I. ForewordWith deepest sorrows, I regret to inform everyone to the death of fellow Goodreads reviewer, and my dear friend, s.penkevich. While he may have departed, I, Vincent Kephes, have taken upon myself the burden of collecting his notes and the half-finished reviews that he left behind in order to bestow them upon you all. I am certain beyond the shadow of a doubt that, having been close with s., this is in keeping with his wishes, and although they were never overtly expressed, I knew from the first moment we became acquainted that this was an undertaking he desired for I alone to embark upon. While it has been some time since we have seen each other in person, passing in the esteemed interior passageways of Eastern Michigan University and engaged together in academic adventures within the same four walls of many classrooms in Pray Harold’s Literature department, I have intimately following his scribblings on this website. After finding my way through his saved drafts, I’ve found a particular discarded review that radiates his voice and style, an unfinished work that belongs in the public eye. Having finished this particular novel of Nabokov’s back in the spring of 2012, s. left laconic remarks upon Goodreads stating his intention to return once he could “sort out some thoughts” and complete his work. I’ve taken some liberties, incorporating several of his rudimentary drafts and notes into one authoritative, polished copy, and have included a commentary to help understand the ideas that bounced through his mind while creating his review. My commentary to this poem, now in the hands of my readers, represents an attempt to sort out those echoes and wavelets of fire, and pale phosphorescent hints, and all the many subliminal debts to me. Without further adieu, I present to you the last review of s.penkevich’s.II. Review of: Pale Fire By Vladimir Nabokov‘'reality' is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average 'reality' perceived by the communal eye’Nabokov’s Pale Fire is at once a comedy of errors, and a biting satire on politics, literary criticism, as well as Nabokov’s own life and colleagues. Through the foreword and commentary of a fictitious poem, Nabokov stays impressively in character as Charles Kinbote as Kinbote misinterprets John Shade’s poem and imposes his own life story as the true underlying message of the poem. Through misdirection, intentional fallacies, wordplay and wit, as well as a vast array of allusions to his own works and life, Nabokov has created a parody of epic comedic proportions.In keeping true to Nabokov’s style, I present to you a pale parody.A Parody Fire I was the shadow of the reader slain by laughter through the tale of Zemblan’s famed runaway royalty, a story which served to mimic the politics5 from which Nabokov also did flee like Pale Fire’s commentator to work in an American university. Through wordplay and wit this story unfolds of poets and spies as voyeurism grows an unshakable notion in our commentators brain10 that it is he who inspires each clever refrain from his neighbors pen down into his last work of art then a conclusion takes the form of bullet through heart Through parody Nabokov takes a humorous jab at literary criticism and the way that we grab15 for meanings that fit into our own ideal even when those meanings are completely unreal. So have a chucke, have a laugh and enjoy Nabokov’s tale of literary gaffe.In short, a charming novel that I greatly enjoyed reading. The joy lies in Nabokov’s craftsmanship, and I am stunned how well he was able to keep this together.4.5/5III. Commentary1.t Through misdirection, intentional fallacies, wordplay… Am I the only one made irascible by s.’ insistence on producing a thesis statement in each review, as well as incorportate a conclusion in most – this review lacks one for reasons of being an incomplete work, but one can be sure he would have been unable to rest lest he recapitulate his main points. This habit is surely a residual effect of our time spent together in Dr. L-‘s Lit. Theory course. Our marvelous professor insisted that within her course would be forged the perfection of the thesis statement, and it seems s. has been unable to remove himself from his memories of that class. Of utmost importance here is that this was where I first laid eyes on s., then a young, quirky teenager often adorned in band t-shirts featuring musical icons such as Neil Young (loathed) or, to credit his tastes, The Doors. While I sat a distance away from him – the effluvium of tobacco made sitting directly beside him a tad unpleasant for a non-smoker such as myself, I