About this title: Generally considered one of Nabokov's greatest works, PALE FIRE consists of a 999-line poem written by a professor named John Shade, and a scholarly commentary on it by his colleague, Charles Kinbote. The novel is a satire of literary scholarship and American university life; it is also a study of creativity in both its constructive and destructive guises--and a remarkable work of poetry as well. Despite its complexity, PALE FIRE was a best-seller when it appeared in 1962, and was nominated for the National Book Award.
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Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Satisfaction Garunteed, Please feel free to ask any Questions! Thanks. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Perigee Books
Date Published: 1980
ISBN-13:9780399504587ISBN:0399504583
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Small amount of underlining and a couple of short handwritten notes, neither affecting text. Good working copy. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 315 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Edition: Reprint
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780679723424ISBN:0679723420
Binding: Perfect Bound Paper
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Corporation
Date Published: 1969
Description: Good + to Very Good- Mass Market Paperback. 16mo-over 5¾"-6¾" tall. N1580. Moderate to heavy wear, PON inside front wrap and on FEP. Old sticker back wrap. (Display Case) read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Lancer
Date Published: 1963
Description: Acceptable. Well used. Still readable but not for the collector. All orders processed within 2 business days. Ships from Foxboro MA. read more
Binding: Mass-market paperback
Publisher: Berkley Medallion
Date Published: 1975
ISBN-13:9780425037843ISBN:0425037843
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Mass market (rack) paperback. Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. Crease on front cover. Minor tanning. Info upon request. Ships next business day read more
Description: Very good; Collectible. Stated 1st Vintage International Edition (paperback 1962). Has a few pages of underlines/marks. Crease on front cover, visible shelfwear. Free deliver confirmation. Satisfaction guaranteed! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Vintage Books
Date Published: 1989-04-01
ISBN-13:9780679723424ISBN:0679723420
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780679723424. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780679723424ISBN:0679723420
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780679723424ISBN:0679723420
Description: Very Good. No Jacket. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. First edition/second printing book is tight with no markings, some tanning to page edges, wraps have some rubbing. read more
"Far be it from my expectations of myself to decipher just what in the hell I read. Did Kinbote invent Shade as a literary device or vice versa? Or were they really two different individuals who happened to live next door to one another? Was Kinbote an exiled king or suffering delusions of grandeur? Does Zembla exist? Obviously we have an unreliable narrator, but does that make his summary of the insane asylum escapee narrative - which he denounces - unreliable as well?
These questions tug at you throughout the whole novel, and in many respects the guessing game is what makes reading it an entertaining experience, but I best leave final answers up to the experts. There are, of course, no experts, because it's impossible to know just what happened. This novel tears down the fourth wall and continues bashing through walls you never knew existed while erecting new ones here and there; the result is we have no context in which to judge the validity of anything we read. Anyone who tells you they've figured it out is missing the point.
The point is a clever novel with an interesting story that is sprinkled throughout with playful witticisms and beautiful language. For those who get wrapped up trying to decipher the "real story" going on there, they should re-read a gorgeous passage near the tail end of Pale Fire: "We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages."
I don't know who the "real" narrator is, nor do I care; I only know that he is a genius."
"I have read every Nabokov novel besides his last, but Pale Fire still remains my favorite, as it continues to cast its shadow on everything I write myself (perhaps too strong of a shadow...). In a close run for second is "Ada or Ardor", followed by "Invitation to a Beheading", and perhaps "The Defense"."
"I (1) liked (2) this book (3), especially the poem (4).
_______________________________________________
(1) When I use the first-person singular pronoun, I am here referring to my normal persona. I have also, at various times, maintained other personas. For example, between 1999 and 2001, I used to play chess regularly on the KasparovChess site under the handle "swedish_chick".
I find this a strange example of what makes people believe things. Everyone was extremely skeptical on first meeting her; but, for some reason, as soon as they discovered that she actually could speak fluent Swedish, they were also ready to believe that she was an attractive 26 year old graduate student living in Stockholm. I still can't explain why this might be.
