Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic DiscoveryPale Fire is regarded by many as Vladimir Nabokov's masterpiece. The novel has been hailed as one of the most striking early examples of postmodernism and has become a famous test case for theories about reading because of the apparent impossibility of deciding between several radically different interpretations. Does the book have two narrators, as it first appears, or one? How much is fantasy and how much is reality? Whose fantasy and whose reality are they? Brian Boyd, Nabokov's biographer and hitherto the foremost proponent of the idea that Pale Fire has one narrator, John Shade, now rejects this position and presents a new and startlingly different solution that will permanently shift the nature of critical debate on the novel. Boyd argues that the book does indeed have two narrators, Shade and Charles Kinbote, but reveals that Kinbote had some strange and highly surprising help in writing his sections. In light of this interpretation, Pale Fire now looks distinctly less postmodern--and more interesting than ever. |
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... Kinbote's comparing himself to “a lean wary lover” abruptly becomes clear. If we have followed this far, we now know to trust Nabokov. Or so we think. We finish note 691, return to note 47–48, with its hilarious description of Kinbote ...
... Kinbote refers us to his note to lines 47–48 (we smile: we know that note, we'll get back and finish it as soon as we're ... Kinbote's initial cross-reference—we reach this: “A suggestion,” I said, quivering. “I have at my place half a ...
... Kinbote's admission of the “devastating erasures and cataclysmic insertions” (14) on the last index cards of the manuscript, Hurley's claim, Kinbote's counter-claim. (3) About Kinbote's relationship to Shade: “The thick venom of envy ...
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