/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.10742463]

>PALE FIRE THREAD

Just read this. The prose was beautiful and Kinbote's goonery was great fun but I wonder if I missed something. I've heard it called a masterpiece on here, which is fine. But I feel like I either missed a bunch thematically or there just isn't that much under the hood.

[Anonymous No.10742479]

>>10742463
at first you think the guy is just a narcissist but as the book goes on you realize he's insane and by the end you feel really bad for him, and realize that shade probably felt bad for him too

[Anonymous No.10742496]

>>10742463
Give it time to sink in. I felt the same when I finished it but then certain passages beginning gripping me back like few other books I read. Rereading the poem itself on finishing is a delight.

>But who can teach the thoughts we should roll-call
>When morning finds us marching to the wall
>Under the stage direction of some goon
>Political, some uniformed baboon?
>We'll think of matters only known to us--
>Empires of rhyme, Indies of calculus;
>Listen to the distant cocks crow, and discern
>Upon the rough gray wall a rare wall fern;
>And while our royal hands are being tied,
>Taunt our inferiors, cheerfully deride
>The dedicated imbeciles, and spit
>Into their eyes just for the fun of it.

[Anonymous No.10742503]

>>10742479
Insane is rather hyperbole, obsessed and deranged sure

[Anonymous No.10742510]

>>10742463
now read this to make sure you understood it.
https://newrepublic.com/article/63440/bolt-the-blue

[Anonymous No.10742545]

>>10742503
how is obsessed and deranged different from insane

[Anonymous No.10742552]

I’ve only read the poem, can the book be worth the while as well?

[Anonymous No.10742556]

This is prose? I thought it was a huge poem

[Anonymous No.10742597]

Be honest, how many of you read this just because it was in Blade Runner?

[Anonymous No.10742599]

You are really shilling this book hard OP

What the fuck is your end goal?

[Anonymous No.10742603]

>>10742479
>felt bad for him
really? he's so easy to hate

[Anonymous No.10742613]

>>10742597
why exactly WAS it in Blade Runner? what were they trying to say? I couldn't figure it out.

[Anonymous No.10742630]

>>10742552
I only read the commentary. Is the poem actually worth reading?

[Anonymous No.10742639]

>>10742613
That's because you didn't understand the book. The reference is really obvious. K thinks he's the son of Deckard and Rachel; Kinbote/Botkin/whoever he really is creates the illusion of being a Zemblan king. That's the extent of the Pale Fire metaphor. Sure you could go deeper, but that's the idea. Try reading the book next time instead of the wikipedia summary.

[Anonymous No.10742645]

>>10742630
Oh, golly gracious, yes!

[Anonymous No.10742648]

>>10742613
I think it was something to do with false memories, ie the "tall white fountain" that was actually a "tall white mountain"

[Anonymous No.10742746]

>>10742503
Kinbote/Botkin believes himself to be the deposed monarch of a nonexistent country. I'd consider that at least a little insane.

[Anonymous No.10742749]

>>10742552
>reading the poem before the commentary
Clearly you didn't read the introduction my friend.

[Anonymous No.10742763]

>>10742639
then why do they make K speak the lines from the poem? that would imply he was Shade wouldn't it?

[Anonymous No.10742788]

>>10742763
Kinbote believes himself to be the author of Pale Fire by extension. Remember that Kinbote tells Shade his story and escape from Zembla so that Shade will immortalize it in a poem. In a sense Kinbote believes Pale Fire is totally his own work, thus the commentary, to explain how the poem is really about Zembla and its monarch.
>that would imply he was Shade wouldn't it?
Also this doesn't follow logically. Just because I speak lines from a poem doesn't make me the author, especially if I'm being forced to read them by a higher authority.

[Anonymous No.10743103]

>>10742597
Pale Fire has been /lit/core for years, newfriend.

[Anonymous No.10743113]

>>10742763
Are you seriously this etarded?

[Anonymous No.10743630]

>>10743113
I hadn't even realised that Kinbote was making up Zembla so yes probably

[Anonymous No.10744416]

>>10742597
My bookmark was my movie stub for BR.

[Anonymous No.10745962]

>>10742479
right, but mainly because the poem is so clearly about routine life in an academic village (Ithica NY) for a couple both before and after a certain domestic catastrophe which of course has little to do with Kinbote. Hazel's of course the anti-Lolita, and Sybil's perhaps the most interesting chatacter in American lit completely denied ANY means of self-representation. It's not only sad and ridiculous at the same time, it's beautiful.
t. by no means a Nabokovian
>just credit where credit's due

[Anonymous No.10746061]

>>10745962
>Hazel is of course the anti-Lolita

fucking what?

