Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire

Ordinarily, I think I would have dismissed this book as needlessly complicated and overly confusing.  The poem doesn't seem to have any particular merit to me, although I am certainly not a poetry expert!  It seemed to have something of Alexander Pope's "Rape of the Lock" about it insofar as it is presented in epic style with considerable gravitas but its subject matter is decidedly domestic.  It deals mainly with John Shade's life, his marriage and his daughter's suicide, which aren't terribly amusing topics.  However, I definitely got the impression that the 999 lines are mainly mocking in their intention with feted poets their intended target.  Whatever the case, I didn't derive much pleasure from the poem.

The absolutely insane commentary is considerably better and contains lots of amusing prose.  Charles Kinbote, the commentator, provides such a dazzling array of delusion it's quite hard to work out what exactly is going on during the book!  Is Kinbote an exiled king, as he not very subtly alludes to and then states outright?  Is there such a person as Gradus, who seems a fantasy character?  Does Kinbote, in fact, kill Shade in order to obtain the poem and provide his lunatic eisigesis? Given that all we have are the poem and Kinbote's mad glosses; I think it is pretty much impossible to work out what's going on!  Who can we believe and what is as it seems?  The whole work struck me as an elaborate and slightly niche joke!

A passage from The Real Life of Sebastian Knight expresses some of my more weary and impatient sentiments about Nabokov more generally and Pale Fire specifically as the most bewildering example I’ve read:

“I asked him whether he had liked them. He said he had in a way, but the author seemed to him a terrible snob, intellectually, at least. Asked to explain, he added that Knight seemed to him to be constantly playing some game of his own invention, without telling his partners its rules. He said he preferred books that made one think, and Knight’s books didn’t – they left you puzzled and cross.” (p209)

As usual, there appears to be a huge amount of mocking going on; the poem, the poet, the lunatic critic, perhaps all critics in some way with their extensive comparisons of minute discrepancies between notes and fair copy and their elaborate interpolations from scant biographical scraps, often obtained at far remove? Kinbote takes this to a ludicrous, and hilarious, extent; making connections where none can realistically exist.  In any case, I feel divided about it.  Part of me is excited by the irreverence while another part of me is repulsed by the obfuscatory snobbishness and self satisfaction.  Perhaps I’m just annoyed not to feel full “in” on the joke!  I can’t help shake the feeling that some of it is needlessly esoteric and willfully obscure; making it feel quite pretentious in places.

The things that save this book from being a totally abstruse bore are the bursts of spectacular prose, the comedy of Kinbote's delusions and the intrigue over their credibility and some of the fantastic scenes of Zembla and its exiled King's escape from there (p105 onwards).

The best bits of Nabokov's writing really can't be praised highly enough in my opinion. I occasionally found myself smiling or sighing, luxuriating in sheer pleasure of his masterfully mellifluous combinations. Against this, I would also say there's a fair amount of floral, finickity, forced prose too, which can be almost torturous to read. At these points I marvel at the fact that I used to claim Nabokov as my favourite author for a few years after reading Lolita as a 17 year old! In my defence, some of the prose is enchanting but, less happily, it also points to some quite profound pretentiousness! If only I had written about what I liked when I was 17.

I list a few examples of my favourite passages:

“teeming with devastating erasures and cataclysmic insertions” (foreword)

“relations are at first touchingly carefree and chummy, with expansive banterings and all sorts of amiable tokens” (foreword)

“Having replaced everything in a neat pile, he sank back in his chair closing and opening his gabled hands in various constructions of tedium – when a man who had occupied a seat next to him got up and walked into the outer glare leaving his paper behind” (p258)

Of Gradus, “He had never visited New York before; but as many near-cretins, he was above novelty. On the previous night he had counted the mounting rows of lighted windows in several skyscrapers, and now, after checking the height of a few more buildings, he felt that he knew all there was to know.” (p280)