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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 27
... leads toward this interpretation through the series of discoveries Nabokov invites the first-time reader to make, then the more elusive discoveries he offers the rereader,11 and the even more resistant and astonishing discoveries he ...
... lead the would-be solver astray.24 To an interviewer who quoted part of the parenthesis back at him, Nabokov replied “I believe I said 'between the author and the reader,' not 'the world,'”25 which is plainly what he had originally ...
... lead at times to uncertainty and frustration, as well as to the surprise of discovery. I first followed this particular path when I was sixteen years old and ever since have let Nabokov lead me to discoveries more rewarding than we have ...
You have reached your viewing limit for this book.
You have reached your viewing limit for this book.