Don't be terrified of Pale Fire

[acabal]

Pale Fire has been my favorite book for a long, long time, ever since I read it as part of a course in university. After all these years I haven't read a better, more intricately-constructed book.

It was suggested to me to read the intro first, then skip the poem and read the endnotes start to finish, then to go back and read the poem. The index is part of the fiction and must also be read.

I think the keys to really enjoying Pale Fire are 1) to realize that while the subject matter is ostensibly serious, Kinbote is really a comic figure, and you're meant to be laughing a lot of the time; and 2) the great puzzles to unravel are who is John Shade, who is Charles Kinbote, are any of them even real, and who wrote the poem? The book is so beautifully written that it can be argued that none of those questions have definitive answers - and thinking about them, and how Nabokov threads clues and possibilities throughout the novel, without any of them seeming to be contradictory, is the pleasure.

[fsaid]

Shade's diminished excitement for evidence of the afterlife after meeting "Mrs.Z" was a surprisingly funny moment in the poem (even before he discovered the misprint of mountain to fountain). So much so that I wasn't sure if I was misinterpreting the poems content.

  But if (I thought) I mentioned that detail 
  She’d pounce upon it as upon a fond 
  Affinity, a sacramental bond,
  Uniting mystically her and me,
  And in a jiffy our two souls would be 
  Brother and sister trembling on the brink 
  Of tender incest.

[zem]

> It was suggested to me to read the endnotes first, start to finish, then to go back and read the poem.

I read it with two copies open, so that I was reading the poem and the endnotes in parallel.

[causi]

none of those questions have definitive answers

I will limit my criticism to saying that this is a trope adopted very often these days and it is not one to which my personality is suited. I like mysteries but I do not like treadmills, running without arriving.

[OldGuyInTheClub]

"Kinbote is really a comic figure"

I say this name in Christopher Lloyd's voice: "That's Kinbotay! Tay! Tay!!"

In my head, of course.

[chch]

I always saw Pale Fire as somewhat of self-parody, which made me enjoy it more.

Seven years before Pale Fire came out, Nabokov was working on his translation of Eugene Onegin. Often, people argue that a translated novel should have no end/footnotes, because a "good translation" should read "naturally" to a reader. Nabokov disagreed, and wrote an article that included the phrase:

> "I want translations with copious footnotes, footnotes reaching up like skyscrapers to the top of this or that page so as to leave only the gleam of one textual line between commentary and eternity." [1]

Quite a fun image, and one he took somewhat seriously, as his endnote commentary for Onegin is more than twice as long as the translation itself! [2]

So, for me personally, I can't imagine a world where he didn't reflect on his own zeal here, and realize "I think there's a novel idea in here somewhere!"

[1] "Problems in Translation: Onegin in English." Partisan Review 22, no. 4 (1955): 512.

[2] https://secondstorybooks.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/136717...

[mlsu]

I read Pale Fire on the plane recently. Picked it up randomly, knew almost nothing about it. It is absolutely riotous. Most of the references probably went over my head, but I was immediately annoyed, then grinning about how annoyed I was, then tearing into the next page to try to unwrap just who the hell is Kinbote. About 10 pages in you will discover that you're never going to fully figure it out, and then the question is where the hell is this character going to take you. To the fractal depths of his soul, turns out.

And obviously the lettering is a lyrical joy.

10/10

[wmorse]

I read it randomly, too, having found it in a summer vacation house. Found it hilarious, once I finally caught on, and went back and re-read it over the summer. Isn't most "great" literature best read if you discover it yourself? Much more fun than university seminars on Tolstoevsky, не так ли?

[adolph]

Interesting:

The connection between Pale Fire and hypertext was stated soon after its publication; in 1969, the information-technology researcher Ted Nelson obtained permission from the novel's publishers to use it for a hypertext demonstration at Brown University.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Fire

[cxr]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23491587

[recursive]

Funny to think that we're this far into the "information era", and your choices for consuming this book are either physical paper, or general (non-hypermedia) ebook.

