The thing you want to know in order to get started is whether you ought to read the poem, the one by Shade at the beginning of this book, or whether, with calm of mind, you might skip straight to the meat of the matter, the novel. Just get on with it. Well, to be honest and such, I’d have to give a strong recommendation to read the poem. Not all at once of course. And certainly not as preparation for the novel. That would be asking too much. But read enough of it somehow. Gradually pass along its lines until you get to the next portion keyed into the novel proper. It won’t really work to excise or somehow simply skip the poem. It’s that bleak grey dull background against which the consciousness of our hero King-in-Exile emerges into full round three-dimensional fictional characterhood. And our narrator Kinbote is such a charming fellow.

But what is really of utmost importance is that you also read the entirety of the Index. There’s really no way around that. That’s where the treasure lies.

And give the whole thing Five Stars, if you do that kind of thing. Of course.

Reread this for the first time since I was a teenager. Absolutely stunning and hilarious.

Those of you who wonder why I will put a cow on a king's head when speaking Polish should read "Pale Fire" where my solecism is explained in the following passage on page 261:
"There was an unbelievable case where not two by three words were mixed up. A newspaper account of a Russian Tsar's coronation had, instead of korona (crown), the misprint vorona (crow), and when the next day this was apologetically 'corrected', it got misprinted a second time as korova (cow). The artistic correlation between the crown-crow-cow series and the Russian korona- vorona-korova series is a frequent source of verbal miscues."
I speak Polish and thus have to contend with a four word sequence king- crown-crow-cow which corresponds with krol-krona- vrona-krowa in Polish. Thus I often put the cow on the King's head.
(The Russian sequence is also composed of four words korol-korona- vorona-korova however Nabokov preferred to present only three.)

Ultimately reading a novel by Nabokov is like attending a concert where a master performs a violin sonata by Paganini. You are entertained by a display of senseless virtuosity but receive nothing of value.

For me, this is Nabokov's finest achievement as a writer. Most of his Russian novels was pretty darn special - I loved Laughter in the Dark & Despair, but after arriving in the States maybe it was Americanization that pushed him to greater heights to write more than one masterpiece. This novel, simply put, is one of only a few from the 20th century that is infused with a Shakespearian level of importance. Pale Fire could be seen as many things things: a Jack-in-the-box; a clockwork toy with many components; a chess problem; an enigma; an infernal machine; a trap to catch out readers; a cat-and-mouse game; an inexhaustible mystery. It's a novel that sends your head spinning for all the right reasons. There have been so many theories over the years into its content and interpretation, regarding Kinbote, Shade, the Kingdom of Zembla and the poem itself, but I think it's best for each reader to reach their own conclusions and just enjoy it in the way they see fit. It isn't actually as complicated and cerebral as it sounds. More than anything it is just so much fun to read; without the huffing and puffing and head scratching frustration that I thought might blight the novel. I was almost caught out by the fact that the forward - which I nearly ended up skipping as I don't generally read forwards in case they spoil anything about the novel - was actually part of the novel itself. Again, Nabokov's genius at play. As for Kinbote himself; the university teacher brimming with outrageous delusions obsessing over the old poet and friend John Shade, we have ourselves an hilariously pompous buffoon to rank alongside literature's greatest characters. It's Shade's epic last poem that gets Kinbote's grey matter going wild, and that has him reaching into the echelons of utter madness. The result? - A humorous, puzzlebox and elegantly imaginative account of one man's insanity; mixing fantasy, reality, truth and lies. He also displays glimmerings of self-awareness which turns him into a rather tragic figure by the finale. A mind-blowing work of art.

This one was so over my head. At this point, I am just relieved that it is over, but still pondering it. And resorting to reading what others have said about it. The best reference I found was a review by Mary McCarthy, whose knowledge and brilliance is comparable to Nabokov. At least reading her take on it was not mansplaining-ha ha.
More later...

Foreward to my review: I almost did not post these thoughts about Pale Fire. It is not really a review. It is me whining. Then I thought that most avid readers are at one time or another defeated by a novel. Whether we soldier on to the end or DNF, it can be a blow. Whether we blame the author or ourselves, it is a discouraging experience. So I post this as a tribute to readers who go outside their comfort zones and try other types of books.

My Thoughts:
I was nearly defeated as a reader by this book. I read it, off and on, for several weeks. It is the most oddly constructed novel I have ever come across: An Introduction in the Everyman's Library edition I read, written by someone else; a Foreward by the narrator Charles Kinbote; a poem in Four Cantos by the fictional poet John Shade; a lengthy commentary by Charles Kinbote who fancies himself to be John Shade's friend and the editor of his poem, deconstructing the poem almost line by line.

