MitchellSteele

I had a similar reaction the first time I read this novel. I think Nabakov is a genius and it really shows in this work.

I really do not think that the story could be understood without reading the commentary and foreword along with the cantos. I find it difficult enough to read with them, but the way that the poem was structured, I would only describe it as absolute chaos. I read the commentary almost like a separate piece of literature, and made a relation to the four cantos that were completely in no order whatsoever. I can completely understand how people were confused, especially if they only read the cantos, without reading the foreword, or the commentary. I really believe that I get why he had us read Pale Fire on the week of intertextual criticism: the story cannot function without the poem, and the poem certainly cannot function without the commentary and foreword explaining some other meaning behind it.

This is the kind of work that makes you put the book down, look out a window, say "huh" to yourself, and then you go and put an end to it all because you, the literary master, had just been played for a fool.

This is the kind of text that makes you feel so inadequate, it isn't even funny. Why can't we be this original and creative?

Fie on Nabakov.