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.
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.
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.
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.
I saw it as Nabokov's celebration of his own genius and the power it gave him. Quite "the flex" as the young peuple say. He was expert in setting chess problems, lepidoptery, French and Russian cultural and literary arcana, linguistics, politics - especially of the academic kind, psychology, and a few others I am undoubtedly missing. According to what I've read, all that and more is in "Pale Fire."
At that point in his life, I think he knew well that a work like this would be devoured by his fans and vivisected by academics. He alone knew how deep the maze went and the layers of arcane tricks he was pulling. For example, see:
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.
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?
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.
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.
Once upon a time people thought hypermedia solved some problem of publishing but didn't realize IP was the real hurdle (until OpenAI etc "solved" that by embedding the novels in NLP token weights).
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.
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
Sounds absolutely fascinating. I just started the second Hyperion book, but I might have to put it down to prioritize this. It does seem like somewhat of an investment though; as if reading it in bed might not be the most optimal way to enjoy the experience. It might require some more dedicated reading sessions from what I'm seeing in the other threads.
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.
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.
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.
The e-reader UI is generally so much better than paper, if a book is not available for kindle, I'll usually find something else to read. Pale Fire is a special case book where you want two have bookmarks where you are currently working. I read Chuck Palahniuk's Diary on paper, and an e-reader would definitely have ruined it.
Technical books with a lot of charts, diagrams, monospaced code examples, etc can highlight the weaknesses of e-readers. PDFs are almost always better on a tablet.
But for like, words-in-a-row novels that don't mind being re-wrapped, there is no comparison, for me. e-Reader every time.
I prefer paper as an experience, but there are absolutely ways that (e.g.) a Kindle can be superior.
* Control of text size
* Weight
I forget what it was, but at some point I was excitedly reading a new hardback -- and found it so heavy to read in bed that I bought the Kindle edition in addition to the paper one. This also applies for travel, doubly so.
I'm the kind of reader that goes back and forth when reading a novel. I like to go back and re-read when a character was introduced, or simply go back a few pages.
The UI of the Kindle sucks for this. It excels at finding a specific sentence, of course, but not for the kind of flipping pages I enjoy doing.
I read Infinite Jest on my Kindle without any problems. So long as the end notes are linked, it works pretty well. If I had a copy of Pale Fire where the poem line references were linked, it would probably be fine too.
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.
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.
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.
Saturday Night Live sketch circa 1986. He's at a Star Trek convention in a small town and finally snaps at the trivia-mad, stalkerish fans telling them to "Get life, will you people?!"
Readit News
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.
I read it with two copies open, so that I was reading the poem and the endnotes in parallel.
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.
I say this name in Christopher Lloyd's voice: "That's Kinbotay! Tay! Tay!!"
In my head, of course.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIyDJxP-b6o
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...
At that point in his life, I think he knew well that a work like this would be devoured by his fans and vivisected by academics. He alone knew how deep the maze went and the layers of arcane tricks he was pulling. For example, see:
https://thenabokovian.org/classics/barabtarlo-fa84 via https://thenabokovian.org
Also, https://thenabokovian.org/forum/6 and https://thenabokovian.org/nabokv-l for 25+ years of a Nabokovian mailing list.
It's all imbued with a cruelty that some of the very brilliant enjoy displaying.
And obviously the lettering is a lyrical joy.
10/10
Только если вам не нравится Достоевский! Но мало кто может сравниться с Набоков.
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
Sounds absolutely fascinating. I just started the second Hyperion book, but I might have to put it down to prioritize this. It does seem like somewhat of an investment though; as if reading it in bed might not be the most optimal way to enjoy the experience. It might require some more dedicated reading sessions from what I'm seeing in the other threads.
They do take up a shitload less space, which is a pretty big advantage, though.
The e-reader UI is generally so much better than paper, if a book is not available for kindle, I'll usually find something else to read. Pale Fire is a special case book where you want two have bookmarks where you are currently working. I read Chuck Palahniuk's Diary on paper, and an e-reader would definitely have ruined it.
Technical books with a lot of charts, diagrams, monospaced code examples, etc can highlight the weaknesses of e-readers. PDFs are almost always better on a tablet.
But for like, words-in-a-row novels that don't mind being re-wrapped, there is no comparison, for me. e-Reader every time.
* Control of text size * Weight
I forget what it was, but at some point I was excitedly reading a new hardback -- and found it so heavy to read in bed that I bought the Kindle edition in addition to the paper one. This also applies for travel, doubly so.
I'm the kind of reader that goes back and forth when reading a novel. I like to go back and re-read when a character was introduced, or simply go back a few pages.
The UI of the Kindle sucks for this. It excels at finding a specific sentence, of course, but not for the kind of flipping pages I enjoy doing.
I read both on paper, using two bookmarks.
What people who adopted e-readers often say is that e-readers can be more convenient and take less space.
But nobody says "paper sucks".
Anyways, if you've seen my cat please feed him.
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.