Pale Fire: A Novel by Vladimir Nabokov (English) Paperback Book

Description: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov In Pale Fire Nabokov offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures: a 999-line poem by the reclusive genius John Shade; an adoring foreword and commentary by Shades self-styled Boswell, Dr. Charles Kinbote; a darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry and one-upmanship, and political intrigue. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description In "Pale Fire" Nabokov offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures: a 999-line poem by the recluse genius John Shade: an adoring foreward and commentary by Shades self-styled Boswell, Dr. Charles Kinbote: a darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry and one-upmanship, and political intrigue. Back Cover In Pale Fire Nabokov offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures: a 999-line poem by the reclusive genius John Shade; an adoring foreword and commentary by Shades self-styled Boswell, Dr. Charles Kinbote; a darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry and one-upmanship, and political intrigue. One of the twentieth centurys master prose stylists, Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg in 1899. He studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, then lived in Berlin and Paris, where he launched a brilliant literary career. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and achieved renown as a novelist, poet, critic, and translator. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977. Author Biography Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), Russian-born poet, novelist, literary critic, translator, and essayist was awarded the National Medal for Literature for his lifes work in 1973. He taught literature at Wellesley, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. He is the author of many works including Lolita, Pale Fire, Ada, and Speak, Memory. Review " This centaur work, half-poem, half-prose . . . is a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth. Pretending to be a curio, it cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the great works of art of this century." --Mary McCarthy "This centaur work, half-poem, half-prose . . . is a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth. Pretending to be a curio, it cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the great works of art of this century." --Mary McCarthy -This centaur work, half-poem, half-prose . . . is a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth. Pretending to be a curio, it cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the great works of art of this century.- --Mary McCarthy Review Quote "This centaur work, half-poem, half-prose ... is a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth. Pretending to be a curio, it cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the great works of art of this century." --Mary McCarthy Excerpt from Book INTRODUCUTION by Richard Rorty [WARNING: this Introduction not only gives away the plot of Pale Fire , but presumes to describe the readers reactions in the course of a first reading of the book - reactions which will not occur if the Introduction is read first. The first-time reader may wish to postpone the Introduction until he or she has finished the Index.] The imagination, Wallace Stevens said, is the mind pressing back against reality. But it is in the interest of reality - that is to say, of the imagination of the dead - to insist that no further pressure is needed: that the imagination of the living can do nothing save reiterate lessons previously learned, instantiate previously known truths. Judicious reviewers must presuppose that nothing genuinely new can be written, for only on that assumption are they in a position to judge, and in no danger of being judged by, the book they are reviewing. Like the judicious reviewer, the common reader is made nervous by books that are insufficiently like the books he or she has read in the past. Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) wrote books which were not much like anybody elses, and they rarely got good reviews. Most reviewers echoed Dr Johnsons dictum that nothing odd can last, and proceeded to diagnose Nabokovs oddities as signs of his egoistical disdain for reality, a disdain which cloaked his inability to imitate reality convincingly. Simon Raven, reviewing Pale Fire on its publication in 1962, said that it was not a novel, but a blueprint. Saul Maloffs review explained that the novelists immemorial purpose and justification was to create a world, and that Nabokov had created only a constellation of elegant and marvelous bibelots , an art which is minor by definition. Reviewer after reviewer conceded Nabokovs skill while deploring his self-indulgence, his delight in his own tricks - tricks which made clear his lack of respect for both reality and the common reader. Dwight Macdonald called Pale Fire unreadable, emphasized that Nabokov, even at his best, was minor, and urged that the technical exertions he [Nabokov] expends on the project are so obtrusive as to destroy any aesthetic pleasure on the readers part. Perturbed by the fact that Mary McCarthy had called Pale Fire a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth, Macdonald explained that both the novel and McCarthys review were exercises in misplaced ingenuity. Nabokov had no interest whatever in creating a world like the one to which Raven, Maloff and Macdonald were accustomed. We speak, he once said, of one thing being like another thing, when what we are really craving to do is to describe something that is like nothing on earth. It was just that craving which annoyed so many of the reviewers. To those who wish reality to be given the respect it takes as its due, such a craving is a sign of egotistic self-indulgence. Egotism is realitys name for whatever calls attention to itself - whatever is odd, hard to understand, hard to follow. Those who respect reality, who are sure that it needs no further pressure, insist that what is worthwhile is already a part of reality, and merely needs to be accurately represented. What is not a part of reality is subjective, personal, idiosyncratic, silly, puerile, evanescent, not worth writing down. For reality is, to the respectful eye, the only legitimate authority. The poets longing to exert pressure upon reality seems not only futile but morally dubious. Now, thirty years after the publication of Pale Fire , critics and literary historians have begun to