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Pale Fire (Hardcover)

by Vladimir Nabokov (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 26.95
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Product Description

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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 --This text refers to the Paperback edition.



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, The New Republic

"As a literary tour de force it surpasses anything else Mr. Nabokov has done." —Atlantic Monthly

"Scintillating, brilliantly inventive…[Pale Fire] has almost as many layers of meaning as an artichoke has petals." —Commonwealth

"Of all [Nabokov's] inventions, Pale Fire is the wildest, the funniest and the most earnest. It is like nothing on God's earth." —New York Herald Tribune

"A monstrous, witty, intricately entertaining work . . . done with dazzling skill." —Time

"Nabokov writes prose the only way it should be written, that is, ecstatically." —John Updike
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Customer Reviews

63 Reviews
5 star:
 (51)
4 star:
 (6)
3 star:
 (5)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:
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Average Customer Review
4.7 out of 5 stars (63 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing pale about it, Sep 21 2006
By Henry Batista (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
This book has bee likened to McCrea's KATZENJAMMER which contains elements of the same thing---what is truth----what is the lie? PALE FIRE can be read on many levels, but if you really want to 'get' it, you'll have to delve into the structure, pay attention, and possibly read it twice. Nabakov uses the book to not only tell a story, but also to show how the story is at once true, and false. I was also reminded of Palahniuk's FIGHT CLUB with its weird tone and twists at the end. I can't recommend PALE FIRE enough, and also the author's better known LOLITA.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Masterpiece, Jul 17 2004
By Mark Cannon (Larchmont, NY) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Pale Fire (Paperback)
An original and one-of-a-kind art form. The story occurs not mainly in the text, but in the "notes," and not so much in what is told, but in how it is told. The commentator/annotator, Kinbote, is obsessed with telling his story -- but the keys are in the manner and craziness of how he tells it. "Pale Fire" is a wonderful and transporting journey.
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4.0 out of 5 stars An amazingly original achievement, Jun 17 2004
By Matthew Krichman (Durango, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Pale Fire (Paperback)
Reading Nabokov, it is impossible not to get the impression that this is an author who knows that he is 100 times smarter than his readers. Not only that, he also feels no shame in making that abundantly obvious with every sentence that he writes. Reading Pale Fire is the literary equivalent of turning around in circles until you get so dizzy that you fall over, punch drunk and hysterical. You feel sick and disorientated, but you also get the sense that the process was somehow fun and - dare I say - worth it.

Whether you like this book or not - and personally, I can't say that I loved it - it is hard to deny what an amazing achievement it is. Nabokov first writes a 999-line poem - the equivalent of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, in length if not in quality. He then writes a foreword to the poem, and a line-by-line commentary, as if the poem were written by someone else. And by means of the commentary he weaves an imaginative, suspenseful adventure that is so obviously fictitious that it immediately becomes real. There's no denying that this is brilliantly creative and original writing.

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 		 Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Nabokov's Best Ever?
Pale Fire -- Vladimir Nabokov

It is arguable, and debatable, whether this title or Lolita is Nabokov's masterpiece, but what is certain is that Pale Fire is once of the... Read more

Published on Jun 8 2004 by Scott Esposito

5.0 out of 5 stars amazing!
This book is so incredible. All I can say is that I re-read it 4 times year and still drown in it. Totally brilliant!
Published on May 27 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars Now my favorite book
I remember this awful woman I had for 10th grade literature - the kind who wouldn't allow for any interpretation beyond "The scarlet letter A stands for Adultery" - who... Read more
Published on Mar 24 2004 by Susan Howson

5.0 out of 5 stars Mad, bad and glorious to know
Take everything you knew or thought about Vladimir Nabokov, and stuff it in the trash. Experimental novel "Pale Fire" is a strange, haunting, magical experience, and as... Read more
Published on Mar 2 2004 by E. A Solinas

5.0 out of 5 stars if ever a novel deserved 5 stars...
Let's put things straight from the start: this is a weird novel, practically a genre unto itself. It consists of a long poem ("pale fire") supposedly written by a... Read more
Published on Jan 28 2004 by Simone Oltolina

3.0 out of 5 stars A novel told in an interesting form
Reclusive American poet John Shade composes a 999-line poem titled "Pale Fire" and finishes it on the day of his death. Read more
Published on Dec 22 2003 by gac1003

4.0 out of 5 stars An Expert Experiment
One of the most formally experimental novels ever written, Pale Fire is the name of a 999 line cyclical poem (the last line can be continued to the first line, ad infin). Read more
Published on Dec 5 2003 by Jimmy Chen

5.0 out of 5 stars Nabokov outsmarts himself. I think.
Once upon a time, a judge named Goldsworth who lived in the college town of New Wye, Appalachia, sent a homicidal maniac named Jack Grey to an Institute for the Criminal Insane... Read more
Published on Nov 4 2003

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than Lolita
I'm sorry, but Pale Fire is Nabokov's greatest work. It is funnier, more troubling, and ultimately a more satisfying read than any of his other works. Read more
Published on Sep 17 2003 by Robert L. Brewer

5.0 out of 5 stars Dead-accurate parody of academic critics
"Pale Fire" is indeed a book which repays return visits. I recently picked it up again, and noted two new aspects of interest. Read more
Published on Aug 2 2003 by Roberto Olivera

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