Product Description

A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed--according to Nabokov's fiction--by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31979 in Books
• Published on: 1989-04-23
• Released on: 1989-04-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.com Review
Like Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire is a masterpiece that imprisons us inside the mazelike head of a mad émigré. Yet Pale Fire is more outrageously hilarious, and its narrative convolutions make the earlier book seem as straightforward as a fairy tale. Here's the plot--listen carefully! John Shade is a homebody poet in New Wye, U.S.A. He writes a 999-line poem about his life, and what may lie beyond death. This novel (and seldom has the word seemed so woefully inadequate) consists of both that poem and an extensive commentary on it by the poet's crazy neighbor, Charles Kinbote.

According to this deranged annotator, he had urged Shade to write about his own homeland--the northern kingdom of Zembla. It soon becomes clear that this fabulous locale may well be a figment of Kinbote's colorfully cracked, prismatic imagination. Meanwhile, he manages to twist the poem into an account of Zembla's King Charles--whom he believes himself to be--and the monarch's eventual assassination by the revolutionary Jakob Gradus.

In the course of this dizzying narrative, shots are indeed fired. But it's Shade who takes the hit, enabling Kinbote to steal the dead poet's manuscript and set about annotating it. Is that perfectly clear? By now it should be obvious that Pale Fire is not only a whodunit but a who-wrote-it. There isn't, of course, a single solution. But Nabokov's best biographer, Brian Boyd, has come up with an ingenious suggestion: he argues that Shade is actually guiding Kinbote's mad hand from beyond the grave, nudging him into completing what he'd intended to be a 1,000-line poem. Read this magical, melancholic mystery and see if you agree. --Tim Appelo

Review
"This centaur work, half-poem, half-prose . . . is a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth.  Pretending to be a curio, it cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the great works of art of this century."  --Mary McCarthy -- Review

Novel in English by Vladimir Nabokov, published in 1962. It consists of a long poem and a commentary on it by an insane pedant. This brilliant parody of literary scholarship is also an experimental synthesis of Nabokov's talents for both poetry and prose. It extends and completes his mastery of unorthodox structure. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

Review
"This centaur work, half-poem, half-prose . . . is a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth.  Pretending to be a curio, it cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the great works of art of this century."  --Mary McCarthy

Customer Reviews

everyman's decisions
Aside from the fact that I had to re-order, the first being damaged, I am satisfied overall except for one rather important point.
Everyman has decided to produce this book using a very delicate ink gradation. This does not cause any undue difficulty in reading, unless there is extremely low light. However, if we were to grade ink from 0 (invisible) to 100 (pitch black), the choice of going with 65 to 70 is an error. I like my black ink to be black, and values under 85 look less than black and worse, you can see in the Pale Fire publication that some of the letters contain tiny white holes where ink viscosity is too sticky and ink coverage of the interior of the letter is not sufficient. With blacker ink this fickle issue is reduced because the eye works less to define the letter's outline. With this lighter black ink, it does require a little more work to make out some letters on some occasions.
Details, details. For a run-of-the-mill paperback, purchased in an airport hanger, I wouldn't care. For a book that I wish to have remain on my bookshelf for sons, grandsons, nephews etc, I am disappointed and will perhaps seek alternatives to the everyman name in future.
This lighter than black ink is a modern trend that is more concerned with aesthetics than readability.
However, it isn't a severe and show-stopping issue. Just my preference, and since I was invited to write a review...
As for something on the work itself, it would be foolish of me to comment on the creator of vain van veen, other than to say that the 21st century has not yet seen his genius and I wish it upon us.

Enjoyable at Multiple Levels
As someone who reads and interprets American fiction for a living (pity me), this is the first novel I've read in ages that challenged me and then rewards the reader's efforts when the depths of the multiple layers of storytelling started to show themselves. Don't think you've got it solved when you realize that Kinbote isn't who you thought he was. He's not THAT second person either. And there's ghosts -- several of them -- who take possession of the story in various ways. I don't want to wreck your delight by giving away more. I also recommend Brian Boyd's critical work on the novel, _Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery_, an amazing interpretation of the novel that blows it wide open.

Clever
A clever construction and master of words in an essentially unreadable work that fails to hold interest either on a character level or, for lack of a better term, plot. This book is like watching a painter work, marveling at what he does with great appreciation, while the actual painting itself is unappreciable.