Pale Fire in Never too Late to Read Classics

Aug 30, 2014 Chrissie rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2014-read, audible-us, fiction, classics, poetry

This book IS amazing, but that doesn't mean I loved it.

Nabokov is a word magician, and he has such imagination. His words and his imagination merge to become an object d'art filled with originality and humor, concluding in an amusing commentary on literary critique, which I totally support.

So why do I feel the book was merely OK?

Line after line of humor is hard to take. Do you sit and read a joke book? I don’t. Or maybe this book is better if read it in small portions, not as a novel but as a co This book IS amazing, but that doesn't mean I loved it.

Nabokov is a word magician, and he has such imagination. His words and his imagination merge to become an object d'art filled with originality and humor, concluding in an amusing commentary on literary critique, which I totally support.

So why do I feel the book was merely OK?

Line after line of humor is hard to take. Do you sit and read a joke book? I don’t. Or maybe this book is better if read it in small portions, not as a novel but as a conglomeration of wonderfully expressed thoughts and great lines of satirical humor. Some of the lines ARE priceless. In a novel there should also be an engaging plot. So let’s look at this novel’s plot

There are two main characters. There is an author-poet, John Shade, and then there is Charles Kinbote. John has written a poem and Charles, on John's death, is editing and compiling notes on said poem. It is just that Charles has a different story to tell and he wants it told. His literary critique of the poem twists Shade’s work beyond recognition. Nabokov is known for his unreliable narrators. Clearly, Charles is here the unreliable narrator. Of course, neither John Shade nor Charles Kinbote ever existed. The author of both Shade's poem and Charles' commentary on the poem, which becomes a whole different story about Charles’ beloved kingdom Zembla, is none other than Nabokov!

My problem with the book is Charles’ story. His story is confused; his lines tedious. He is not a good story teller. The country and the events he is describing are imaginary. His imaginary country never became tantalizing. There is no real country with real traditions and customs and history to learn about. The numerous fictional characters and events became a jumble in my head. I couldn't have cared less about Charles’ story!

I thought when I began the book that I would have difficulty reading a poem, but that was no problem at all! Shade's poem is simple reading. You forget that it is even a poem. It reads as a story that just happens to rhyme. Unfortunately it comprises only a very small portion of the book.

The audiobook presentation is not difficult to follow. You do not have to switch back to the poem as you follow Charles' commentaries; as I explained, Charles has a different story to tell. The audiobook has two narrators, one for John Shade and his poem (Robert Blumenfeld) and another for Charles Kinbote(Marc Vietor). It is Marc Vietor who reads the larger part. Both narrators do their parts well; they further personify the respective character’s personality. The book ends with the reading of the index!!! I have never read an index from start to finish. Have you? Do you want to? It is kind of funny though because the numerous references to Charles show clearly who the book is really about.

The book has some beautiful lines, some satirically funny lines and a message I totally agree with, but neither of the two main stories captured my interest!
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Jun 02, 2018 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: russian-fiction, e-books, fiction-20th-century, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, read-2018, mtbr-challenge-2018, prose-poetry

I do like the style prose-poetry, as Tennyson use to employ also in some of his novels.

4* Lolita
4* Christmas
3* The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump: Essays and Reportage, 1986-2016
4* Pale Fire
TR Ada or Ardor
TR Despair
TR Pnin
TR The Eye
TR Lectures on Don Quixote
TR Nikolai Gogol
TR Letters to Vera

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Aug 14, 2024 Natalie rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics

Though the story wanders through a variety of topics and reflections, the structure is interesting and the prose engaging. The book starts out with a 50 page poem, which the editor Charles Kinbote, explains is the careful work of poet John Shade (though the entire book is the creation of Nabokov). There isn't a continuous narrative, but the "editor's" thoughts are mostly interesting.
We first read the poem, divided into four Cantos, which seems to be about the beautiful and mundane aspects of lif ...more

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Mar 31, 2022 Jeffrey rated it liked it

Shelves: modern-library-100, peterman-society

Update
With so many great books out in the world that I haven’t read, it’s rare that I’ll open up the same book twice in twelve months, but a few old friends and I were inspired to form a book club inspired by a seminar a few of us took back in college and so The Peterman Society was formed. I didn’t want to spend so long picking books that we never got around to starting things up, so when Pale Fire was thrown out there I said ‘Absolutely – let’s get going’.

Besides, I remembered giving the book ...more

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