Tyler's Blog Death of Destiny

“Pale Fire” by Vladimir Nabokov (4/5)

Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov
ISBN 0-679-72342-0

Pale Fire is a fictional novel by Vladimir Nabokov. It is written like a textbook composed of four parts: an introduction for the text, a poem, a commentary on the poem, and an index for the text.

The text itself is entirely based on the poem (named "Pale Fire"). "Pale Fire" is a 999 line poem (supposedly unfinished) written by John Shade. He was killed just prior to finishing his poem according to Charles Kinbote. Charles Kinbote is the writer of the introduction, commentary, and index. He is the neighbour of Shade and, like Shade, is a professor at Wordsmith University. Kinbote witnessed Shade's murder by the third main character of Pale Fire: Gradus.

One last important thing to note, John Shade wrote "Pale Fire" mostly as his story prior, during, and after the suicide of his daughter Hazel Shade (who killed herself due to her appearance). Kinbote, however, appears to (at least, judging by the entirety of his text) believe that the poem is written based on his own homeland (a country named Zembla). And thus, a major aspect of the novel is to determine what is true and what is untrue. It is also a good lesson in "Never trust the narrator".

The plot itself is very amusing (in an absurd sort of way). Also amusing is the patterns, riddles, and absurdities that occur in the book. The amount of these is immense. To briefly name a few... the commentary goes in circles between lines 47-48 and 62, 80 and 275 and 434, and 270 and 993-995 (to name a few; this happens in the Index as well). In the note to line 584, Kinbote refers to a non-existant portion of the commentary. Absurd portions exist throughout (eg. "damn that music", "as our shadows still walk without us", "the lost glove is happy"). And there are random dirty symbolisms all over the place (eg. "smooth column").

The characters in the novel are very well developed, and the writing style is fairly easy to read (ignoring the absurd aspects). All in all, I really enjoyed this novel. I've read it several times already, and everytime I discover new things. It's quite a remarkable, well-thought-out, and well-written novel. I'll probably end up reading it at least once every couple of years to see what else I can pick up. For a rating, I'll give it 4 out of 5 stars.