[_virtu]

This is hilarious. I bought the book after watching Blade Runner 2049. There's a scene where some of book was being recited as part of the protagonist's anti-empathy test and I figured it had to have a deeper importance to the writers so I grabbed it on a whim. It's been sitting on my shelf. Now I'll have to move it up the list after seeing this.

[dilyevsky]

The book is also in the film - joi offers to read it to k in their first scene I think. Another cool reference there is K’s ringtone is Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf which every soviet kid should recognize from their childhood

[easyKL]

You might enjoy this video: _Blade Runner 2049 | "Cells Interlinked" and Pale Fire (LITERALLY ME! INCELS INTERLINKED)_ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtLvtMqWNz8

[haroldp]

If you are going to read Pale Fire, get it on paper. I tried to read it on my Kindle and the UI is not up to task of lots of flipping back and forth between the poem and the prose sections.

[oraknabo]

I can't imagine trying to manage this on an e-reader. If the notes popped up in a window over the text it would be an ideal way to experience the book, but every epub reader I've ever used makes jumping around a pain and I have a really hard time even hitting the index links on a touchscreen.

[stevenwoo]

I think some sort of hypertext format would be perfect for being able to go back and forth or separate windows open for poem and prose, similar to what others are suggesting with two copies of the book.

[vundercind]

When I tell people the UI of paper books is in most ways superior to ebook readers, this is the kind of thing I mean.

They do take up a shitload less space, which is a pretty big advantage, though.

[ubermonkey]

This is also true of _Infinite Jest_, for the same reason.

I read both on paper, using two bookmarks.

[xhkkffbf]

Some readers say that paper sucks too. The right scheme is to get two copies that advance together. So they could be either Kindle or paper or a mixture.

[meristohm]

Or noDRM, and either duplicate it or split the epub in Calibre.

[zem]

i read it on a kindle and a laptop so i didn't need to flip back and forth

[razadots]

I love Nabokov. In fact, I named a stray cat after him who has since abandoned me. Or I, him. If you want a more approachable book of his to start off (pale fire is tremendous but daunting) I would recommend Laughter in the Dark. It is short and moves effortlessly. The characters are charming and evil. The plot reads like a suspense thriller. It is a wicked, wicked delightfully wicked book.

Anyways, if you've seen my cat please feed him.

[jjtheblunt]

Luzhin's Defense / The Defense / Zashchita Luzhina is awesome too.

[OldGuyInTheClub]

It's a good book that I've read a couple of times but a tiring one. Nabokov puts so many traps and misdirections in it that it becomes a cryptic crossword in a distant language. He is a very smart and clever guy and never tires of reminding the reader of it. He lampoons academia while enabling many an academic career in the process. There are professors aplenty specializing in Nabokov and some in Pale Fire itself.

For s&g I read "Nabokov's Pale Fire : The Magic of Artistic Discovery" by Brian Boyd, one of the aforementioned. It was interesting at first to see how literary criticsm and analysis work but eventually I had a Shatner moment.

[jjtheblunt]

Shatner moment?

[block_dagger]

I was excited to read Pale Fire after reading what I consider to be one of the finest novels ever written, Lolita. The protagonist is a monster, but the writing is so eloquent - and not even in the author's original tongue! Pale Fire was simply boring to me. I am not extremely literary, so a lot of it probably went over my head, but I was rather disappointed it didn't shine like his 1955 masterpiece.

[oraknabo]

Pale Fire is, without a doubt, my favorite thing Nabakov ever wrote. I've been through it at least 5 times but I don't feel as if I've ever fully read it cover-to-cover like other novels. It's just a rough draft of an epic poem (of specious quality) and a bunch of publisher's notes, but it's always intriguing and surprisingly funny.

[The_Blade]

It is sandwiched between Pnin and Speak, Memory

But I really love Invitation to a Beheading. he wrote in three languages!

