Nabokov's Pale Fire

Pale Fire is regarded by many as Vladimir Nabokov’s masterpiece. The novel has been hailed as one of the most striking early examples of postmodernism and has become a famous test case for theories about reading because of the apparent impossibility of deciding between several radically different interpretations. Does the book have two narrators, as it first appears, or one? How much is fantasy and how much is reality? Brian Boyd. Nabokov’s biographer and hither to the foremost proponent of the idea that Pale Fire has one narrator. John Shade, now rejects this position and presents a new and startlingly different solution that will permanently shift the nature of critical debate on the novel. Boyd argues that the book does indeed have two narrators. Shade and Charles Kinbote, but reveals that Kinbote had some strange and highly surprising help in writing his sections. In light of this interpretation, Pale Fire now looks distinctly less post-modern – and more interesting than ever.

Author Biography

Brian Boyd is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is the author of the prize-winning Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years (Princeton 1990), Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years (Princeton 1991), and Nabokov’s Ada: The Place of Consciousness. Referred to in a recent journal as “the great man of Nabokov studies,” he has also edited Nabokov’s English novels and autobiography for the Library of America and Nabokov’s Butterflies for Beacon Press.