Literary Criticism

Structure of a Pale Fire surpasses and rewrites the usual boundaries a novel has

Nabokov’s book Pale fire has a unique one-of-a-kind structure in the way it was written. For about 30 pages in the book, it contains a poem written by a fictional author. The rest of the book is the notes written by the fictional author's editor. Due to this unique angle of writing, Pale fire comes off as something completely different and new, something the likes of which many have never seen before. This structure creates a non-linear story, allowing for anyone to open the book up to any page and begin reading there, as many times as they’d want, and they could almost get a different story every time. (Rowberry, “HIS and MY READER”)

Hypertext is defined as a software system that can create extensive linking systems. Nabokov's Pale Fire is often described as such with its structure in the “commentary” portion of the book often stating to look at other portions of the book it can read like a website that has multiple links to another website that also has links, so on and so forth. This writing format gives way to creating a sense of truly reading from the perspective of someone reading about a real author and his crazy editor. This unique and original form of writing helps to accentuate the main story at hand and make the audience want to read again and again to get a true grip on it. (Rowberry, Pale Fire: The Lost “Father of All Hypertext Demos”)

While the book's unique and deep structure helps to impact the way the book is understood, the writing in of itself of course plays a deeply important role in how the book is understood and interpreted. The writing can be extremely contradictory at times and can be confusing the first time someone reads it, leading some to not get the deeper understanding needed to grasp the full concepts being shown in the book. While Nabakov’s writing may break the bounds of the usual novel through its use of forcing the reader to go backward and forward in the book, it can also lead to people being confused or unwilling to fully read the book. (Lombardo, Magical Realism in the Works of Vladimir Nabokov: Competing Realities in Pale Fire and Ada)

Nabokov’s intrinsic style heavily changes the way the book is read and understood

The writing of Pale Fire has been described many times as grouping the readers into three categories: Nabakovian, Shadean, and Kinbotean. Shadean, being the reader that mostly focuses on the poem part of the book, digging deep into each stanza of the poem and trying to see the true meaning of each of the words. Kinbotean reader are the ones who focus on Kinbote’s commentary and relish in the unique non-linear structure of the writing. But the reader who gets the best understanding and truly knows the book is the Nabokovian reader, the one who will flip back and forth between every time they're told and the times they're not told, the ones who constantly search for the meaning of every word within the book itself. (Goddard, “Realizing and Imagining “Aesthetic Bliss” in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and Pale Fire.”)

With the best kind of reader for Pale Fire being the one who goes the extra mile, it becomes easy to understand that at certain times Nabokov’s writing can be somewhat hard to fully grip and needs someone who's persistent to fully understand the book, and while it's understandable how the belief that this writing style can cause a large gap between each of the kinds of readers, it's also easy to understand that it's not hard to be one of the Nabokovian readers. It’s not hard to sit down and truly read the book and search for the deep motifs amongst the writings to truly get the full grip of the writing. (Rowberry, Pale Fire: The Lost “Father of All Hypertext Demos”)

One of the aspects of writing that can only truly be understood by stepping deep into the depths of the book is the feel of magic in a non-magical world. Throughout many of Nabokov's books, there is a sense of magical realism, magical realism being a normal everyday life where magic slips into the everyday while the main focus of the story not being the magic that's looming over the characters, within Pale fire the extravagant and fake sounding world that Kinbote describes through his commentary notes leaves the reader feeling as if he’s telling a fairy tale from his childhood, the feel of magic throughout his book leads the reader to dive even deeper into the story that's woven underneath the main story. (Lombardo, Magical Realism in the Works of Vladimir Nabokov: Competing Realities in Pale Fire and Ada)

The audience and author directly effects all connotations and interpretations of the writing

Throughout Nabokov's career, he’s been heavily criticized a multitude of times, his writing has oftentimes been chalked up as a load of nonsense and does zero good to the art of writing as a whole. His personal beliefs, lifestyle, and other extensions of his life have been scrutinized while he was alive and far past his death. These experiences have played a heavy role in his writing, being seen throughout a multitude of his books that one character is almost always characterized as a cynical person who is apathetic to the lives others live, a reflection of how he wishes people would leave him be. (Rowberry, “HIS and MY READER”)

In extension, Nabokov’s history heavily affects the way his writing is perceived and understood. The history of the writer also heavily influences the way the book reads, due to Nabokov’s writing being heavily opinionated and always laced with a sense of harsh reality affecting everyone in the book. The history and life that the audience has lived through also heavily influences the perception the reader gains of the book, leaving the readers' trauma, social life, family, and personal beliefs to heavily drive the way the reader will perceive the book. (Goddard, “Realizing and Imagining “Aesthetic Bliss” in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and Pale Fire.”)

Page updated

Report abuse