Vladimir Nabokov: An Illustrated Biography

Alina S.: A masterful example of unreliable narrator, packaged as a (fake) literary commentary. The disgust I felt for the narcissistic narrator was the best sign of how effective it is.
I think the author of House of Leaves took some inspiration from this book. I personally adore such puzzle-like books; if you prefer a starightforward narration, this one might not be for you.

Germany on Aug 16, 2023

freego: Nabokov continuously surprises the reader and defies expectations. Incredibly elaborate and rich novel with an unusual structure.

Italy on Aug 06, 2023

Graham G Grant: Pale Fire is a literary riot. Your tolerance and enjoyment of it will depend on your appetite for modernism, or postmodernism. It’s Joycean stuff, built around a long poem written by an American academic, John Shade. The poem is made up of ‘heroic couplets’, reminiscent of Pope; there are some gems, but often it’s fairly pedestrian. The conceit of the novel is that the narrator Charles Kinbote appropriated the manuscript after Shade’s murder at the hands of a shadowy assassin. The novel is Kinbote’s labour of love - it comprises the poem itself and then extensive footnotes attempting to explain it, by Kinbote, who’s a kind of Shade groupie. Part of the joke is that he believes himself to be Shade’s muse when in fact it’s fairly clear he’s a bit of an irritant to Shade and his wife. The setting for some of the novel is Wordsmith University; Kinbote is writing at a motel, after Shade’s murder. There are flashbacks to Kinbote’s fictional homeland Zembla. Its King is on the run from revolutionaries. Kinbote believes this Zenda-like tale has influenced Shade’s poem, Pale Fire, which seems like wishful thinking, or just delusional… There are many literary...

United Kingdom on Oct 14, 2022

Martin Jones: Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov’s 1962 novel, is also the name of an autobiographical poem the book contains, by fictional academic and poet John Shade – a moving and humorous piece, which sets reflections on mortality alongside riffs about such topics as Gillette razor advertising. Following John Shade’s death, Pale Fire, the poem, falls into the hands of Charles Kimbote, the unfortunate poet’s neighbour, who has arrived from an imaginary east European country, called Zembla, to teach at the local university. Kimbote holes up in a motel where he works on an annotated version of Pale Fire. Through a series of bizarre and misguided factual associations, he attempts to show how the poem reflects much of his own life.

I read Pale Fire as a Kindle edition, and I’m not the first to see that the book is similar to a web document. Taking the form of a commentary, there are naturally many links jumping between poem and explanatory notes. Kimbote careers around his own self-centred web of crazy connections. His thought process is reminiscent of one of those internet algorithmic cul-de-sacs that can take personal quirks and prejudices and turn them into a firm belief in a flat...

United Kingdom on Oct 16, 2020

SURY: Jestus on Ramage

Any book by Nabokov will be certainly interesting to read. The present book is no exception. Nabokov has an astonishing control over the language, leaving you wondering and admiring; and envying, if you are an aspiring author! You will be sure to come across plenty of new words and expressions.
The story here is presented in a novel way. First comes a long poem in four cantos. By itself, the poem may not illuminate you much as to the contents of the story. The wily author has seen to it. So, a friend of the poet furnishes an elaborate (and ornate) commentary of the poem, through which, the story unfolds. The blurb in the back-cover says this is a whodunit, but actually, this is not so. Before you are half way thro’, you know who is going to do it, and to whom. There is a surprising end, though. (Better not reveal it).
The main attraction of the book lies in how the simple plot is presented. You keep on reading page after page for the sheer pleasure of enjoying the fine prose of the author; the exquisite descriptions of everything: the scenery, the persons, the action, the imagery.
The book, as said, is stimulating, and thoroughly enjoyable. Yet,...

India on Dec 04, 2015

William Adams: This review is for the reader who shares my high opinion of the novel and wants to know if it is safe to buy the Kindle edition. There are several reviews, all a few years old, saying that the Kindle formatting is unacceptable. I can only say that as of May 2015, the formatting is fine. Of course, as you would expect, the poem wants to be read in landscape mode and not too large a font to preserve the integrity of the lines. And you should realize, as perhaps some of those early readers did not, that not all note references or line numbers are supposed to be hypertexted. In fact, none of the numbers in the text of the poem are footnotes, only line numbers, and you aren't supposed to be able to click on them. Then, when you get to the commentary, and see something like "Lines 1-4: I was the shadow of a waxwing slain, etc." on a separate line by itself, you aren't supposed to be able to click on that either. Basically, you're meant to review a big chunk of the poem at one go, lay down a bookmark, and then go back to your Commentary bookmark and read the notes for that chunk before going back to your last poem bookmark, pretty much the way you would read it as a paper book.
[If...

United States on May 31, 2015

John P. Jones III: ...there is nothing pale about this one. Igor Stravinsky "pushed the edge on the envelope" with pre-World War I orchestral works such as "The Firebird" and the "The Rite of Spring." The latter literally caused a riot when it was first played in Paris in 1913. As Richard Rorty notes in the Introduction to "Pale Fire" (and perhaps my only complaint about this particular edition is that Rorty's Intro should have been an "Afterword") the critical reception greeting this book when it was first published in the early `60's was mixed to negative. Dwight MacDonald, a "high priest" of culture, and author of  Against the American Grain (A Da Capo paperback)  as well as others, called the work "unreadable." Mary McCarthy, of  The Group  fame, on the other hand was far more enthusiastic, recognizing that Nabokov was making a "dent" in the orthodox "reality" of acceptable literature, just as Stravinsky did in the musical field, half a century earlier.

There is no question that you have to be at "the top of your reading game" to tackle this work, and then, STILL, the "bookmarks will measure what you lost." McCarthy called it a "centaur-work," half poem, half prose. It...

United States on May 02, 2011