Book # 94 Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

Before we started this reading project I had never heard of Pale Fire before. I had however read Nabakov's Lolita just a couple of years ago. The story behind that novel was kind of icky... but I still enjoyed it because of Nabakov's writing style. The voice given to Humbert is just so weird, funny and deluded that it makes that novel a classic. So with Pale Fire Nabakov has created another crazy character that tells us a bizarre story that is just hilarious.

At first it is hard to really tell what the book is about. The book is divided into three parts. First is the foreword by "Charles Kinbote." Next is a 999 line poem by "John Shade", and then finally a "commentary" by Kinbote (which is the bulk of the book). In the Foreword we get just a bit of the backstory between Kinbote and Shade and we find out that Shade was killed the day after finishing the poem and that Kinbote has decided to publish it with his commentary. The poem itself is a moving piece about Shade's childhood, the death of his daughter, and an afterlife experience. Then we get to the real beginning of the narrative, the commentary.

Right away we see that Kinbote is nuts. He reads things into the poem that totally are not there. Kinbote starts saying how some of the smallest details are really about his homeland of Zembla and how he subtly influenced Shade during the writing of it. As his notes to the poem continue, Kinbote keeps talking about the history of Zembla and starts telling in great detail the life story of the exiled king of Zembla. Then he starts telling the story of how an assassin set on finding and killing the king ended up murdering John Shade. It then becomes obvious that Kinbote is really the exiled king in hiding. We also see that he has pretty much taken off with the poem to publish it and that he is totally nuts.

The whole book is just so weird and funny... it is unlike anything else I had read before. The structure is unique and requires a lot of flipping back and forth since the commentary makes several references to other parts of the commentary and re-reading the poem a few times is also necessary. The stories about Kinbote's escape from Zembla are hilarious and frequently he goes off on little tangents such as the proper manners for throwing oneself out of a window.

While I was reading about the history of the book I found that there are several interpretations about who the real author in the story is supposed to be. Many people think that Kinbote is just a creation of Shade, or that he is the alter ego of another person in the community. I'll have to read about all of these different theories now to see which one I'd agree with.

On a side note, the copy I read had notes written in it by the former owner. Surprisingly I found this stranger's notes pretty helpful. About half way through the book I noticed a note on the title page that this stranger believes the Zembla story is really about Nabakov's childhood... and looking that up on Wikipedia I found out that Nabakov was a Russian noble that was forced to flee the country during a revolution and that his father was later killed in a political assassination gone wrong.... and that he never had a daughter at all... so the Kinbote portion of the story is actually more autobiographical than Shade's poem.

The book was something completely different and I really enjoyed Nabakov's humor. Once I'm done with this project I'll probably look up some of his other works. I'll add it to my top 50 and give it an A.

On a side side note... I've noticed that in several of the books there are specific mentions of other books on this list. Here we get several mentions of Remembrance of Things Past. I feel like I should be keeping track of these.

An updating of my rankings :
1. Les Misérables
2. Invisible Man
3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
4. The Hobbit
5. A Farewell to Arms
6. Great Expectations
7. The Stand
8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
9. Pale Fire
10. The Name of the Rose
11. Frankenstein
12. Wind in the Willows
13. Anne of Green Gables
14. Rebecca
15. Anna Karenina
16. Sons and Lovers
17. Winnie-the-Pooh
18. Charlotte's Web
19. Mrs. Dalloway
20. Atlas Shrugged