[Anonymous No.10746084]

In the beginning I thought that Shade was slightly demented or some hyper-aloof artist type for being nice and continuing to be nice to Kinbote. Ultimately I think that Shade just felt bad for the guy.

But that leaves me with a question, why did Shade give Pale Fire to Kinbote? Did Kinbote snatch them off of Shade near the end and lie about it?

[Anonymous No.10746090]

>>10742545
>how is obsessed and deranged different from insane

Insane requires a radical break from reality the others are more nuanced mistakes and strange thoughts

[Anonymous No.10746119]

>people talking as if Zembla was imaginary in-universe

Where is the proofs?

[Anonymous No.10746123]

test

[Anonymous No.10746127]

>>10746084
Kinbote leveraged Sybil's grief so she'd sign the editing rights over to him.

[Anonymous No.10746157]

I started this recently but when I came to the actual sonnets, I felt that I might be going in prematurely, especially since I have only read Lolita by Nabokov.
That wasn't unnecessary and stupid, right?
>Me did gud?

[Anonymous No.10746159]

>>10746127
Ah yes but before that he received the cards containing the poem from Shade himself

[Anonymous No.10746169]

>>10746157
You're probably able enough to read it if you had no troubles during Lolita. Also, read Pnin.

[Anonymous No.10746182]

>>10742597
Pale Fire is the second ever Nabokov work I read; the first was Signs & Symbols. I haven't even seen the first Blade Runner, although I did read the novel when I was twelve.

[Anonymous No.10746350]

Writers from Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope to Jules Verne and Salman Rushdie have used Zembla’s wastes north of Siberia as symbolic of what Charlotte Brontë called “forlorn regions of dreary space.” Now the site of testing of non-nuclear explosives at a nuclear facility has given birth to zemblanity, the inexorable discovery of what we don’t want to know.

[Anonymous No.10746578]

>>10746061
Haze L. The young girl whom no one notices. Her predicament is obviously just as painful. I mean (we) know what happens, right? This is fairly obvious. What's also fairly obvious is that no one gives a fuck about her story (as Nabokov knew). And so, though it's clearly told by her father, it is conveniently quickly forgotten in deference to the ravings of (an albeit entertaining) raving lunatic by the literature reading population at large.

[Anonymous No.10746596]

>>10746578
Her story was very beautifully though

>People have thought she tried to cross the lake
>At Lochan Neck where zesty skaters crossed
>From Exe to Wye on days of special frost.
>Others supposed she might have lost her way
>By turning left from Bridgeroad; and some say
>She took her poor young life. I know. You know.

Feels were felt

[Anonymous No.10746652]

>>10746596
Agreed. I felt them hard. It's a comic disaster. I also found myself wanting very badly for Sybil to be given leave to speak for herself (never happens). Shade loves her dearly on the one hand, but via Kinbote she's an oafish pleb bitch.

[Anonymous No.10746690]

>>10746578
>I mean (we) know what happens, right? This is fairly obvious.
What happens? I have read the book but I must have missed a ton because I don't know what you're getting at.

[Anonymous No.10746705]

>>10742503
He's insane. I know there's a bit of ambiguity as to whether the reader is to regard Zembla as a real place in the context of the story, but by the end it's quite clear it's not.

[Anonymous No.10746719]

>>10742463
It was a really good book, but I think it lacked some of the frenzied magic Lolita had.

[Anonymous No.10746730]

>>10742463
I'm leaving /lit/ forever hopefully there is a better site out there the board is full of screenshots of books you haven't read, pedo cunts talking about little girls in purple prose and shelves. There is literally nothing worthwhile on this board anymore.

I blame americans -- they ruin fucking everything they ruined the world then they brought 4chan to media attention because of autistic uncultured shoot shootings and nazi frogs. And all these underage and communists migrated from reddit now this board is constantly full of fucking bullshit and I'm done I'm going to find something better away from you fucking losers (90% of this board probably) go fuck yourselves americans

I hope you're fucking happy you destroy the world through pushing transgender, multiculturalism, degeneracy, interracial mixing and now you can't help but destroy /lit/

FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU DEGEN JEW SLAVE CUNTS the fact that you have to look down at your dick (if you can see it fatasses) and be reminded that you're slave to jews is a hilarious you'll never be anything more then the fat retarded nation that ruined the rest of the world enjoy your dystopia of africans, Jewish publishing, spics and whites all blending into some 60 IQ piece of shit race you caused this you fucking cancerous dumb fat fucks.