I skipped the Introduction, as I usually do, saving it to read after finishing the book, because Introductions often contain spoilers. On the advice of several reviewers, I attempted to read the poem and the commentary simultaneously, flipping back and forth between the two. I do not advise this method.

I could tell that Nabokov was at his satirical and literary nadir but I could not quite get a grasp of what he was trying to do. In fact, though I have read and liked some of his other novels, I grew to hate him for being unnecessarily obtuse, for making me feel he was mocking the reader, and for making me feel stupid.

Finally, I went back and read the poem all the way through, then picked up the commentary where I had left off and struggled through to the end. I figured out that Charles Kinbote was the ultimate unreliable narrator and that the satire was working on various levels.

I have read almost all of the Goodreads reviews of Pale Fire and several others from legitimate newspaper reviews. Anyone who liked the book raves about its "ingeniously constructed parody," its wild inventiveness, wit, suspense, literary one-upmanship, political intrigue, perfect tragicomic balance.

I will grant that Nabokov did all that. I will admit that I was woefully under-prepared as a reader to even remotely appreciate it. I doubt I ever will be prepared enough, but someday when I have read another 2000 books (the number of books I have read since 1991 when I decided to move on from reading trashy bestsellers and become "well read") I may give Pale Fire another shot.

After finally reaching the end and then reading the Introduction, still feeling like I did not get the joke, I found a review by Mary McCarthy, one of my favorite super smart female writers, and she explained everything I didn't get. "Bolt From the Blue". https://newrepublic.com/article/63440.... Despite my reading friends telling me I have read everything, I have not, but already in 1962 Mary McCarthy had.

What Vladimir Nabokov and Pale Fire did for me was restore my humility and make me more determined than ever to read all I can for the rest of my life, from ancient to modern, in all genres. Still, I reserve the right to maintain my current opinion that Mary McCarthy's review is more entertaining than Nabokov's Pale Fire.

Afterword:
So please my blog followers and Goodreads friends, tell me: what books have defeated you as a reader? How did you feel? Did you finish those books or throw them against the wall? What have you learned by reading stuff that is over your head or outside your favorite reading categories? Let me know I am not alone!

I’ve always had a kind of love and hate relationship with Vladimir Nabokov. The first time I picked up Lolita, I only managed to read a couple of pages, mainly because I couldn’t stomach its subject matter. But the language was so beautiful and poetic, so the second time around, I managed to finish the book. I didn’t regret it, but I was still somewhat confused. Can a novel about a pedophile also be considered a work of art? What is the nature of art?

Something similar is happening right now with Pale Fire. It is an ingeniously constructed literary work, urging me to think about its true nature. What can be considered a novel? Can we call a poem – with its preface, commentary and index – a novel? In a postmodernist fashion, Nabokov plays with typical narrative techniques, managing to build something new.

The form of the novel is unique, and I can certainly appreciate what the writer was trying to achieve, but the content was a bit too much for me. Too much of everything: facts, fiction, literary allusions; it all mixes up and creates a wall that you have to power through. In its essence, this is a story about an American poet John Shade and his poem Pale Fire, and a certain someone who takes it upon himself to edit and comment on the poem, becoming so obsessed that he starts reading into it his own ideas. But who is this mysterious person? Is it the former king of Zembla, Charles the Beloved, or just a lunatic with a false identity? Who is the murderer? Who did he want to kill in the first place? Again, there are many questions, yet not enough answers, or, more accurately: it is up to the reader to find answers for themselves.

The form of the novel gets a five star rating from me, but the content meager three stars. Who knows, maybe I’ll learn to appreciate it more after the second reading? Vladimir Nabokov is the kind of writer who you have to decipher first, before you can truly enjoy his style of writing. It is an acquired taste.

Four stars, but I’ll get back to you one day.

There really isn't any other word to describe "Pale Fire" other than brilliant. How else can you describe a novel whose story takes place almost entirely outside its own text?

In the end, I can't decide whether I'm supposed to even like the poem, which I did. I can't decide whether Nabokov even wanted me to consider this a great work of fiction or whether this is a bitter satire of readers and critics? Should I be offended? Or do I detect a hint of self-disgust? Should I laugh at Charles Kinbote or should I acknowledge his greatness? I don't know and I leave the whodunits to smarter people.

Finally, I do have to say that I didn't enjoy reading this book in a traditional sense. It was painful leafing back and forth from poem to commentary. Literary critism is not a format/genre that I intend to ever "get into." Moreover, Kinbote's voice is intentionally disorganized and pretentious. This made it difficult to read and definitely not immediately pleasurable. If you can get used to the delayed gratification, then you'll really love this. I'm just not that patient, so I took off a star even though I found the experience extremely rewarding.