[Boogie_Man]

"I am the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane

I am the smudge of ashen fluff

And I lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky"

I am ashamed that I will never command my native language as well as a man for whom it was a second. I don't even know if whom is right there.

[edflsafoiewq]

Nabokov's family was trilingual and he could read and write English before he could Russian. It wasn't really a second language to him.

[leephillips]

You destroyed this by altering the linebreaking. And it’s misquoted in other ways.

[gizmo]

When people recommend Russian literature I'm always curious what they think about the other great Russian literary works. Because I find unnecessary complexity unbearable. I have no desire to read literature with 100+ named characters, unreliable narrators and Escher-like chronology. For some people narrative complexity is a draw but if I can't put a book down and come back to it two weeks later without having to start from the beginning it's just not for me.

[kleer001]

Tried it, couldn't get into it. And this was when I was unemployed and living with my now wife. So, I had time galore.

It seems like a book you have to read cover to cover in one sitting to jam it all in your head.

Now, from what I recall I did chuckle a couple times. But other than that it was a big shrug-fest to me. Just couldn't muster a care.

I never thought I'd admit to such base and earthen attitude, nay vulgar. But there we are.

[AlbertCory]

When I saw this, I looked on my bookshelf. I know I read something by Nabokov other than Lolita, and I wondered if it was Pale Fire. It was.

I remember liking it at the time, but that's all. Now I'm going to go back and read it again. Must have missed something.

[johngossman]

Recently read “Pale Fire” for the first time. It’s insanely good. Another review I read made the comment “Nabokov spoils you for other books.” It’s funny, with beautiful sentences, engaging, and the overall format is a welcome break from the normal narrative form.

[xefer]

In Pale Fire, Nabokov coins a couple of great collective nouns when he writes "... an anthology of poets and a brocken of their wives ..."

The Brocken is the highest peak in the Harz mountains of Germany and is where witches are said to gather on Walpurgis Night. So it was quite a subtle dig.

[gwbas1c]

Is this a "Bookworm's book?"

Much like a "skier's mountain" or a "band's band," is this the kind of book that only appeals to a narrow audience that likes to pick apart the mechanics of a book?

Or is this a book like Harry Potter, which was panned by the critics, but otherwise is awesome popular fiction?

[Fezzik]

I love seeing anything Nabokov related pop-up here; all of his books are lessons in how powerful fictional characters can be when crafted well. Read all of his books as soon as you can!

[nickdrozd]

At the end of the foreword, Kinbote says:

> Let me state that without my notes Shade's text simply has no human reality at all, since the human reality of such a poem as his ... has to depend entirely on the reality of its author and his surroundings, attachments and so forth, a reality that only my notes can provide. To this statement my dear poet would probably not have subscribed, but, for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.

Final exam questions:

1. To what extent did Nabokov agree or disagree with this approach to literary criticism?

2. Did Nabokov personally identify more with Shade or with Kinbote?

[vessenes]

Oof, I hate these questions. Nabokov would have hated 1 as a question because Pale Fire is a sort of extended essay about this very thing, written in the voice of a narcissistic obsessive weirdo and providing him with a sort of chorus response as a poem.

2 feels simplistic to me as well, when asked about one of the great masters of characterization. If you ask who did he sympathize with more, then I’d say possibly ‘neither’.

[justin66]

The main thing people who haven't read it need to know is, it's not a difficult read. A great book that's worth reading, but I'm not sure why the reviewer took the approach she did.

[imksclk]

For someone who wants to get into poetry and literature, but has never read anything past the elementary school, would Pale Fire be a good start?

I'm not particularly sharp witted when it comes to books, would it be a good idea to read it in parallel with some sort of an analysis or commentary?

Should I read it translated into my native language (Polish)? I could get through it in English probably, by looking up some of the words. I wonder how much is "lost" when a book like this is translated.