[Anonymous No.10746777]

>>10746690
See the post two above yours. A severely depressed girl whom no one notices (the female version of London Frog take not give 10 years) and whose parents are a solid couple just gives up, and her parents are completely mortified. Think of 'pale fire' as inspiration (Shade's given this situation) without color. Think of Kinbote's commentary as a kind of coloring in. Though the colors are false, theyre somehow right. Why? Because the world is mad (and full of false hype) and what the author does is convey this fact wonderfully.

[Anonymous No.10746779]

>>10746730
gr8 b8 desu

[Anonymous No.10746793]

>>10742463
crazy idea but literature is shallow and has no climactic value. there literally is nothing there because there is no point. only the greatest stories have even a semblance of meaning, aesthetic experiences are closer to orgasms than they are even just a good conversation with a lover after the orgasm or divining an idea late at night. they’re simply vapid experiences. You’ll note that most people who are deeply interested in literature are incapable of engaging with philosophy, actively flee from it, are almost always narcissists, for this is the root of all desire to beguile and write for a living, and have absolutely no sense of trustworthiness or civility. You’ll note further that the more esoteric the persons interests in lit, the worse of a general human they become, degrading to the point of being basically a parasite literati or academic or more commonly a disgusting suicidal cockroach of a human

[Anonymous No.10746807]

>>10746793

[Anonymous No.10746815]

I loved the little mentions of Pnin troughout the book

>>10746793
What has aestheticism done to you my man?

[Anonymous No.10746825]

>>10746793
>aesthetic experiences are closer to orgasms than they are even just a good conversation with a lover after the orgasm
the form is the orgasm and the content is the post-orgasmic or even peri-orgasmic conversation; without the afterglow of aesthetics the same content would be much less satisfying and memorable.

[Anonymous No.10746874]

>>10746807
this is impotence, and its not an opinion
>>10746815
i just started to notice how much I got from philsophical texts, scientific texts and even religious texts (despite not buying the metaphysics) then looked at /lit/ and realized it was a playground for sociopaths and narcissists to try to sharpen their wits and entertain themselves in the void. It has no purpose its a vocation occupied by people with no weltanschauung. there’s a handful of authors like Joyce and Kafka who break through this cieling of playing with one’s asshole and becoming lost in the world of appearances, but even they just break down into narcissism which is why the Wake is written the way it is, littered with ridiculous socially oriented trivialities disguised as clever linguistic puzzles, and is why a lot of Kafka’s works can really be summarized as sad office man gets beat up by big institute and you don’t need to read the fucking story to get anything else.

Everything else is just pointless, the way you all type you’re really sick fucking people. An alarming number of you have mental illnesses and are sexual deviants, large number of the writers ive met are suicidal, psychotic or religious larpers. Not very nice people at all either, you have kind words but you’re really just self concerned, writers always relate things back to themselves because they’re always self inserting as their characters and try to get out of their own pov which only reinforces thinking through one’s pov, so you can’t talk to them about problems. Everything you say has to have a reference, so you cite largely meaningless passages from works of fiction that you feel have esoteric meaning, and on close examination at first they appear to be intimidating bellows from the void that are illuminating the relevant situation, but ive thought quite clearly about all these passages and excerpts that ive seen for one reason or another, and now I realize they’re just excuses not to think.

Writers and literati don’t think at all, they rely on your illiteracy and poor vocabulary to trick you into thinking their rhetoric, the diction they use and the rhythm of their writing is thought itself. But, this isn’t the case at all, what they’re usually sayig almost always breaks down to: i wish i could do ‘x’ sexually, i want to die, im so happy about being me, oh how much we suffer, this thing sure is beautiful, why me? This pattern of indulgent socialized consciousness, and you’ll never meet a writer who isn’t highly socialized whereas you will meet philosophers and scientists who are almost complete hermits because its unnecessary to have a social discourse to do either activity, this pattern is fundamentally immoral. People who think about themselves all day long, and only in a narrative sense, in a commentative sense, their head is just a theater for their amusement and disgust, these are idol sign obsessed souls. Really despicable type of human

[Anonymous No.10746936]

>>10745962
>Ithica NY
ummmmmm, the town is more like Appalachia than upstate New York new friend. The fucking butterfly in the book can only be found in the Smoky Mountains...sooooooooooo

[Anonymous No.10746943]

>>10746169
He should honestly read Pnin first that way he gets the reference.

[Anonymous No.10746948]

>>10746596
>When they turn off the TV and then Hazel dies.

[Anonymous No.10747112]

>>10746943
Everyone should read Pnin desu

[Anonymous No.10747115]

>>10746705
>but by the end it's quite clear it's not.

