anyone seeking answers after reading "pale fire" should read the index VERY carefully. the comparisons with "ulysses" are totally valid. where joyce uses narrative experimentation to provide the total picture of his characters' inner lives, nabokov uses literary criticism. these characters are so rich! interesting note--nabokov wrote this after translating and annotating a 10-volume edition of "eugene onegin." the question you have to ask yourself when reading this book (for the first or fiftieth time) is this: who is the real author of this book--shade or kinbote? and are they one in the same?
Rating:
Summary: Now my favorite book
Review: I remember this awful woman I had for 10th grade literature - the kind who wouldn't allow for any interpretation beyond "The scarlet letter A stands for Adultery" - who would not stop gushing about The Great Gatsby. Her almost daily comment regarding Fitzgerald's classic was that "every word was carefully and purposefully placed."
I never believed that that could be the case with any piece of literature (I mean, Fitzgerald really thought about every article and preposition he wrote?), but Pale Fire immediately made me think of her words.
I have never read a book so thoroughly enjoyable - linguistically, conceptually, phonetically, ironically. I loved it in the same way I loved Eliot's The Wasteland, Lynda Barry's Cruddy, and the film 21 Grams. It plays with narrator credibility - an always fascinating theme - in a way I've never seen before.
Give it a shot, you won't be disappointed.
Rating: 
Summary: pale fire is too "pale"
Review: nabokov probably had more fun writing this book than you will have reading it. he was a novelist, poet, college professor, and critic which covers all of the characters in this book. he has particular fun with the critic who tries to analyze every aspect of the 999 line poem and bend it to meet his desired application rather than the clear intent of the author. this at times can be entertaining and funny, but it is overused and losses its originality quickly. the story wished to be told by the critic, kinbote, about his native country and the overthrow of its king adds nothing to the novel. that is probably why the poet, john shaw, didn't write about it to begin with. the real value of the book is the "pale fire" poem of john shaw. it speaks for itself and really requires no interpretation. although the structure of the book, half poem-half novel, is creative, nabokov never brings the concept past the inanities of the selfabsorptive dr kimbote. the book that starts bright with "pale fire" dims in the hands of kinbote.
Rating:
Summary: only because i can't give 6 stars
Review: hands down, my favorite nabokov novel of all (with the hallucinogenicly poetic "invitation to a beheading" a close second). this book operates on so many levels, and it doesn't give them up on the first read. anyone seeking answers after reading "pale fire" should read the index VERY carefully. the comparisons with "ulysses" are totally valid. where joyce uses narrative experimentation to provide the total picture of his characters' inner lives, nabokov uses literary criticism. these characters are so rich! interesting note--nabokov wrote this after translating and annotating a 10-volume edition of "eugene onegin." the question you have to ask yourself when reading this book (for the first or fiftieth time) is this: who is the real author of this book--shade or kinbote? and are they one in the same?
Rating:
Summary: amazing!
Review: This book is so incredible. All I can say is that I re-read it 4 times year and still drown in it. Totally brilliant!
Rating:
Summary: Now my favorite book
Review: I remember this awful woman I had for 10th grade literature - the kind who wouldn't allow for any interpretation beyond "The scarlet letter A stands for Adultery" - who would not stop gushing about The Great Gatsby. Her almost daily comment regarding Fitzgerald's classic was that "every word was carefully and purposefully placed."
I never believed that that could be the case with any piece of literature (I mean, Fitzgerald really thought about every article and preposition he wrote?), but Pale Fire immediately made me think of her words.
I have never read a book so thoroughly enjoyable - linguistically, conceptually, phonetically, ironically. I loved it in the same way I loved Eliot's The Wasteland, Lynda Barry's Cruddy, and the film 21 Grams. It plays with narrator credibility - an always fascinating theme - in a way I've never seen before.
