Pale Fire Review

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

A madman hijacks a poem and uses it’s publication as a matrix for his pyrotechnically grandiose delusions. He does this through complimenting the poem with a deranged collection of ‘comments’.

But is that really what was going on? Pale Fire simultaneously holds 100 different explanations of it’s authorship: each of them equally valid, none entirely convincing. Who wrote it? Did Kimbote (commentator) hijack and corrupt the poem as a matrix for his own narrative? Did Shade (poet) invent Kimbote as a literary device? Was Kimbote being sincere, or using his genius to enrich an otherwise tepid poem? Did Shade actively cultivate Kimbote’s psychosis, was it Kimbote who was pulling Shade’s strings? Or was this fantastic disaster a delusion of another character entirely?

All Are valid, but each only partially. But now for the real question: Does anyone give a fuck? I did, but only partially. A- Vlad, you could have taken this a lot further. Working the concept of your own authorship into this apocryphal hall of mirrors would have multiplied this mindmash immeasurably.