(Revision) I just realized I gave some other books 4 stars whose pages I wouldn't wipe this books cornhole with, so 5 stars it is, and deserves. 4.95 anyways.

“The summer night was starless and stirless, with distant spasms of silent lightning.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

Do you enjoy reading the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Lord Byron and William Butler Yates? If so, then Vladimir Nabokov might be your favorite novelist, since this master prose writer's feel for language and precision of words is equal to any of these great poets. However, if you are like most readers of novels, what keeps you turning the pages isn't necessarily the poetic precision of language. Alas, there is still a way for you to enjoy Pale Fire. You can experience the beauty and stunning perfection of Nabokov's language, even if poetry isn't your thing.

Take my word for it here - the audiobook is an entranceway into the novel. Robert Blumenfeld speaks the words of Charles Kinbote with a charming, easy-to-understand international European accent, a mix of French-German-Eastern European. And Marc Vietor reads the John Shade poem. Vietor does a fine job with the poem but Blumenfeld as Kinbote is exceptional, listening to his voice is like listening to a virtuoso harpsichordist performing a baroque score. You will want to listen and listen and listen some more. Order yourself both the book and the audiobook and read and listen concurrently - you will have one of the most rewarding, aesthetically satisfying literary experiences of your life.

Turning to the novel itself, we have Kinbote's forward at the beginning and index at the end, and the actual John Shade poem, entitled Pale Fire, and the extensive Charles Kinbote commentary on the poem, which turns out to be not a commentary in the conventional sense of the term, but a benchmark for a subject of Kinbote's prime interest - his dear distant northern land of Zembla and a subject even more dear to his heart - himself.

Indeed, Charles Kinbote. What a man! Many critical essays could be written (and undoubtedly many have been written) on his character, enough to fill a thick leather-bound volume, but here is one quick observation: he is a study in contrast, a highly erudite man of letter (he might even be a king of an Eastern European country) with an ability to fashion language on the level of Vladimir Nabokov, yet when it comes to interpersonal and social skills, he has a blind spot as large as Kazimir Malevich's black circle.

But I hesitate to make too hasty a judgment, since after reading the novel a second time, my understanding and assessment of Dr. Kinbote is entirely different from my first-time reading. I wouldn't be surprised if I encountered a different Charles Kinbote with each and every future reading. Ah, the richness of this most Nabokovian of Nabokov novels! Below are two quotes taken from Kinbote's commentary, complete with cross-reference notes, to whet your literary pallet and serve as an incentive (I hope) to engage with the high art of Nabokov's novel:

"We shall accompany Gradus in constant thought, as he makes his way from distant dim Zembla to green Appalachia, through the entire length of the poem, following the road of its rhythm, riding past In a rhyme, skidding around the corner of a run-on, breathing with the caesura, swinging down to the foot of the page from line to line as from branch to branch, hiding between two words (see note to line 598), reappearing on the horizon of a new canto, moving up with his valise on the escalator of the pentameter, stepping off, boarding a new train of thought, entering the hall of a hotel, putting out the bedlight, while Shade blots out a word, and falling asleep as the poet lays down his pen for the night."

"How much happier the wide-awake indolents, the monarchs among men, the rich monstrous brains deriving intense enjoyment and rapturous pangs from the balustrade of a terrace at nightfall, from the lights and the lake below, from the distant mountain shapes melting into the dark apricot of the afterglow, from the black conifers outlined against the pale ink of the zenith, and from the garnet and green flounces of the water along the silent, sad, forbidden shoreline."

Reading Vladimir Nabokov can be like playing a game of chess against an international chess master. For certain you will be the one who is checkmated, but, still, you gain a deep satisfaction from playing every move.

Fuoco pallido è il primo libro di Nabokov che leggo.
Ed ho la vaga impressione che questo sia anche il suo libro migliore, perché dubito si possa fare meglio di questo capolavoro.
Un “romanzo” che credo si possa definire postmoderno, che “gioca” con la letteratura e si interroga su di essa, ma che definirei anche romanzo-mondo, vista la ricchezza di tematiche e situazioni.
In pratica, al centro di tutto c’è un poema scritto da un autore (fittizio) morto prima di finirlo, John Shade, e commentato da Kinbote. Ma in realtà, più che il poema, è proprio il commento di Kinbote ad essere la vicenda principale del libro. Ma credo che sia uno di quei libri su cui, meno si dice della trama, meglio è.
Pur essendo una lettura impegnativa (non tanto per la sua particolarissima struttura, quando per la scrittura abbondante di Nabokov), non è mai noioso. Anche perché l’umorismo non manca, così come l’avventura (ma proprio avventura vera, di quella pura ed esotica), ed il protagonista è un personaggio formidabile, quel tipo di personaggio che sa conquistare il cuore del lettore, e di cui non ci si stancherebbe mai di ascoltare.
E’ senza dubbio una delle migliori narrazioni incentrate sul tema della “morte” che io abbia mai letto.

