Critical Response Archive: Pale Fire

Structurally, Pale Fire is a rather unique novel, masquerading as a non-fictional text surrounding an original poem. Posing as another kind of written work isn’t so unusual in the postmodern canon, but Vladimir Nabokov was one of the first, making Pale Fire an original and unique masterpiece. And because the novel is written as if it were nonfiction, the truthfulness of the narrator, who we know is merely a character, is already called into question. It draws attention to the fact that it is fiction, with made up place-names like Zembla and famous poets like John Shade. Whether the places and characters are modeled after anything or anyone in real life is anyone’s guess, and theories abound.

But what is most striking about Pale Fire is the unreliability and unlikeability of the narrator, who is so deluded as to think he could get a poet he admired to write a poem about him. And as one reads on, she questions the motivations and identity of the narrator, whose façade as a humble Zemblan professor quickly erodes in the last hundred pages. He seems almost eager to divulge his true identity towards the end. The ultimate doubts come towards the very end, when the narrator, Charles Kinbote, adds an anecdote about how he might make a play about two men with delusions of being a prince and his assassin, when that was the underlying plot of Kinbote’s tangent. The setup of the poet’s death itself is rather fishy, and given the evidence towards his creepy stalker-ish tendencies and eccentricities, I can’t help but wonder if perhaps Kinbote had been plotting his hero’s death the entire time, since the assassin’s incompetence was too painfully obvious. But just so he could get his hands on a poem? Pale Fire leaves us with many more questions than answers.

Pale Fire tells us a very important message: that you can’t always trust the word of the narrator, whether it’s non-fictional or not, especially if you’re given reasons to doubt him. I paid more attention to the text in order to detect inconsistencies or linguistic slips of the tongue in the narrative that could hint at the “truth” behind the “author” ’s words. And since Nabokov is twice removed from the text instead of once, his own motives and identity are even more disguised. Yet it can also be a very enjoyable read: Kinbote’s voice was very droll and entertaining, even if his tangents proved frustrating for me at first. I found myself laughing both at him and with him, reading more to find out what exactly his game was, as opposed to uncovering any plot twists (though they are certainly there). As one of the quintessential postmodern novels, Pale Fire is a good example of the boundaries that are pushed and questions raised when conventions are not just thwarted, but either cast into the wind or put to satire.

Hibernation

It's been a long while since I've been on this blog, due to stuff like work and school taking up 100% of my time. But out of this I have some good news! For one, I'm graduating college! Yay for real life! And, more importantly, I've found a new direction--or just a direction--to take this blog!

So from now on, I'm sticking to review, critique, and analysis of one of three things: literature (my love), film, and pop culture (which basically covers all other forms of entertainment, but also news and media criticism). And to start of with this new format, I'll be doing a little series on postmodern literature, putting up the first post by sometime next week.

OK, back to hibernation.