Give it a shot, you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Mad, bad and glorious to know
Review: Take everything you knew or thought about Vladimir Nabokov, and stuff it in the trash. Experimental novel "Pale Fire" is a strange, haunting, magical experience, and as different from most novels as it can get. Like a textured surrealist painting, that is hard to take in on only one reading, let alone describe to someone who's never read it. "Pale Fire" is a poem, 999 lines and divided into four cantos, written by poet John Shade. It's moving, vibrant and breathtaking. And it's posthumously annotated by scholar (and head case) Charles Kinbote, supposedly from the fictional Zembla (don't ask). In the "backwoods," Kinbote overdissects and reexamines the strange poem. Increasingly he is drawn into the web of words, stuck on the poem and believing it to be about him. A strain of subtle, dark humor runs through "Pale Fire." Not funny-ha-ha humor, but one that only becomes apparent if you study it. In a nutshell, the humor here pokes at critics who read what they want to see into literature. Everyone has seen a passage or a line that strikes them to the soul. The entirety of "Pale Fire" does this to Kinbote, and his obsession with making it about himself is weirdly hypnotic. Most unique (and funny) is the sort of analysis that Kinbote does of "Pale Fire." It's overblown, unlikely, and tailored to his delusions. He sees what he wants to see, and tries to turn ordinary phrases into deep allusions, and even adjust the whole point of the poem. What else do literary analysts do? It's hilarious to see Kinbote bend, twist and mangle every little phrase to fit. After all, who hasn't heard that "Lord of the Rings" is about World War II or the atom bomb? Or listened to a professor pinning a mess of Freudian theory on poor Hamlet? The poem "Pale Fire" is the soul and core of this unorthodox novel. Perhaps only in A.S. Byatt's "Possession" does another poem so completely show the soul of a fictional character. Nabokov's poetry has the classic flavor of his prose. It's delicate and evocative without being overdescriptive. "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/In the false azure of the windowpane" is among the loveliest excerpts, from the very beginning of the first canto. And Nabokov's narrative is both dizzying and madly brilliant. He takes us on a ride into Kinbote's very, very disturbed mind and makes the journey stranger as the book goes on. At the same time, he crafts this as a puzzle. Not a mystery, a puzzle. Hints are dropped, questions are raised, and just try to dare to overanalyze any of it. "Pale Fire" is a book that has to be read to be believed: A satire within a poem within a novel. Unique and witty, spellbinding and avant-garde, this is a thinking reader's classic.
Rating:
Summary: if ever a novel deserved 5 stars...
Review: Let's put things straight from the start: this is a weird novel, practically a genre unto itself. It consists of a long poem ("pale fire") supposedly written by a fictional american poet (John Shade) and the subsequent notes/commentary, written by an equally fictional character: Charles Kinbote, a man who claims to be a scholar from the country (fictional again) of Zembla. Now, far from being a reliable annotator, Kinbote bends every word of the poem (hilariously so because it's far too evident) so as to mantain that Shade's autobiographical poem is in fact about the story of Zembla (and Kinbote's personal tragedy).
This was intended as a satire against critics who, in Nabokov's opinion, tend to see in other people poems meanings and hints that are not really there.
While the concept immediately got my attention, I feared that it might be marred by boring execution. Boy, how was I wrong... Eventually I couldn't put it down until I had finished it!
Rating: 
Summary: A novel told in an interesting form
Review: Reclusive American poet John Shade composes a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire" and finishes it on the day of his death. One of his fellow professors at Wordsmith University, Dr. Charles Kinbote, is given the poem in rough draft form by Shade just minutes before his death and decides to publish it. What follows is the story of the poem, but told in a unique fashion. The foreward and commentary to the poem are told by Dr. Kinbote, who idolizes Shade. He's a bit disappointed, though, because he was trying to direct Shade's thoughts, to have him write about his homeland of Zembla; instead, Shade took the poem in a different direction. Kinbote's commentary is filled with his attempts to sway Shade with stories of King Charles II of Zembla's exile, of his preference for young men, his own interpretations of what Shade must have been thinking when writing the lines, and as the reader soon discovers, Kinbote's own secret truth about King Charles. It's an interesting study into idol-worship (Kinbote's for Shade) and has some political intrigue thrown in to make it interesting and told in a unique way.
Rating: 
Summary: An Expert Experiment
Review: One of the most formally experimental novels ever written, Pale Fire is the name of a 999 line cyclical poem (the last line can be continued to the first line, ad infin). The body of the book is the 'commentary' on the poem, written by Charles Kinbote, a man who is so obsessed with the poet John Shade, that he moves in next door. Even a fictional 'editor' provides an explanation in the forward of this book about the poem. Of course, this is all Nabokov's invention, as he uses these 'non-fictional' formal devices to elaborate the depth of this intricate masterpiece. Each 'segment' varies in length from one sentence to thirty pages, as Kinbote, the narrator, is convinced that the poem was written for him, and uncovers a strange fictional world known as Zembla (yes, a fiction within a fiction veiled as an editorial commentary- bravo Nabokov) that reads like a myth, in which King Charles is being pursued by Gradus through intra-dimensions. Slowly readers are led to suspect that Kinbote is insane, and that King Charles is really Kinbote's alter ego. When assassin Gradus enters the 'reality' of Kinbote and Shade, havoc erupts. Only Shade's wife is onto Kinbote, providing some of the funniest moments in this book. As if this isn't enough, the poem itself is another 'story'-that of Shade's drowned daughter, hauntingly and beautifully written. This novel deconstructs reader's traditional orientation with 'fictional reality', to a level where everything is simply in the mind of some arbitrary entity- be it the author, narrator, commenter, or reader. Just about the time when readers begin asking themselves in this literary chaos how the poem was even 'published', they will discover exactly who all these faces really are.
| 