ensured a direct line of sight with his notes by placing myself a few rows behind him. I must confess that his note taking habits were lackadaisical, often drifting into juvenial attempts at poetry, or perhaps song writing. The following poem evinces his inability to break away from a rhyme structure that must have been made sacrosanct in him through angst-ridden punk bands like the Vandals (another t-shirt that frequented his wardrobe in those days). Old habits don’t just die hard, in s. they outright failed to die until he himself did.2.tLine 1: I was the shadow…A parody of John Shade’s first line in his poem which reads: “I am the shadow of the waxwing slain”3. Line 2: by laughter…It seems s. has decided to produce his own little jab at me through this poem. The winter following our time spent together in Dr. L-‘s course, I happened to find myself seeking a new place of residence. Having heard from s. that he lived in the R- apartments, I quickly transcribed a letter to the housing office stating my desires to move in immediately, and, if at all possible due to my being a stranger in the area, to find an apartment close to his own so as to be comfortable around friends. While living near a close friend is a blessing, there are some deficiencies when that friend happens to live with two other roommates, all of which were loud and often intoxicated. Laughter would always thwart my efforts to sleep on weekends, and when one finds themselves alone in the night haunted by loneliness, the joyous laughter that only comes when close friends find themselves in high spirits formed by shared company tends to be nothing but a dagger through the heart. I had pitched multiple noise complaints against them, and this line is a message to me alone that he knew it was I who filed the aforementioned complaints.3.tLine 5: Nabokov did flee…While Nabokov’s family did uproot over reasons of political turmoil, s. fails to draw the most obvious connexions here. Nabokov’s own father was killed by Piotr Shabelsky-Bork, his father protecting the life of Pavel Milyukov, whom Wikipedia calls “a leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party-in-exile.” To anyone with a scholarly eye, which, clearly, s. lacks, would note that Nabokov incorporates murders through mistaken identity in his novels to echo his fathers own death.4.tLine 6: Pale Fire’s commentator…Another conspicuous insult directed towards myself. It is apparent that s. finds my features to be some sort of hilarious joke. Though I am not ashamed to have red hair, and very white skin – a feature that is often of discomfort to me during the summer months – it is outright injurious to nickname me “Pale Fire”. I am glad I have kidnapped s. in order to…. That last statement of kidnapping is in jest, and it seems by “backspace” key is out of order otherwise I would have it stricken from the records. It is a tragedy to have lost him, and my backspace key. Alas, we cannot take back our words, and now even in writing I have found myself stuck in the same conundrum. The obvious allusion is sealed by his referene to “an American university”, one of which we have met at. (See Note 1)5.tLine 8: Voyeurism grows…To speak of me as a voyeur is also entirely unfounded. It was not I that chose for his bed to be directly in line of sight, seen clearly through the tiniest gap between his nightshade and window frame, that could only be viewed from the precise location of my late night reading chair. The chair absolutely had to have been positioned there in order to collect the rays of the moon upon my page so I would not need a night lamp in order to read and could hide myself in total darkness in order to become merely an extension of my novel, or my homework as opposed to a being producing or reading. I had no desire to be forced to witness coitus through such a tragedy of coincidences, and when he saw me gazing out – purely to better reflect on my thoughts, staring into the abyss allowing it to gaze back into me, spacing out and only happening to be directed towards him, why should I have felt it necessary to avert my gaze? I was in deep thought, caught up in serious work, unlike he who knows nothing of scholarly knowledge and probing thought. Look at his reviews, the man can’t avoid using the term ‘prose’ at least once in every review. Had he an IQ beyond that of a toddler he would know there are resources such as a thesaurus – I assume he hasn’t utilized one as he cannot spell it in order to place it in the url bar.6.tLine 10: Clever refrain…Clever, as defined by Wikipedia: “a large knife that varies in its shape but usually resembles