Welcome earthlings to the Awful Book of the Month! In this thread, we choose one work of Resources: Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org - A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best. SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/ - A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here. For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM me. Past Books of the Month [for BOTM before 2014, refer to archives] 2014: January: Ursula K. LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness February: Mikhail Bulgalov - Master & Margarita March: Richard P. Feynman -- Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! April: James Joyce -- Dubliners May: Gabriel Garcia Marquez -- 100 Years of Solitude June: Howard Zinn -- A People's History of the United States July: Mary Renault -- The Last of the Wine August: Barbara Tuchtman -- The Guns of August September: Jane Austen -- Pride and Prejudice October: Roger Zelazny -- A Night in the Lonesome October November: John Gardner -- Grendel December: Christopher Moore -- The Stupidest Angel 2015: January: Italo Calvino -- Invisible Cities February: Karl Ove Knausgaard -- My Struggle: Book 1. March: Knut Hamsun -- Hunger April: Liu Cixin -- 三体 ( The Three-Body Problem) May: John Steinbeck -- Cannery Row June: Truman Capote -- In Cold Blood (Hiatus) August: Ta-Nehisi Coates -- Between the World and Me September: Wilkie Collins -- The Moonstone October:Seth Dickinson -- The Traitor Baru Cormorant November:Svetlana Alexievich -- Voices from Chernobyl December: Michael Chabon -- Gentlemen of the Road 2016: January: Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome February:The March Up Country (The Anabasis) of Xenophon March: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco April: Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling May: Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima June:The Vegetarian by Han Kang July:Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees Current: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov Online hypertext version of the novel here: http://www.shannonrchamberlain.com/palefiremain.html quote:As Nabokov pointed out himself,[14] the title of John Shade's poem is from Shakespeare's Timon of Athens: "The moon's an arrant thief, / And her pale fire she snatches from the sun" (Act IV, scene 3), a line often taken as a metaphor about creativity and inspiration. Kinbote quotes the passage but does not recognize it, as he says he has access only to an inaccurate Zemblan translation of the play "in his Timonian cave", and in a separate note he even rails against the common practice of using quotations as titles. quote:Pale Fire is one of the most singular and unusual novels ever published; no synopsis could hope to suggest its ingenious layers of meaning. The core of the novel is a poem of 999 lines entitled Pale Fire, by American poet John Francis Shade. Collateral to Shade's poem are a Foreword, Commentary, and Index compiled by the pompous and pedantic scholar Charles Kinbote. Kinbote, an unabashedly solipsistic �migr� from Zembla, 'a distant northern land,' has a personal and distinctive interpretation of Pale Fire the poem, which makes Pale Fire the novel a comical and inventive piece of fiction and one of Nabokov's most treasured works. Fairly good summary here: quote:Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novel, Pale Fire, is widely considered a forerunner of postmodernism and a prime example of the literature of exhaustion. The novel has four distinct sections. The first is a "Forward" by a man who calls himself Charles Kinbote. Kinbote, who claims to be a scholar from the country of Zembla, relates how he befriended the American poet John Shade. Following Shade's untimely death, Kinbote was entrusted with the manuscript of the poet's last major work, a long autobiographical poem called "Pale Fire." Despite the many reservations of others concerning his authority to do so, Kinbote has edited the work for publication. The second section is the poem itself, divided into four cantos. It is followed by the third, and longest section, Kinbote's own idiosyncratic commentary and line by line glosses. The fourth section is an index in which Kinbote provides brief capsule descriptions of the major people and places of the text and its accompanying commentary. http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/elab/hfl0244.html About the Author quote:Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (/nəˈbɔːkəf, ˈnæbəˌkɔːf, -ˌkɒf/;[1] Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков, pronounced [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr nɐˈbokəf] ( listen), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin; 22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1899c – 2 July 1977) was a Russian-American novelist. His first nine novels were in Russian, and he achieved international prominence after he began writing English prose. quote:Nabokov was a self-described synesthete, who at a young age equated the number five with the colour red.[35] Aspects of synesthesia can be found in several of his works. His wife also exhibited synesthesia; like her husband, her mind's eye associated colours with particular letters. They discovered that Dmitri shared the trait, and moreover that the colours he associated with some letters were in some cases blends of his parents' hues—"which is as if genes were painting in aquarelle".[36] quote:
https://books.google.com/books?id=U...20prank&f=false Pacing Just read, then post. This one is complex so don't be afraid to toss your theories into the ring. References and Further Reading http://www.postmodernmystery.com/pale_fire.html http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_spectator/2010/07/freeing_pale_fire_from_pale_fire.html http://nabokovsecrethistory.com/news/pale-fire-nabokov-zembla-secret-history/#.V6XlTbgrIuU http://www.nabokovonline.com/uploads/2/3/7/7/23779748/v3_06_roth.pdf http://observer.com/1999/12/the-novel-of-the-century-nabokovs-pale-fire/ Final Note: If you have any suggestions to change, improve or assess the book club generally, please PM or email me -- i.e., keep it out of this thread -- at least until into the last five days of the month, just so we don't derail discussion of the current book with meta-discussion. I do want to hear new ideas though, seriously, so please do actually PM or email me or whatever, or if you can't do either of those things, just hold that thought till the last five days of the month before posting it in this thread. Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Aug 6, 2016 |
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# ? Aug 6, 2016 16:17 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 18:42 |
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Just finished the Foreword 1) Didn't realise Pale Fire isn't a real poem 2) Didn't realise the Ruskis did postmodernism (this must be a very early predecessor to postmodernism?). 3) Protagonist is a vegetarian, noice 4) Great prose, much appreciated the_homemaster fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Aug 7, 2016 |
# ? Aug 7, 2016 03:47 |
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An important thing to note about this book is that there is no one good way to read it. You can read the foreword, then the poem in its entirety and then read the commentary (which is how I did it,) or you can read the poem and refer to the commentary line by line, or read the poem first, and then the foreword, and then the commentary, etc. Each method is going to produce a very different interpretation of events as they proceed. The book is intricate and brilliant and I've never encountered another story quite like it.
