Rating: 
Summary: Such beauty and such jokes should be illegal.
Review: When you examine the sweep of literary history, if you can call it that, there is the occasional oddball book that does not fit on anyone else's scale. You might give Ana Karenina a 10 as a big fat classic, the sum of its own particular field; but where do you put that which is both deeply experimental (as in avant-garde) and honed to heart-rending perfection? This book is it; the category is the Pale Fire category. Read and weep over John Shade's 999-line poem about worrying about death while extracting the finest nectar from life; then giggle and slap yourself for 200 pages of commentary by the quite insane and quite engaging Charles Kinbote, deposed King and pederast extroardinaire.
The great thing in Nabokov, if you follow from Lolita to this book and then onto Ada, is that the more convoluted the structure, the more 'pretentious' (the web of references, the difficulty of making syntactic sense of a given paragraph) he gets, the more moving it all becomes, elevating banal literary incidents (death, sex, infidelity) to dizzying heights. Read the account of Shade's daughter Hazel's death if you want to know what I mean (end of part II of poem). Read it all through several times, which you'll have to do, and each time a different jangle will go up your spine, just as the Master intended.
Rating:
Summary: The most perfectly consructed book I've ever read.
Review: What an unusual piece of fiction! Beginning with a substantial poem, the real story begins after the final stanza, hidden among the weft of the poem's critique and annotation. The main character is the literary critic himself, unwitting of his true role in the story he weaves. Nabokov's masterpiece thrives on many levels, as poetry, as critique, as one man's story, and as the dark mystery revealed as we explore the mind of the critic.
Nabokov has much in common with Joseph Conrad. Both explore what is mysterious amid the mundane, and both present an intrigue that does not impose on the poetry of language or the fullness of character. In fact, in Pale Fire, it is because of the skill and fullness that the story's mystery is sustained.
This odd tale is like a perfectly constructed puzzle. Its many intricate and intriguing components are compelling in their own right, and they further compel the reader to explore their intricate possibilities. And when, finally, the pieces come together as a whole, we are left with a beautiful and troubling portrait, a bit of delicious poetry and prose, and a joyous "Aha!!" .
Rating:
Summary: Nabokov's Tour de Force
Review: Pale Fire is the name of a 999-line poem in four cantos by the "distinguished American poet" John Shade, published posthumously in a lovingly prepared edition with a foreword and detailed commentary by the Zemblan literary scholar Charles Kinbote. Pale Fire is also the name of the novel by Vladimir Nabokov in which the poem is written by Shade and annotated by Kinbote, who are Nabokov's creations. The novel is actually written in the form of poem and scholarly apparatus, not omitting a thorough index. It is a perfect and perfectly original union of form and meaning. It is also wickedly, outrageously funny. The poem itself is a complicated, beautiful, mysterious achievement. It reveals the character of John Shade so completely and movingly that we have to keep reminding ourselves that it was actually written by Nabokov, himself. The poem is the heart of the novel, literally and figuratively, although the commentary no doubt constitutes the most interesting reading. Pale Fire is Shade's final work; possibly his greatest work. It is the product of every thought and experience in a long, thoughtful life, and it also contains that entire life: childhood, adolescence, marriage, fatherhood, old age and death. The title refers to the "pale fire of time," and is taken from a poem by Yeats and not from Shakespeare, as Kinbote confidently suggests. Or is Nabokov simply leading us on a merry chase? Better check Timon of Athens to be sure. And Kinbote is frequently wrong in his confident suggestions in the commentary. He identifies allusions where none exist; fails to recognize those that are actually there (he is writing his notes in a remote cabin in the Rockies and complains that he has no books to check his references), and suggests interpretations which are clearly, hilariously, wrong. The hapless Dr. Kinbote has got it into his head that Pale Fire (the poem) is really about himself, and his commentary is an audacious attempt to demonstrate this. So, almost ignoring what is actually present in the poem, he proceeds through the commentary to give a detailed history of his own life and times, often revealing far more than he really means to do. And it turns out to be quite a good story, because Kinbote, a native of the remote northern European country of Zembla, has had quite an adventurous past. It is only a pity that it is quite irrelevant to Shade's poem. Kinbote just happens to be a man who doesn't do anything by halves; even the most innocuous phrase of the poem is "demonstrated" to be a cryptic reference to some event in Kinbote's life. Pale Fire is nothing if it is not great fun. But Pale Fire is not merely amusing and inventive. Kinbote's commentary seems to be everything literary criticism should not be; but it is actually only an extreme, exaggerated version of what literary criticism truly is. Kinbote attempts to rewrite Shade's poem in his own image and likeness, but this is true to a greater or lesser extent--or a more or less subtle extent--of every critic, amateur or professional. Pale Fire is thus a complex, and ultimately rather touching, demonstration of the way people have of reading their lives into books and reading books into their lives, like Kinbote. (And also, the way we have of writing our lives into books and writing books into our lives, like Shade.) It is an affirmation of the power of literature, of the power of books to help us make sense of our lives, and of the impossibility of distinguishing precisely where art ends and life begins. To quote John Shade: I feel I understand/ Existence, or at least a minute part/ Of my existence, only through my art,/ In terms of combinational delight;/ And if my private universe scans right,/ So does the verse of galaxies divine/ Which I suspect is an iambic line. Almost every reader can remember that one particular novel, poem or play that seemed to have been written for him and him alone. The one the reader took so personally, it changed his entire outlook on life and which even now he cannot discuss rationally or impartially. Every passionate reader knows of just such a book or even books. So, perhaps we should spare one or two sympathetic thoughts for the poor, but smitten, Dr. Kinbote even as we laugh uproariously at his well-intentioned mistakes.