I¹ liked² this book³, especially the poem⁴.
____________________________________

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 I will call G. G 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, G 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, G 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:

n  Manny Rayner, could be saner
Plays chess, in a dress.n

My friend 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 review is in my book What Pooh Might Have Said to Dante and Other Futile Speculations

Another unreliable narrator gradually revealed in overly ponderous prose. Nabokov is showing off, the old windbag pontificating at dinner, truly brilliant but two steps ahead of everyone, dripping with irony and complicated, obscure references. The story was keen, the plot clever, and he teaches us how to read a poem through the protagonist, a character in his own story. Tones of pederasty and homosexual love abound, Lolita shades. This was a labor for me, and not of love. I was glad when it was over. I appreciate the talent, like a long opera or modern jazz piece, but I did not really enjoy it all that much. There were many flashes of brilliance, and the erudition was impressive. But that’s not why I read, and this author is not writing to entertain but to show off. Pale Fire is not unlike a modern jazz piece, to be appreciated by only those highly specialized, trained experts. I’m not an author nor practiced in the trade, but I can still appreciate a good story well written. I do not love poetry, but I did learn from this book how to break down a poem, for which I appreciate, since I’ve not the energy to do that normally through casual reading. It’s a rich feast, as all great poetry is, reduced to a fine essence.

I’ll try Nabokov again, perhaps next time I’ll see the pearl for what it must surely be, there amongst the dry cornhusks of my swinish longing. I have a couple more volumes on the shelf.

My initial strong impression was - Nabokov does not care about his reader. He cares only about his craft, the process of creation and the satisfaction it brings. His ability to squeeze the aesthetic effect from the language is magical. He plays with the words, their musicality - the amount of alliteration in this short novel is more than i’ve seen in a volume of poetry. His character says: “One can harness words like performing fleas and make them drive other fleas.” And this pretty much sums up what he does - His possession of the language is the one of a virtuoso jazzmen.

He plays with the structure as well- not many writers would manage to weave a perfect poem, a fictional literary criticism and two parallel storylines into the canvas of a novel with slightly more than 200 pages. Although he does not particularly care about his plot either - it is almost a parody on a plot driven fiction with a darkly comic villain and slightly pathetic, a bit creepy main character.

Yes, I thought, he does not care about the reader. I heard recently an interview with a modern, very talented writer. She said she always wanted to write a perfect short novel. But while she was writing she was thinking: “My reader would understand that and this based upon his/her preconceptions of the world. But it is not the case in my novel. So I should write more to explain this”. And her novel grow and grow. It is definitely not about Nabokov. He does not care whether and how he would be understood by the reader. He cares much more how his sentence sounds. So, I thought, this novel is more for writers. They surely would love it. But I could not relate to it.

But slowly the magic of his work has put a spell on me. I read the poem twice and once aloud. He managed to rhyme 999 lines perfectly without any single stutter. His poem is very lyric, but it contains very profound themes as well. And simply it is amazingly beautiful.

And the notes, apart from all these literary effects, contain unlimited cerebral themes. Below, there are just few which i liked, but you can pull out as many more as you wish really:

- nature of violence: “The one who kills is always his victim inferior.”

- “As many people of little culture, Gradus was a voracious reader of newspapers, pamphlets, chance leaflets and multilingual literature that comes with nose drops and digestive tablets; but this summed up his concessions to intellectual curiosity…”. This is the perfect description of a tabloid reader! And now we have a social media to deal with. How unfortunate that these people are exercising their democratic rights based upon this cocktail of information!

- Russians’ character: “There is nothing metaphysical, or racial, about this gloom. It is merely the outward sign of congested nationalism and a provincial’s sense of inferiority - the dreadful blend so typical of Zamblans under the Extremist rule and of Russians under Soviet regime.” - not much changed there under the current regime, I am afraid. Again, nowadays it affects not only the Russians unfortunately.

But overwhelming theme of the novel is the nature of creation. Can it be influenced from outside or imposed on the creator? Can its mystery be resolved at all?

So I started from the premise that Nabokov does not care about his reader. But I changed my mind to the opposite at the end. He cares very much. He wants to lift the veil, even if ever so slightly, from the world we normally do not see. He wants us to look beyond the usual pleasure of reading and have a glimpse of this dark mysterious miracle of creation. And if he succeeds at least in a few cases, that is more than any writers could dream for.

“We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thoughts, 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, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the freeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable.”