(2) People liked hearing stories about Chick, as she was known to my circle of friends. At the time, I was working at a start-up in Cambridge, England, and one of my colleagues was a young woman named Gen. Gen took a lively interest in Chick, and helped me considerably with the development of the back-story. Chick borrowed several features from her; in particular, everyone, for some reason, wanted to know if Chick was blonde, and the agreed-on answer was "yes, during the summer at least". Even more remarkably, Gen began to acquire features from Chick, which went as far as learning Swedish and moving to Linköping in order to do a PhD there.
(3) The stories about Chick would fill a small book. She was a charming person, and I've often wished that I were as nice as she was. She was always happy to play chess with lower-rated players, and commented encouragingly on their progress. When people became abusive, as inevitably happens on the Web, she never lost her cool. She would occasionally give regular opponents glimpses of her private life, but only after she had known them for some time, and felt she could trust them. The back-story was in fact quite complicated, even though it was hardly ever used; she was bisexual, and had a female lover in California that she sometimes visited. No one was ever told this straight out, however.
It was inevitable that men would fall for this wonderfully attractive person. The first time, I managed to hide successfully, and he went away after a while. (She had poignantly reminded him of a brief encounter he had had many years ago, that he'd always regretted not following up). The second time, it was too complicated. Her admirer was a regular habitué of KasparovChess, and kept pestering her for a date in real life. He offered to take her on vacation in Germany, and seemed completely smitten. With great regret, we had to terminate Chick.
(4) One day at work, we were discussing clerihews. We looked up some examples on the Web. Suddenly, Gen started laughing uncontrollably; she had been visited by divine inspiration! She rushed to her laptop, and shortly afterwards mailed out the following very fine poem:
Manny Rayner, could be saner Plays chess, in a dress.
Gen is nothing if not PC. I'm sorry that I can't remember the exact text of the accompanying note, but she made it clear that she was not literally implying that I wore women's clothes when I impersonated Chick, and that, if I had chosen to do so, she would have regarded it as a completely defensible exercise of my right to wear apparel that expressed my personality in whatever way I chose."
"This is the third Nabokov book I've read (the Defense and Lolita being the others) and maybe because of it's formal inventiveness, the remark I've seen about hearing the clatter of surgical tools in Nabokov's prose seemed more apt here. And compare that metaphor with Nabokov's own description of Dickens in 'Lec on Lit' -
"All we have to do when reading Bleak House is relax and let our spines take over. Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between our shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and it's tingle."
If only PF were that easy to enjoy. It has undeniable pleasures, mostly in the form of Kinbote, an extremely funny creation, mostly because of his complete pompous self-delusion. Nabokov's hatred of all things Freudian comes through in an especially funny note. And never has diarrhea been described so high-falutin'. But it was a very difficult book for me, requiring constant jumping back and forth and a dictionary within arm's length.
I wish I could give this book 3.5 stars, because ultimately I 'really like' what it's trying to, but I only 'like' what it does.
So what do I think of it? It's can be a hilarious send-up of any literary commentary, a sort of inversion where the commentator takes credit for everything the poet himself has done. But the greatness of this book, I think, lies in the questions you find yourself constantly asking about the point of view. Like Lolita, this book is a masterwork of the unreliable narrator. I don't buy the 'Kinbotean' or 'Shadean' points of view about what's actually going on here. Bryan Boyd notwithstanding, I believe the theory that this book is really the ravings of the mad Russian professor - Botkin - who's only hinted at in the book. Mostly because that sounds more like what Nabokov would write.
But I can't escape the annoyance of dealing with Nabokov and his puzzles. I just feel as if I'm on some type of literary game show with revealing doors and oblique clues that only the most anal retentive would remember and piece together. Literature is in some senses the art of manipulation, but with Nabokov, the feeling of manipulation is much stronger than most. And ultimately, that takes away from that "spinal" enjoyment that Nabokov seems to respect so much in Dickens, and which I find to be the best part about great literature."
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