a rectangular-bladed hatchet. It is largely used as a kitchen or butcher knife intended for hacking through bone. The knife's broad side can also be used for crushing in food preparation.” I suppose this use of cleaver was meant to be some metaphor at the cutting wit of Nabokov’s. Weak choice at best. 7.tLine 11: last work of artThis line clearly defines my legal right to have obtained these documents. While I am currently pitted in a legal battle for “illegally” accessing his computer, I am certain this will provide more than satisfactory evidence in my defense. Besides, possession is nine-tenths of the law anyhow.8.tLine 16: when those meanings are completely unreal.Upon reviewing earlier drafts, there are multiple lines crossed out in which it is evident he desired to use a phrase “misinterpretation of signs”. It seems he, like all juvenile poets, had the end rhyme as his goal and forced each of these meager lines towards keeping up with his laughable rhyme; rhythm and overall enjoyableness were victims butchered and slain in order to achieve his goal. You, reader, are also a victim for having been forced to read such drivel. Unlike s., I will refrain from placing an exclamation point at the end of the preceding sentence, I am not a child and I prefer to maintain a profession care over my punctuation at all times. Besides, what is with his use of the single inverted comma? He must think he is Knut Hamsun or Cormac McCarthy, both of which he must have seen me reading on my balcony, or seen tucked into my book bag at school as there is no possible way that it was from reading Bukowski that he decided to investigate Hamsun. If it was Bukowski, then surely he learned that from myself as well. When he sat outside reading from Plato, I am certain it was only to discover a vantage point to peer in to my bookshelves, which I kept in the middle of my bedroom just so he could see them. I have spent years following his work to see that he is nothing but a shade of my own genius, and I am certain his reference of a John Shade in his introduction is simply a confession of such.But I digress. The desire to use the term “sign” takes root in his job working as a sign maker at U- factory at the time of reading this novel. Several unfinished drafts for novels such as Steinbecks In Dubious Battle were found by myself as well, and it seemed he had failed in an attempt to relate Steinbeck’s message of workers revolt to his own plight working in the suffocating aluminum dust, low wages and hazardous conditions of the factory. He had a love for workers rights, which was hopefully beaten out of him by the absence of workers voice he must have encountered there. It is best that he did not post those, as politics and anything scholarly is truly above his capacities. Perhaps had he read more Hegel instead of Steinbeck he would have formed any worthwhile opinions. 9.tLine 18: literary gaffe.The literary gaffe is s.’ opinions and this poem altogether. Perhaps it is best that I have kidnapped… I mean, uh, let’s just ignore any attempts of what must be jokesters that say s. is alive and still writing on Goodreads, okay? He is a menace.There you have it, the final work of s.penkevich. That's all folks.The End(?)
I have no desire to twist and batter an unambiguous apparatus criticus into a monstrous semblance of a novel.Giving star ratings to books is, as I'm sure you've already noticed, a tricky business. Sometimes, I even find myself wishing for a more nuanced rating system—perhaps with multiple categories, with stars ranging from 0 to 10. Yet I think such a system would quickly grow tiresome. The best solution is to give a book a star rating and press on; the review is the meat, the star-rating the garnish. But I preface this review with this digression because I wish to explain why I'm not giving such an obviously brilliant work five stars. When I can, I prefer rating books by comparing them with other books by the same author; this give me a reasonable baseline. So, because Nabokov unfortunately reached such dazzling heights in Lolita (in my opinion, at least), this work gets a demotion. Sorry, my dear Vlad; you're too good for your own good.While reviewing this book, it is extremely difficult to resist lapsing into parody; this book practically begs the reviewer to take part in the fun. But since I don't think I could do it justice, and since Manny (among others) has already done such a fine job of parodying it, I will let that be, and attempt an old-fashioned, earnest, non-meta, straightforward review. Wish me luck.Aside from the sheer joy of taking part in Nabokov's literary game, another