Pale Fire 1962 Literature

Vladimir Nabokov

“But look at the [stuff] that's going on in Zembla! Place is melting under the water, people are-- falling out just to try and get here, they're grabbing any kind of raft they can get onto, and meanwhile getting walled off.” -Simon Rose, Superflat (2016) Let’s look at Pale Fire from two angles: Pale Fire is, from a literary perspective, one of the worst books I have ever read. Words cannot describe how agonizingly boring it is, how pointless it all feels. From a perspective of satire, it’s… better. Pale Fire is best described as Nabokov’s attempt to troll the reader into thinking there’s some deep plot behind the book and an effort to convince the reader that reading it just one more time to see if they can uncover any more information despite the fact there’s nothing there in the first place. Charles Kinbote is easily the most annoying narrator of all time. The book seems to be relatively clear cut parody- the commentary offers very little insight into Shade’s actual poem, most of it being Kinbote either talking about his love of stalki- uh, being friends with John Shade, Zemblan Kings, or, more often than not, absolutely nothing of value whatsoever. The commentary provided by this book on, uh, really anything at all, is next to near not present. Like I said, this book is not meant to say anything; it’s just meant to fool its readers. The main character’s love of rambling off topic is part of this: how much can you tolerate before you see through the façade?