concede that the book will, in fact, last. It is gradually acquiring the aura of a classic, gradually coming to be seen as the work of one of the most powerful imaginations of our century. This sort of concession is one of the means reality uses to avoid admitting that it has been dented. It is as if, in the dark of night, when no one is looking, reality sent out pseudopods to incorporate the latest oddity. By morning reality looks as smooth and unpressured as before (although just a bit bigger). Something that actually was like nothing on earth thus gets turned into one more objective terrestrial fact, waiting to be observed. Sometimes, however, when the oddity is very large or very complexly shaped, the process of assimilation is not over by morning. Then reality can be caught draining the life out of a metaphor, or reshaping a paradox into a platitude, or repackaging a scandal as a classic. Lolita was like nothing Morris Bishop - a good reader, a good man, and Nabokovs best friend at Cornell - had ever read; his revulsion from Humberts sliminess prevented him from finishing the manuscript. Thirty years later, Bishops granddaughter was assigned Lolita in high school. The more often Lolita and Pale Fire are assigned, made set books for examinations, the more Humbert Humbert and Charles Kinbote will become well-known literary characters - familiar parts of the reality within which people grow up. The more that happens, the more likely it is that those two will merge with the figure of their creator - that Nabokovs readers will think they are reading about Nabokov when they read about these two charming monsters. The more this unconscious identification is made, the less they will remember the people whom Humbert and Kinbote manipulate - the Haze and Shade families, and, in particular, the youngest members of those families, Lolita Haze and Hazel Shade. Brian Boyd, whose splendid biography serves Nabokov well by making the incorporation of his books less easy, reports that among all the characters in his novels whom Nabokov admired as human beings, Lolita stood second only to Pnin. But readers of Lolita often have trouble getting Lolita in focus. All they seem to remember is Humberts creature, his invention - the nymphet, rather than the little girl. So Nabokovs suggestion that she is a splendid human being is hard to take in. Still, readers of Lolita vaguely recall, Lolita did have guts: somehow she got away from Quilty and managed to find herself a good man who would give her a child. She made a home for him and for the child who was to have been born at Christmastime - a home in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest, where it is very cold. Nabokov, it now comes back to us, said that Gray Star was the capital town of the book. Then finally it all comes back: it was only Humbert who thought that he had invented Lolita. We were not supposed to think that. We were supposed to remember what Humbert kept forgetting: Lolitas sobs in the night, her dead brother, the child that might have replaced the brother. How could we have forgotten? We forgot because Nabokov arranged for us to forget, temporarily. He programmed us to forget first and remember later - remember in confusion and guilt. His book keeps on manhandling us even after we close it. The reason it is going to be relatively hard to turn Lolita into a classic is that we guardians of legitimacy, we servants of reality, can only make sound observations about a novel, find admirable illustrations of general truths in it, if we can get it under control. We need to stand at a distance from it in order to see it steadily and whole. But Nabokov arranges things so that, just when we thought that we had stepped back and found the proper standpoint from which to see his book in perspective, we get an uncanny sense that the book is looking at us from a considerable distance, and chuckling. The resulting discomfiture usually turns into renewed exasperation over Nabokovs egotism, his puerile tricksiness, his silly attempts at novelty. As with Lolita , so with Pale Fire . When you read the book for the first time, you find yourself absorbed in a good story, told by an odd but charming man, even before you have finished the Foreword. What follows next - the nine hundred and ninety-nine rhyming lines of Pale Fire - seems a slightly unfortunate interruption. It is perhaps a little unfair to make us lovers of good stories trudge through a long poem on our way back to the plot. But shucks, we fair-mindedly say, it isnt a very long poem. After being briefly troubled by the story of Hazel Shades suicide in Canto Two, and being a bit bored by the reflections on death in Canto Three and those on the creative process in Canto Four, we get back to the story which the poem interrupted. We have rejoined that intriguing, if dubious, Kinbote, and are becoming amused at the way he blithely intrudes himself into what is, in theory, a commentary on the poem we have already started to forget. Fifty pages into Kinbotes commentary we have forgotten all about John Francis Shade (1898-1959 - as the Foreword told us, we now recall, he died right after writing Pale Fire, poor fellow). For now we are immersed in the adventures of a much more interesting person - Charles Xavier Vseslav, last king of Zembla (1915-?: reigned 1936-1958). Whereas the only big event of Shades life seems to have been the unfortunate suicide of his young daughter, the story of Charles Xaviers youth is packed with incident. Better yet, it has the deep human interest which always attaches to stories about royalty, not to mention that extra little thrill we get from reading about the copulation of faunlets. A hundred pages further on, we have become convinced that Charles Kinbote and Charles Xavier are one and the same person. This realization gives us not only the satisfaction of knowing that our interest in Kinbote paid off, but the Details ISBN0679723420 Author Vladimir Nabokov Short Title PALE FIRE Pages 320 Series Vintage International (Paperback) Language English ISBN-10 0679723420 ISBN-13 9780679723424 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY FIC Year 1989 Publication Date 1989-04-30 Imprint Vintage Books Subtitle A Novel Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States Residence St. Petersburg, RUR Birth 1899 Death 1977 Publisher Vintage DOI 10.1604/9780679723424 AU Release Date 1989-04-23 NZ Release Date 1989-04-23 US Release Date 1989-04-23 UK Release Date 1989-04-23 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:2625323;

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