thing that makes parody so tempting is that this book is so damned deep. A parody is a kind of defense mechanism, allowing one to demonstrate one's knowledge of the work without falling into the black hole of interpretation. This book can be read a dozen times and still fascinate; in every line, in every cross-reference, in every stanza, some little joke, some new interpretation, some added twist to the labyrinth lurks languidly, luring us on. Thus, I'm confident that, with my measly first reading, I barely managed to scratch the surface; yet what a lovely surface!While Lolita shows Nabokov as a consummate artist, Pale Fire shows him as a consummate craftsman. This is a work of supreme artistry, of nearly breathtaking skill, and—dare I use that tired expression?—a tour de force. Let me use a few more clichés: it is a virtuoso performance, a triumph, a masterpiece. Really, no heap of superlatives will reach high enough to allow us to see the top of this mountain.The poem itself, which could easily have been a throwaway little ditty in less capable hands, is very fine; in fact, the poem is almost too fine. By the end, the reader has experienced a piece strong enough to stand on its own; one almost doesn't wish Nabokov to spoil the aesthetic with some elaborate literary ruse. The poem, please—that's all we need. Here is just one sample from the many wonderful lines:Space is a swarming in the eyes; and time,A singing in the ears. In this hive I'mLocked up. Yet, if prior to life we hadBeen able to imagine life, what mad,Impossible, unutterably weird,Wonderful nonsense it might have appeared.(One wonders if perhaps Nabokov missed his true calling. Well, on second thought, never mind.)The meta-fiction has to be awfully good to compete with the poem for attention; otherwise, Nabokov just wrote a nice poem with an appended joke. And, indeed, the commentary does often take the form of a joke. Kinbote is hilariously hapless, delightfully deranged, and uproariously obtuse. (Yes, not a very elegant string of alliterations, I'll grant; but can't I have just a little fun?) While Nabokov's descriptions of sexual lust are disturbing with Humbert, they are farcical with Kinbote; I smiled often at the many descriptions of homosexual delight among the swarms of page-boys in the palace of Zembla. Also endearing are Kinbote's attempts to read his own past into Shade's poem; so desperate and so dimwitted is the attempt, that it's hard not to chuckle.I am very hesitant to read a moral into the story, as Nabokov was anything but a moralist. Nevertheless, I can't resist seeing the whole novel as one gigantic commentary on commentary itself: a testament to the act of criticism, in which the reader reads himself into the story, and then rewrites the story via interpretation to fit. Reader's are like the moon, shining with borrowed light: "the moon's an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun" (Nabokov's source for the title, from Timon of Athens). Kinbote does comically what we all do unconsciously when we read a work of fiction: searches for the elements, the specific passages, the certain themes that resonate with him, and disregards the rest. While confirmation bias is the bane of science, it is the basis of literature: we find our own preconceptions, priorities, and personalities when we read.This is a tempting interpretation; still, the sensitive reader of this work will not be satisfied. For there seems to be more going on under the surface than first appears. Is Zembla a real place? with a real king? Are we to believe these tales of the palace, with its page boys and inept revolutionaries? Are we to take seriously this absurd escape story? And could there be, even in a work of fiction, a man so learned and yet so dull as Kinbote? (Well, I'm not so skeptical about this last question.) In short, the comic character of Kinbote quickly makes one suspect that he himself is a ruse, a persona; that this backstory of escapes and love affairs is fantastical, and that we are not to trust a word written by the man.But then, who is he? Is he a professor with a split personality (Botkin, or Botkine, as the text darkly hints)? Or is he Shade himself, indulging in literary gag? Or is Shade the one who is fictional, and the poem invented by Kinbote to taunt his Zemblan nemeses? But if Shade or Kinbote isn't real, who is this "Gradus"? An escaped psychotic named Jack Grey (as the text also hints), bent on killing Judge Goldsworth?—the judge whose house "Kinbote" is renting, and who was responsible for Grey's incarceration. Then was Shade killed—if he was, in fact, killed—because he resembled Goldsworth? Is Zembla really just Novaya Zemlya?