Pale Fire
A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed--according to Nabokov's fiction--by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.
Stats for nerds
41recommend
101mentions
80people
2008–2026years
46% recommend49% neutral6% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Currently going through Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. It's... challenging for the non-native english speaker I am, but still very untertaining. I've been getting out of my comfort zone lately, as a lifelong Sci-Fi aficionado, with every other book on my "to read" pile being non-fiction or experimental like Pale Fire.
- > language and style of speaking sentences
Nabokov? His protagonists have very special styles of speaking. I'd recommend "Pale Fire" (which is also very funny and has an interesting hypertext-like structure) as a starter.
- I think hypertext is best for things like Pale Fire, where the linked text is long (it is a novel, after all), but I must admit that I like paper footnotes are good for things like the SF novels of Jack Vance, so you stay on (more or less) the same page, and you can ignore (or even re-imagine them) if you like.
- I was the shadow of the waxwing slain¹
¹ Pale Fire is one of the greatest books I’ve ever read. It took me two tries because I didn’t understand what I was getting into the first time.
- Pale Fire is one of my favorite books of all time. BTW the crown jewels can be found in the book, if you know where to look :)
- Literature should be able to explore tough topics and spark discussion. There are numerous interpretations of reading a book.. for example, if in the book it is written that a 10 year old had sex with a 30 year old, that could be the fantasy of the 30 year old and you can use it to explore the mind of a pedophile.
Also, reading this of course Lolita comes to mind. To this day, one of the best books I have read (although Pale Fire is the more literarily impressive one of Nabokov). Lolita is an example of a book that explores a complex controversial topic, with an unreliable narrator which forces the reader to think about what is actually happening and what is not.
Banning books and not allowing content such as this, where clearly no child is actually harmed, is insane.
Edit: the novel in the article takes the point of view of the (potential) minor rather than the adult. Doesn’t really change my point, in my opinion.
