Pale Fire

I LOVED this book. Good grief. I am such a sucker for an unreliable narrator.

Pale Fire is an unfinished Poem by the recently deceased John Shade, and is presented here with an introduction, commentary, and exhaustive index by his friend, Charles Kinbote.

Or is it? Who knows.

I was aware that this book was held in very high regard but I had no idea how funny it would be! The pompous and witty Kinbote keeps us entertained throughout with his unbelievably far reaching footnotes and his direct appeals to the reader to do his research for him because he just doesn't have the time or the resources. I particularly enjoyed his bizarrely detailed discourse on committing suicide ‘successfully'.

This has been in my bookcase for years and I just never got around to it. Having now (finally) read it, I'm sure it was bought as a post-HoL recommendation because there is definitely an air of the House about it. I was also very much reminded of A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro, and Poor Things by Alasdair Gray throughout.

I will be absolutely amazed if this book isn't in my top five at the end of the year.

Five stars. No, six! Ten!

Pale Fire makes all the writers in the world look bad. One part beautiful poetry, the other part a manic analysis of it.

Nabokov is able to create a beautiful poem that meditates upon death, the afterlife, and the fear of being forgotten that is authentic enough to be from himself rather than from the point of view of a fictional character. The poem itself is heartfelt and touching as it is existential about what it means to have lived a meaningful life that has experienced tragedy in-between. It's heartfelt. It's worded soundly, with such profound lines such as:

“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the window pane”

But Nobakov manages to find a way to make this even better in a way that comically mocks scholarly literary criticism; through careful deliberation of every line in the 999 line cantos, through the point of view of an insane fan, he annotates the poem to find meaning that doesn't exist. The reason why the book is so long is that the rest of the pages following the poem are footnotes that analyze the poem that tell a story in itself, through connections. The connections are tangible at best and rambling and comically wrong at its worst. Through the extensive use of footnotes, he manages to tell multiple stories that are spurred off a few lines of poetry that barely connect - one a random kingdom that may not exist, another about his experiences with the author himself, and what leads to the author's demise.

He is able to defile an “autobiographical” poem in a way that enhances the reading experience without taking away the brilliance of the former. If the poem was anything less than okay or even slightly tongue in cheek, the book would have lost its impact. For the book to work as a whole, every part had to be great. It is through the critique of literary analysis that the book's nature shines: creating a memorable poem first that could be read on its own and a memorable experience that pokes fun at what was written.

I am not usually a fan of poetry - having read much of Shakespeare and having taken a chance on Sylvia Plath's poems as well, much to my disappointment. Pale Fire's poem was one of the few to actually move me emotionally, as well as impress me. He made a poem that is touching in his third language (with difficult vocabulary) and may as well have been a joke. This book has multiple layers to it - the forward, the poem itself, the annotations (which make the bulk of a novel), and the index - all equally brilliant in of itself.

Nobakov is able to make every sentence dense with allusions, such rich vocabulary, and a poetic structure. It is not an easy book to read, but it is a rewarding experience to have read. It may be a book that I appreciated more than I enjoyed, but those feelings are incredibly close together.