—also called "Nova Zembla," where, it so happens, there is a river named "Nabokov's River," named in honor of a family member of Vlad's who discovered it. And what's with the frequent allusions to the afterlife? to suicide? What, in short, is really going on here?All this ambiguity reminds me of a certain passage from Nabokov's memoir, Speak, Memory. Here, he is describing his goal when composing chess problems:It should be understood that competition in chess problems is not really between White and Black but between the composer and the hypothetical solver (just as in a first-rate work of fiction the real clash is not between the characters but between the author and the world), so that a great part of a problem's value is due to the number of "tries"—delusive opening moves, false scents, specious lines of play, astutely and lovingly prepared to lead the would-be solver astray.(It seems Nabokov had a very adversarial view of fiction. In any case, we can be sure that the obscurity of this work was intentionally and carefully built into it.)A person with more time, energy, and inclination than I, could easily get lost in these mazes; I merely noted them on the periphery of my awareness as I made my way through the work. With a narrator as unreliable as Kinbote, the wary reader cannot trust a thing; that there is much uncertainty is the only certain conclusion I can reach.What prevents this undoubtedly brilliant work from reaching the heights of Lolita is the drama, the beating heart, the bright flashes of tenderness which managed to make a book about a reprehensible man committing a heinous deed into high art. The appeal of Pale Fire is, by contrast, largely to the mind. The basic arc of the story is known almost from the beginning; we are, if often interested, seldom surprised. The characters, though compelling, are not as multidimensional as dear Humbert, who lives and breathes in the pages of Lolita; and the meta-fictional mystery, though it inspires fascination, does not tug at the heart or chill the spin. In short, Nabokov's artistry managed to strangle his art.But perhaps I'm wrong. Often when I've felt like this about other works, it has only meant that I wasn't yet ready, that I needed some time to digest it. I wouldn't be surprised to find myself rereading this little gem, and finding, as I hold it up once more to the pale light, more tints, hues, and subtle shades than I ever imagined.
What do You think about Pale Fire (2010)?
Pale Fire is another great American novel narrated by another great Nabokovian vampire, the academic showboat Dr. Charles Kinbote. This particular parasite wraps the leathery wings of his sexy but suffocating rhetoric (syntax that seduces, diction that deflowers) around the last poetical work of John Shade, a 999 (or 1000) line poem entitled “Pale Fire.” Kinbote is only too happy to abuse his coveted position as the sole editor of “Pale Fire” by infesting the poem’s Forward and line-by-line Commentary with an abundance of autobiographical anecdotes about his “friendship” with the poet during the last few months before Shade’s murder, picaresque accounts of Kinbote’s mysterious native country Zembla, tales of said country’s political intrigues and monarchal woes, gossip about Shade’s and Kinbote’s colleagues at the college where both teach, a generous lathering here and there of Kinbote’s personal likes and dislikes in literary art…oh and let’s not forget Charles Kinbote’s (who also happens to share a first name with Charles II, the recently ousted King of Zembla whose present royal whereabouts, by the by, are a dubiously kept secret) no you can’t forget Professor Kinbote’s fetishistic preoccupation with the supple form of the young male’s body as well as acrobatic acts of homosexuality. Despite Kinbote’s obsession with making the poem about himself and his memories (or delusions, depending on which of the several ways you choose to interpret this book; not that any particular stance is better than another) of poor troubled Zembla, Shade’s “Pale Fire” stands as a lively rumination on mortality, the afterlife, and the suicide of the poet’s daughter. Considered one of the greats in the niche genre of “anti-novels”, Pale Fire outshines many of its successors by both defying formal conventions and embracing a love for suspenseful storytelling.
—Anthony Vacca
Another, more prosaic objection: if Kinbote/Botkin and Shade are all the same person, then who does Gradus shoot? Or is he just a fantasy figure too, and there is no murder? I still feel I prefer the normal explanation...