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: Masterpiece
Review: An original and one-of-a-kind art form. The story occurs not mainly in the text, but in the "notes," and not so much in what is told, but in how it is told. The commentator/annotator, Kinbote, is obsessed with telling his story -- but the keys are in the manner and craziness of how he tells it. "Pale Fire" is a wonderful and transporting journey.
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Summary: A quadruple bank shot within a quadruple bank shot...
Review: Regarding "Pale Fire":
A narrator, Charles Kinbote, who may or may not be a deposed king in hiding, proffers the reader an elliptical, line-by line commentary to an extraordinary 999 line poem, the centerpiece of the novel and itself entitled "Pale Fire", said to be authored by another character, the otherwise taciturn John Shade. Kinbote's lengthy commentary (he urges the reader to buy two copies of the book so that he may more easily refer to the poem while reading the annotations) concerns little of the actual poem but focuses instead upon an exotic northern nation, Zembla, and an evolving revolutionary conspiracy, both of which may or may not be anything more than the elaborate imaginings of his deranged mind. Meanwhile, almost disguised amongst a great variety of fantastical and artistic wanderings, one stumbles across the numerical and emotional centerpiece of the poem. These lines concern Shade's overweight teenage daughter who, rejected by a blind date, decides to go ice-walking and plunges forever into the freezing black depths of Lake Omega. Just after finishing his poem (which Kinbote fervently strains to interpret as Zemblan-inspired, but is more apparently an exquisitely prolonged biographical musing on the nature of life and death) Shade is murdered by a man who is either Gradus, an assassin attempting an ill-aimed regicide upon Kinbote, or an anonymous lunatic exacting revenge upon a judge, mistakenly thought to be Shade, who had sentenced him to a facility for the criminally insane.
Finally, in the last paragraphs, with this intricate narrative edifice on the verge of total collapse, Nabokov brutally rips down the literary proscenium, abruptly revealing his labyrinthine construct as the product of a "healthy, heterosexual, Russian professor" who muses upon his next move before signing off for good, but not before supplying us with an annotated Index.
The first lines of the poem read thusly:
"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff--and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!"
Fascinating in and of itself, it is equally absorbing to speculate upon the numerous ripples of post-modernist thought Pale Fire might have generated within intellectual circles of the early sixties. For example, is it possible that Nabokov had an impact upon the visual arts? The sculptor Robert Smithson published a short piece entitled "The Crystal Land" in "Harper's Bazaar" in 1966. From another Smithson piece, written about the same time, comes the following excerpt:
"Each framework supports the reflections of a concatenated interior. The interior structure of the room surrounding the work is instantaneously undermined. The surfaces seem thrown back into the wall. "Space" is permuted into a multiplicity of directions. One becomes conscious of space attenuated in the form of elusive flat planes. The space is both crystalline and collapsible. In the rose piece the floor hovers over the ceiling. Vanishing points are deliberately inverted in order to increase one's awareness of total artifice."
Nabokov: The exquisite pleasures of the quadruple bank shot within a quadruple bank shot. The haunting impossibility of a single frame of reference, and the death of direct experience. But what a gorgeous thing he creates in their stead.
