Vladimir Nabokov - Pale Fire (1962)

Nabokov’s metafictional caricature of academia is not only narratively and linguistically striking, it continues to be relevant and impactful many decades after its publication. Pale Fire tells the story of two (fictional) academics: Dr. John Francis Shade and Dr. Charles Kinbote. The story is told via Kinbote’s writing in first-person perspective, resulting in a predictably biased and distorted textual product, yet the depth of his writing is remarkable. The novel as a text is unique in many respects, but one of the most notable is its metatextual form: it exists as a purposeful parody of academic artifacts. The novel is assembled and presented in four parts: a “Foreword”, the titular poem (Dr. Shade’s Pale Fire: A Poem in Four Cantos), “Commentary”, and an “Index”. Yet one of the more important and interesting aspects of the novel's form is its telling through Kinbote's toxic hubris, intrinsically linked to his position in academia. As Kinbote writes during the “Foreword”, “for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word” (29). This last word is essential to understanding much of Kinbote's writing, and therefore the novel as a product. The beauty of Pale Fire is in its combination of style and parody. Shade's writing is almost as fascinating and illuminating as Kinbote’s, a feat only an author with chops like Nabokov could manage. The novel is overflowing with references and cues toward narrative obscuration, yet its messages are capable of being unearthed with (significant) patience. Nabokov provided possible answers during past interviews, but the best way to enjoy the novel is with a personal, untainted reading, strictly following one’s intuition, then a second with broader context in place. Similar to other great postmodern works, however, the plot itself is argued and is not agreed upon in scholarship or in reader circles. This makes Pale Fire, along with a few other great novels, a particularly personal story, one the reader interacts with more than a traditional, temporally or physically linear text. As with many of Nabokov’s greater novels, the intertextuality here is substantial. While it is decidedly postmodern, some readers even labeling the text as “unreadable”, it is a beautifully written novel that captures many of academia’s realities, and further the psyche of an appropriately labeled madman.