By Vladimir Nabokov
Featured on the Time Magazine Top 100
I wrote a short story years ago which featured (kind of obnoxiously, sure, but I think also effectively) about five to ten pages of endnotes. And the endnotes had footnotes. I submitted this story during a creative writing class I was taking, and this feature of the story divided the class considerably. I knew this would be a controversial move when on my way to class, one normally friendly student refused to acknowledge a greeting on a street corner, and another saw me and laughed while shaking his head. When our instructor opened the class discussion she read the title of the story with, what I was afraid was...disdain? Boredom? I wasn't sure. There was what felt like a full minute of silence before anyone said anything. Finally, a woman sitting to my right said: "I hated it...well, I didn't get it...well, I didn't read it." And away we went.
The people who objected to my story almost down the line did not like the way they had to flip back and forth. I pointed out that I was not the first person to employ endnotes or footnotes in a story, but these folks were having none of it. It is interesting to consider how those classmates of mine, fine people all, would respond to this novel. While I was just trying to be playful, silly and inventive, Nabokov seems to be actively hoping to frustrate and alienate his audience (although I hope that if I were to be in a creative writing class with Nabokov I would be more polite than to open the discussion with "I hate it." I mean, seriously, who does that?).
The form of the novel is unlike anything I have ever seen. It is presented as a 1000 line poem, introduced by the late poet's neighbor and friend, Charles Kinbote, with his instructive annotation afterwards. The poet is the fictional John Shade, and his poem is Pale Fire. I was intrigued at first by the idea of a novel explicating a poem, and how Nabokov was playing both with the form of the novel but also the conventions of academia. But as the novel continued, I saw he was going for larger targets. An early line annotation betrays Kinbote's self serving qualities, and he begins to relate the story of the fictional kingdom of Zembla, and Zembla's brave and beloved king, Charles II. As this annotation gets longer and more involved, it becomes apparent that Kinbote is less interested with the poem than with showing off his knowledge of Zembla. Charles was deposed by revolutionaries, and aided in escape by the Soviets. And (mild spoiler) may just be Kinbote in hiding. Unless, (again, mild spoiler) Kinbote is crazy.
Kinbote's relationship with Shade is also a thread that runs through the annotations. While he describes himself as a friend, the anecdotes that he relates resemble stalking more than friendship. The disconnect between Kinbote's perception of his relationship to Shade, as compared to what it is, provides a great deal of the novel's humor. But it is this relationship that Kinbote feels is the key to Shade's poem, which he thinks is an epic description of the Zemlan history.
The events surrounding Shade's death (note and mild spoiler: it is not of natural causes) adds a significant amount of ambiguity to the text. (Spoiler)It is unclear if Kinbote is Charles II, crazy, a murderer, liar, or all of the above. It is also unclear how much of his interpretation of the poem is his own personality projecting itself. By playing with the form of a novel, Nabokov invites (or dares) his readers to do the same thing.
Pale Fire is not Nabokov's most notorious work (I'll be doing a write-up on that eventually), but it does play with some of the same themes as that novel. Most notably, Nabokov plays around with what he considers the obsession that Europe has with the United States (and vice versa), and how one's understanding of the other is often comically and tragically flawed.
Like most works that play with form, Pale Fire was received by critics in a variety of ways. While some referred to it as a work of genius, some considered it all but unreadable. While I very much appreciated the form of this novel, and, upon reflection, found it to be very clever, I found the process of reading this book to be very frustrating. I guess, with that in mind, I should ease up on my inconsiderate classmate who said of my short story, "I hated it." I don't want to suggest that the short story I handed in to my divided creative writing class was a work of genius, but fill in the blank.
Coming Soon:
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