Is it? Perhaps I missed some detail you didn't but I seen no suggestion

[Anonymous No.10747147]

>>10747115
Yeah I like the ambiguity of whether his story is real or not. I guess it wouldn't be too surprising if the madman commentator was that much more mad, but from what I remember there was no definitive proof either way. And how could there be if the account we're listening to is Kinbote's?

[Anonymous No.10747150]

>>10747115
It's been a while, but at the end there is a single line, at the end of the last part, where he alludes explicitly to an imaginary king from an imaginary place. I don't have the book handy and my googlefu is failing. I'm curious so I'll check after work and report back the specifics.

[Anonymous No.10747155]

>>10747147
>And how could there be if the account we're listening to is Kinbote's?

Some sort of contradiction or slip I would presume. But I don't recall any, certainly not in any definitive sense.

[Anonymous No.10747175]

>>10747155
There are a few slips, just subtle cracks in the armor, though I believe there is enough ambiguity so as to not be definitive. Similar to in Lolita when every like 50 pages or so you get just a glimmer of Dolores' torment through the Humbertian sheen.

[Anonymous No.10747177]

>>10747155
In any case I find such speculative readings to be assinine and childish. It ultimately doesn't matter if it was real or not when Kinbote is ultimately a fun house mirror reflection of Nabokov himself and the Kingdom he once lived in but ultimately now exists only in his head

[Anonymous No.10747238]

>>10747175
I should definitely remember them because I only read the book about a year ago, but do you remember any specific ones?

[Anonymous No.10747531]

>>10747112
Right on, brother. I hate to use the term but the book is truly comfy. Pnin is such a great character. Everybody sees him as this absurd caricature while he's just this little man trying to join in with the world around him. It's the only book of Nabokov I know with such a lovable protagonist.

[Anonymous No.10747919]

>>10746936
I'm no lepidopterist, anon, but I do watch birds and a cedar waxwing flying about a residential neighborhood around where I live in the warmer months is a rarity, and I live in the rather broad region (you) speak of. Nonetheless it's possible, and I know almost nothing of lepidoptery. Ever visited Cornell though? The book definitely has an Ithaca feel..
These aren't arguments, however, so I guess I must defer, or at least admit that what I transcribed from my reading experience was an assumption I made *while* reading and not in the book itself. It's been awhile since last reading it.

[Anonymous No.10748017]

>>10747919
Ok, I was just being antagonistic. The college town is actually an amalgam of a college town like Cornell and the Appalachia mountains. Though I forget what real life university it was inspired by. Sorry, I just wanted to be an asshole.

[Anonymous No.10748025]

>>10747531
Does everyone see him that way though? Or is it only the narrator? We can't forget that for some reason the narrator doesn't like Pnin, plus he cucked him out of an already cucked wife. The narrator really doesn't like Pnin, But at least Pnin is an uber chad in the community of Russian expats.

[Anonymous No.10749829]

>>10748025
No true. His 'son' sees him for who he is and so do the people he lives with in the beginning.

[Anonymous No.10749875]

>>10742463
>But I feel like I either missed a bunch thematically or there just isn't that much under the hood.
It's Nabokov, what's under the hood for him are clever structural details, not great insights into humanity.

[Anonymous No.10750824]

>>10749875
Meme. He comes loaded with 'insights into humanity.' Just not 'information' shot through with 'explanations' that one can carry away (from any one of his books) as if in a wet paper bag.

[Anonymous No.10750831]

>>10749875
>not great insights into humanity.

Brainlet

[Anonymous No.10750834]

>>10748017
Well? This is the place, right?
I didn't take offense.

[Anonymous No.10751830]

>>10742463
which printing is this?

[Anonymous No.10751833]

>>10749875
MUH INSIGHT

[Anonymous No.10752602]

>>10751830
My copy's the fourth printing of the Wideview/Perigee edition (Putnam) first printing of which was in 1980

[Anonymous No.10753608]

>>10742597
The movie was trash. At least the sequel. Why would anyone be reading it because it was shown there.

[Anonymous No.10753647]

>>10742639
>basing a movie, which was already based on a book, on a book

[Anonymous No.10753695]

>>10753608
Because the cover looked cool and the quotes used in the baseline tests were magnificant

[Anonymous No.10753702]

>>10753608
The movie was good. Stories of male alienation and general atomization don't get $150 million budgets

[Anonymous No.10753777]

>>10746777
Of course the true color would concern the parents love for their troubled, perhaps mercifully deceased daughter. An exceptionally private feel, and kept that way. In a way Kinbote runs cover without even realizing it (he is himself an incredibly sad figure, a kind of how-to to entertain oneself given his type of loneliness) and all works out almost too beautifully in this hilarious tale of crushing sadness.