—John
Nabokov's Pale Fire is "what a composer of chess problems might term a king-in-the-corner waiter of the solus rex type." Perhaps even moreso than Luzhin Defense, Pale Fire seems to me Nabokov's ultimate ode to the king's game. A kind of post-modern salad of quirks and quizzes, the structure of the "novel" is a 999-line poem of heroic couplets by the late John Shade, a preface, an index, and most importantly explanatory commentary in the form of end-notes by Charles Kinbote (friend? neighbor? deposed king? psychopath?).Nabokov was a lover of chess, but more particularly chess problems, which in themselves are remote artifices, much like Nabokov's post-modern artifacts-as-novels. He championed the chess problem as a battle, not between black and white, but between problem and solver, and that is how his novels should be read as well: the tension is not between characters but between novel and reader. Pale Fire is he ostensible struggle between Shade's poem and Kinbote's commentary, but is actually a problem (or host of questions, problems) for the reader to solve. The character-king of Charles Kinbote (Zembla's Charles X), is the great false move of the game: posing as the innocuous professor and neighbor of John Shade, we are tempted to believe what he tells us in his commentary, though as the narrative continues his harmless mask slips and slips, revealing the madman beneath. Nabokov, in an interview, on deception in chess and in art: The fake move in a chess problem, the illusion of a solution or the conjuror's magic: all art is deception and so is nature; all is deception in that good cheat, from the insect that mimics a leaf to the popular enticements of procreation ...I am fond of chess but deception in chess, as in art, is only part of the game; it's part of the combination, part of the delightful possibilities, illusions, vistas of thought, which can be false vistas, perhaps.The whole of Pale Fire can be read as a false vista, and the potential truths behind the mask are manifold, though none is certain. Is Kinbote really Charles the Beloved of Zembla (is there a Zembla at all?)? Is he the mad professor V. Botkin? Is the world actually a shared work between Shade and Kinbote, or is Kinbote/Botkin the sole author? The novel abounds in questions, each solution seductive but all mutually exclusive.For the sake of simplicity, and to keep from caging myself too much in the Kinbote-is-Botkin camp, I will focus this review largely on the other treasures of Pale Fire, and take Kinbote's character as real and not simply a creation, though with a dash or two of salt. The novel's title suggests lines from Shakespeare's Timon of Athens:TIMONThe sun's a thief, and with his great attractionRobs the vast sea: the moon's an arrant thief,And her pale fire she snatches from the sunTimon goes on to name the sea, the earth, and all else as thieves, but they are natural thieves: the moon can't help but to hold the light of the sun, the sea can;t help but to reflect the light of the moon, etc. Artistic theft is a recurrent theme in this Boswellian game of chess, and the potential malignancy of borrowing of inventive "light" from other artists. Kinbote "steals" the narrative from Shade, in fact the poem is quite overshadowed by the narrative, both in relative length and in artistic power, it is not the friendly borrowing of allusion, but the maliciously referential one-up-manship which Kinbote employs on the work of the late Shade. Kinbote is the Nabokovian trope of false-artist: a man who appears to share his views on art, but deploys them to malicious ends. Like Hermann in Despair, like Humbert in Lolita, Kinbote is an aesthetically inclined man, but one who uses art as a way to seduce, to take advantage: not art for art's sake, but art as Machiavellian deception. I do not consider myself a true artist, save in one matter: I can do what only a true artist can do—pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation, wean myself abruptly from the habit of things, see the web of the world, and the warp and the weft of that web.The novel is a web, it literally refers to itself, and defies tradition methods of narrative reading. The trick is to pounce upon the butterflies of revelation when the appear in small flashes (they are never caught fully in the web) to avoid the sinister spider of deception. Even from the start, how does one read Pale Fire? Poem first, then commentary? Or Kinbote's self-important suggestion to read the commentary before-during-after? There is no right way. The novel is a chess match of 999 lines, first Shade's poesy, then Kinbote's prose, Shade, Kinbote, Shade, Kinbote, etc. But it is an idle kind of match (stalemate.), the quality of Shade's poem is a vastly inferior to Kinbote's commentary, though there is no real conclusion, the poem is left undone, or at Kinbote's suggestion it is left recursive: ending the same way it began. Like a king-in-the-corner, there is a stunted kind of play between Shade and Kinbote, but the play between book and reader is quite active, quite evocative. The false vistas of Pale Fire are manifestly forewarned of in the opening of Shade's poem: "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane" The reader can easily be seduced by the seeming vistas of Kinbote's stories, but by doing so they are reduced to the shadows of their own naivete. While there are a number of potentially "true" vistas, Nabokov never gives us one that is certain, keeping us constantly cognizant of the potential pitfalls of our assumptions: we are never safe when we read Pale Fire.
—David
