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Don't be terrified of Pale Fire

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Re: Don't be terrified of Pale Fire

#121

Post by leephillips »

glial wrote: post #17

I have not yet read Pale Fire, but I loved Lolita and hope to read it soon. Nabokov's writing is so rich, the writing itself (aside from the story!) is worth lingering over and savoring. I've only found a few other writers with a similar quality - Proust, Milton, perhaps Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison. Does anyone know of authors with a similar property? I'm not even sure what to call it, so it's difficult to sear…

Look into Marc Leyner, especially the novel Et Tu, Babe and anything he wrote before that. He specifically set out to create prose where each sentence could stand alone as something beautiful. I think he’s not often taken seriously because he’s simply so extremely funny that he gets pigeonholed as a comic writer. But as his best he crafted English prose at the highest level.

Re: Don't be terrified of Pale Fire

#122

Post by zem »

haroldp wrote: post #10

If you are going to read Pale Fire, get it on paper. I tried to read it on my Kindle and the UI is not up to task of lots of flipping back and forth between the poem and the prose sections.

i read it on a kindle and a laptop so i didn't need to flip back and forth

Re: Don't be terrified of Pale Fire

#123

Post by adammarples »

vundercind wrote: post #105
haroldp wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would disagree strongly with this. :) The e-reader UI is generally so much better than paper, if a book is not available for kindle, I'll usually find something else to read. Pale Fire is a special case book where you want two have bookmarks where you are currently working. I read Chuck Palahniuk's Diary on paper, and an e-reader would definitely have ruined it. Technical books with a lot of charts, diagrams, monos…

Yes, they are fine for books with no features but body text and no important formatting or layout, and that the reader progresses through entirely linearly. Those are the sorts of books they’re best-suited to.

Ie. 99% of fiction books

Re: Don't be terrified of Pale Fire

#124

Post by Angostura »

nimih wrote: post #100
causi wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

none of those questions have definitive answers I will limit my criticism to saying that this is a trope adopted very often these days and it is not one to which my personality is suited. I like mysteries but I do not like treadmills, running without arriving.

What do you mean by “these days?” Pale Fire was written in 1962.

Presumably that it is a trope widely adopted these days.

It may have been more novel in 1962, but the commenter might still not enjoy it

Re: Don't be terrified of Pale Fire

#125

Post by optimalsolver »

OldGuyInTheClub wrote: post #73
acabal wrote: post #6

Pale Fire has been my favorite book for a long, long time, ever since I read it as part of a course in university. After all these years I haven't read a better, more intricately-constructed book. It was suggested to me to read the intro first, then skip the poem and read the endnotes start to finish, then to go back and read the poem. The index is part of the fiction and must also be read. I think the keys to really…

"Kinbote is really a comic figure" I say this name in Christopher Lloyd's voice: "That's Kinbotay! Tay! Tay!!" In my head, of course.

Any relation to Lord Kinbote of X-files fame?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIyDJxP-b6o

Re: Don't be terrified of Pale Fire

#127

Post by wmorse »

mlsu wrote: post #65

I read Pale Fire on the plane recently. Picked it up randomly, knew almost nothing about it. It is absolutely riotous. Most of the references probably went over my head, but I was immediately annoyed, then grinning about how annoyed I was, then tearing into the next page to try to unwrap just who the hell is Kinbote. About 10 pages in you will discover that you're never going to fully figure it out, and then the ques…

I read it randomly, too, having found it in a summer vacation house. Found it hilarious, once I finally caught on, and went back and re-read it over the summer. Isn't most "great" literature best read if you discover it yourself? Much more fun than university seminars on Tolstoevsky, не так ли?

Re: Don't be terrified of Pale Fire

#128

Post by debo_ »

hristov wrote: post #69
debo_ wrote: post #46

"Ada or Ardor" is my favorite book that I didn't understand.

Tell me about it. I think it was on the second reading that i figured out it was supposed to be alternate reality science fiction. In the beginning I started reading it because it had footnotes, naively thinking that the footnotes would explain all the bizarre nabakoivsms. Quarter in the way in i was like “these are the worst footnotes ever, they do not explain anything but make things even more bewildering; and why,…

> I think it was on the second reading that i figured out it was supposed to be alternate reality science fiction

The only reason I knew this was because I read the Wikipedia article after I finished the book. It was a strange experience to enjoy the prose even though I had no idea what was happening.

Re: Don't be terrified of Pale Fire

#129

Post by Boogie_Man »

leephillips wrote: post #120
Boogie_Man wrote: post #44

"I am the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the windowpane I am the smudge of ashen fluff And I lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky" I am ashamed that I will never command my native language as well as a man for whom it was a second. I don't even know if whom is right there.

You destroyed this by altering the linebreaking. And it’s misquoted in other ways.

You're not wrong, but it was from memory. I invite you to look it up and post the correct version.

Re: Don't be terrified of Pale Fire

#130

Post by OldGuyInTheClub »

chch wrote: post #115

I always saw Pale Fire as somewhat of self-parody, which made me enjoy it more. Seven years before Pale Fire came out, Nabokov was working on his translation of Eugene Onegin . Often, people argue that a translated novel should have no end/footnotes, because a "good translation" should read "naturally" to a reader. Nabokov disagreed, and wrote an article that included the phrase: > "I want translations with copious f…

I saw it as Nabokov's celebration of his own genius and the power it gave him. Quite "the flex" as the young peuple say. He was expert in setting chess problems, lepidoptery, French and Russian cultural and literary arcana, linguistics, politics - especially of the academic kind, psychology, and a few others I am undoubtedly missing. According to what I've read, all that and more is in "Pale Fire."

At that point in his life, I think he knew well that a work like this would be devoured by his fans and vivisected by academics. He alone knew how deep the maze went and the layers of arcane tricks he was pulling. For example, see:

https://thenabokovian.org/classics/barabtarlo-fa84 via https://thenabokovian.org

Also, https://thenabokovian.org/forum/6 and https://thenabokovian.org/nabokv-l for 25+ years of a Nabokovian mailing list.

It's all imbued with a cruelty that some of the very brilliant enjoy displaying.

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