[Anonymous No.10754045]

>>10753647
>art can't interact with other art

[Anonymous No.10754053]

Nabokov may have gotten too convoluted with Pale Fire, but I still find it a masterpiece. I read it a few years ago, and the emotional impact of the ending, where Kinbote and his person seem to break down did something for me very few books have been able to do for me since.

Anyway, Kinbote is actually the scholar V. Botkin. Check the Index. Who could have written the index, referring to the "3 principal characters of the work G, K, and S"? Not Kinbote, or not Kinbote-as-Kinbote. but someone beyond. The beyond is V. Botkin himself. Neither Shade nor Kinbote exists, and of course Zembla doesn't exist but that's trite. Kinbote and Shade are both aspects of Botkin's self. After completing the novel, Botkin commits suicide. Hazel Shade is also an aspect of himself. The suicide is supported by Nabokov's own words, and "Kinbote's" reflections on suicide and self-conscious professed similarity to Hazel.

The point of the convolution, in my view, is to make a point about the convolution of EVERY novel. We know we're not reading real events, that the characters aren't real people, it's all just words on paper, but we get emotionally attached and affected anyway.

I think the point of the novel was simultaneously to affect you despite being about "nothing" (everything in the story is made-up, none of it has actually happened, in both senses --- within the novel, and in real life), and be a more cerebral reflection on how novels and stories affect us despite being about "nothing" in the same way.

[Anonymous No.10754092]

>>10754053
Kinbote = V. Botkin, mentioned in the index as a Russian emigrant professor

Zembla doesn't exist. zembla = semblance = from the latin similare, simulare, to simulate, a simulation.

Botkin wrote Kinbote's commentary, and perhaps even the poem (the fact that John "Shade" is married to a "Sybil" (=sibyl) seems suspicious). After finishing the novel, he commits suicide --- heavily implied when he says in the end that he hopes God will rid him of the impulse to "follow the fate of the 2 other main characters in this story".

The fact that one person wrote both the poem and the commentary, a person who is neither John Shade nor Kinbote, is supported by the index, where the person who wrote the index refers to "the three main characters being represented by the letters G, K, and S".

The trite realization that Kinbote = exiled king of Zembla is a sort of parody to trick the reader, make them thing they've gotten something deep. The layer behind that is that Botkin created the story and Kinbote is his alter ego; Zembla is a parody of Russia

Both of these are old posts made by me I found on the archive and I was too lazy to retype. If you haven't tried to think much about Pale Fire and want to figure it out yourself, i'd suggest skipping over these. Although looking back on it, I think the entire purpose of the novel is to be interlocking in an indeterminate way -- it could be that Shade made up Kinbote, Kinbote made up Shade, or the other, Russian professor V. Botkin, made up both, or it could just be read on the surface. Pretty damn clever, if you ask me, and while other people think it's cerebral, I thought it was pretty emotional -- Sybil's suicide, John Shade's kind character and death, Kinbote's emotional ending monologue where he clearly suggests that he knows that he is insane on some level/this is all fake, or, from this interpretation, where Botkin breaks through the narration for a second, showing his own suicidal grief obliquely

[Anonymous No.10754974]

>>10754053
>>10754092
Interesting but I have a different theory. I think the book was actually written by Vladimir Nabokov

[Anonymous No.10755842]

>>10754974
Merely the nominal author, but the true author?

[Anonymous No.10755913]

>>10754053
Good post

>>10754092
It's been a while since I read it, I don't recall Kinbote tearing up at the end, what did he talk about specifically?

Also if Botkin is the overarching author, does he actually dislike Pnin? Did Botkin apppear in Pnins novel?

[Anonymous No.10756208]

>>10753608
>the movie was trash
how fucking smooth is your brain bub. be honest

[Anonymous No.10756270]

>>10756208
He's just being a contrarian faggot, since reddit hates BR49 he hates it too

[Anonymous No.10756301]

>>10756270
these website wars need to end, imo. i'm not a redditor at all but i'm too damn old to give a shit what site someone goes to or what a site i don't visit likes or doesn't like

[Anonymous No.10756320]

>>10756301
Reddit is not just a forum like 4chan with its own organic community and culture its a very consciously architectured technology of establishing conformity and artificial consensus. There is no tolerating the sheepish cretins who spawn from there

[Anonymous No.10756326]

>>10756320
that guy talks like about 80% of /lit/ and /his/. disgusting. i don't know why i still come here.