Rating:
Summary: First impressions: a personal review
Review: Vladimir Nabokov has always been one of my favorite writers. I've read "Lolita" twice and think I'm not quite finished yet with this book. Since I like his writing and ideas so much, I thought I should try his "Pale Fire", a book that has been highly recommended to me by many people, and that looks difficult and challenging enough for me devote my time. It turns out these impressions weren't wrong.
"Pale Fire" is brilliant, certainly one of the best books ever written in English. It is difficult. Nabokov's language, approach and style are labored enough to drive any experienced reader insane. And, despite the fact that I can't say I totally understood the book, I'm willing to tell that I loved it. Why? Because every word sounds brilliant and placed in the right place where it is supposed to be. Because his style and structure were demanding, and as a reader this is what we should look for: something different from the usual, something that would challenge our minds.
The writer toyed with the idea of hypertext much before it was a trend. Compound of a poem and its comments, reading "Pale Fire" makes the reader goes back and forth to follow the poem and its interpretation. But, this is not the only hypertext structure, in the comments, every time the writer mentions another line etc.
However strange it may sound, "Pale Fire" still has a plot. Actually many plots -- like any good many-layered book. One of the plots deal with the "Pale Fire" poem writer and his relationship with his neighbor, who happens to be the writer who is annotating the poem. There is something sick going between these two and their tacit dispute to see who is more brilliant. On another level, there is another story -- something a little magical, a little political-- involving a king.
Due to its complexity and brilliance, Nabokov's "Pale Fire" is a book (it is tempting to say `a novel', but it is not really a novel -- it is more a book of literary critic or something) that deserves multiple reading. I'm sure that every time we read this superb book we'll find something new that only proves what a genius this magnificent writer is. His words prove that he says, "True art is above false honor". "Pale Fire" certainly is one of the truest forms of art possible, and I'm willing to reread it in a couple of years.
Rating:
Summary: King of Stalkers
Review: An obsessive tour de force; the story of a "famous" poet's death, told by a narrator whose aspirations to literary critic lead him to narrate his own story through what is alllegedly an analysis of the poet's final work. The 999-line poem, an account of the dead poet's daughter's suicide (oh yes), dwindles in importance as the endnotes take over. By the end it stops figuring in the notes altogether.
Our narrator's derangement gets clearer as the book goes on. Parodying critical glosses (especially Norton's, which are so pedantic and sometimes so bizarre), the "critic's" notes stray farther and farther from the poem. At one point the word "often" in the poem is glossed, at the end, with a lengthy account of the critic's youth, beginning "Often, when I was young...."
Amazing language. The poem is pleasantly awful. A surprisingly quick read. Overall, an utterly bizarre and wonderful journey; this books has the kind of structure that can only be done once. It's original in the way "Being John Malkovich" is original. Wonderful, twisted, complete with a cat wearing a bowtie.
Rating: 
Summary: Beyond the Pale Fire
Review: Fire - a timeless subject. Perhaps rivalling the wheel in terms of its importance in human development, fire has been an important companion in our teleological quest towards perfection. This book didn't really directly tackle the subject of fire as poignantly as would suit my tastes. If you're interested in furthering your knowledge of fire I recommend the movie "Quest for Fire", the song "Fire" by Arthur Brown, and "Backdraft."
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Summary: Adventures in Paranoid Hermeneutics
Review: The most interesting thing about Pale Fire, to me, is that such a wild experiment works so beautifully. Even the horrible poem, "Pale Fire," is just as it ought to be. The story, as you know, is told in the introduction and footnotes to the poem, which are written by a fictional madman, C. Kinbote.
Nabokov suggests that Kinbote's way of reading, to take possession of a text and wrap a narrative around it, is everyone's. And this process is certaintly not rational. Kinbote isn't. He toys with his imagined reader to amuse himself, inventing a fantastic biogrpahy for himself, and telling whomever will listen about it. Perhaps you know someone like this.
A caveat: Fifty years after publication, Nabokov's implicitly anti-gay and (weirdly) anti-vegetarian (Kinbote is both) agenda seem well out of line. But in the liquor-and-pills context of 1950's bombshelter America, homosexuality or vegetarianism would have been taken as signs of mental incapacity, as lefthandedness would have been. Nabokov's point is the madness, not snide bigotry.
The joke may be on us, readers. The rest is silence.
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