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 Shade's self-styled Boswell, Dr. Charles Kinbote; a darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry, one-upmanship, and political intrigue. "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 ...
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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 Shade's self-styled Boswell, Dr. Charles Kinbote; a darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry, one-upmanship, and political intrigue. "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
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The narrator of this novel is one screwed up guy. The character who is narrating this novel purports to be annotating and commenting on a lengthy poem by a dear friend and neighbour. Instead, the narrator has hijacked the poem for his own purposes. The reader has to decide if the narrator is aware and is intentionally subverting the other man's work, or is he so deluded that he actually believes in the hilarious and revealing nonsense he goes on and on about.
This is a very funny book and there is no doubt that the humour is intentional. It is also brilliant.
