I bought this like 4 years ago and forgot all about it

>>8260419
There was no king. Zembla wasn't a real place

>>8260552
Yes it's a real place even if it never had a king.

>>8260545
It's worth reading imo. Lots of good prose, the poem is nice, the narrator's personality is quite entertaining, and it can certainly have a serious emotional impact depending on how you look at it.

i read the poem. the explanatory notes were just random unconnected thoughts. 3/10

He was really the king of Zembla and nothing you could say would convince me otherwise

>>8260634
Replying to this bait just to bump my thread.

It's better than Lolita

>Oleg
>Boner why

Spoilers: Charles Kinbote is V. Botkin, referred to in the index as "American scholar of Russian descent", himself an obvious surrogate for Nabokov. V. Botkin created both Charles Kinbote and John Shade, both signs of the nigh-schizophrenic split in Botkin (and Nabokov himself, evident in a lot of his other works like Lolita, Pnin, Ada, etc.) between Russia and America in his mind. John Shade is the American poet incarnate, Kinbote the flamboyantly homosexual yet old-timey patriarchal Russia incarnate. The suicidal Hazel is explicitly compared to "Kinbote" by "Kinbote" himself through use of several odd coincidences that unite them. The "bigger, more competent Gradus" in the end who will destroy "Kinbote"/"Shade"/Botkin is Botkin himself, according to Nabokov, who shoots himself after completing the index. Pale Fire is the dance of his suicidal and erudite imagination before he kills himself, a meditation on death and suicide, cultural conflict, and how massively deluded people can be and incapable of understanding others' suffering and humanity, as "Kinbote" deludes himself with regards to "Shade". This also all functions as a commentary on the novel form itself, since, even if all the "characters" were made up by one mind, can't we still relate to them and suspend our disbelief on some level? This ending, by the way, is foreshadowed also by Kinbote's darkly comical footnote about the temptations of suicide.

I prefer it to lolita.

>>8260419
>so gay and so religious
Because that's Russia.

>>8261060
Both great, but PF was more groundbreaking. Groundbreaking isn't even the word, since no one's had the balls to imitate it, he hasn't created any new movement with it, hasn't spread the boundaries of literature for any writers after it. He simply did what he wanted and created a brilliant and universal piece of art unlike almost anything ever written before. It stands completely apart, with no clear predecessors (except his own Lolita, perhaps) and no clear imitators. Just my opinion desu.

>>8261082
I wouldn't go that far, I'm not all that versed in these things but I'm sure there are plenty of postmodern works that share the conceits of being "books within books" and having unreliable narrators. It's certainly well-done, but it's not entirely unique.

>>8261082

Proof no one on /lit/ reads anything not posted on /lit/.

>>8261095
>>8261097
You're not getting it. Sharing a single trope isn't the same as being influenced by it. Don Quixote has I probably sound stupid right now don't I the book within the book trope, it's probably closer to Pale Fire than a lot of other books, also The Thousand and One Nights, stuff like that. That's the thing about Pale Fire, it's tapped into something primordial and universal about literature itself, it's not at all gimmicky like a lot of experimental books that came after it. IDK feel free to argue

>>8260609
I'm rereading laughter in the dark right now but once I'm done I'll probably start this

>>8261115
I think that the book's structure has value, since it makes it more of a surprise when things go off the rails, but its vitality and spirit could exist in any format simply because they're universal. I wouldn't call it unique, but it's certainly powerful and well-done.

>>8260654
This desu. It's just more fun this way and it holds up imho. God-tier book but not Nabokov's best which is Lolita if you're a casual or Ada if you reach ultimate patrician status like me

I noticed the butterfly on the cover. Did you know Nobokov was a dedicated butterfly collector?
You can see his collection (for free) in moscow.