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# ? Aug 7, 2016 04:22 |
the_homemaster posted:
quote:
http://www.postmodernmystery.com/pale_fire.html Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Aug 7, 2016 |
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# ? Aug 7, 2016 04:24 |
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^ Cheers for link Heath posted:An important thing to note about this book is that there is no one good way to read it. You can read the foreword, then the poem in its entirety and then read the commentary (which is how I did it,) or you can read the poem and refer to the commentary line by line, or read the poem first, and then the foreword, and then the commentary, etc. Each method is going to produce a very different interpretation of events as they proceed. The book is intricate and brilliant and I've never encountered another story quite like it. I've decided to do what the narrator suggested, which is commentary, then poem + commentary, then commentary.
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# ? Aug 7, 2016 04:51 |
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Pale Fire is a fantastic book and rewards everything that you put into it and please read it if you are on the fence. And Boyd is correct when claiming that the writer of the entire poem/commentary complex is Hazel. e: lol he recanted his theory yet again a few years later, what a maroon. Tree Goat fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Aug 7, 2016 |
# ? Aug 7, 2016 06:02 |
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Controversial viewpoint: the whole thing is actually created by Vladimir Nabokov.
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# ? Aug 7, 2016 06:43 |
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Bandiet posted:Controversial viewpoint: the whole thing is actually created by Vladimir Nabokov. Please don't waste thread space with ridiculous things like this.
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# ? Aug 7, 2016 07:23 |
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Heath posted:Please don't waste thread space with ridiculous things like this. What's more ridiculous is people who cheapen an Unreliable Narrator device with vigorously defended "fan theories"
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# ? Aug 7, 2016 08:30 |
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Heath posted:An important thing to note about this book is that there is no one good way to read it. You can read the foreword, then the poem in its entirety and then read the commentary (which is how I did it,) or you can read the poem and refer to the commentary line by line, or read the poem first, and then the foreword, and then the commentary, etc. Each method is going to produce a very different interpretation of events as they proceed. The book is intricate and brilliant and I've never encountered another story quite like it. drat, I was hoping to get "first post, what order are we going to read the pages in?" The first time I read it, I read them more or less in order, I think; this time I think I'll read the poem first and then everything else in order.
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# ? Aug 7, 2016 10:20 |
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How do you guys like the poem itself? I love it, personally, but it's an odd duck. Heroic couplets seem like a childishly simple form for a modern work. At times, the rhythm slips carelessly. It's hard to imagine a contemporary poet who would've been satisfied with the basic meter found in Pale Fire. But the images wind so wonderfully through the lines: White butterflies turn lavender as they Pass through its shade where gently seems to sway The phantom of my little daughter's swing. The house itself is much the same. One wing We've had revamped... You can almost see the implicit little ghost of a butterfly fluttering around the lonely house from that word choice, "wing." Nabokov was, by this point, an expert narrative writer, but I don't think he ever mastered poetry. There's some quote to that effect (maybe in Pale Fire?) where he says that he found himself able to emulate anyone's prose, but not their verse.
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# ? Aug 7, 2016 12:03 |
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Bandiet posted:What's more ridiculous is people who cheapen an Unreliable Narrator device with vigorously defended "fan theories" Boyd is certainly silly (I think one of the essays linked in the OP accuses him of going "an exegetic bridge too far" which sounds about right), but from things like The Vane Sisters we can see that Nabokov is not above playing the kind of games that Boyd uses for evidence, and the theme of the supernatural floats around consistently enough without a satisfying referent, that it's tempting to play New Criticism style games with the work, even though the Author is stone cold Dead. I think Kinbote's unreliability functions very differently as a device than, for instance, Humbert Humbert, so reducing them both to just lines on a TV Tropes page cuts off some interesting approaches to tackling the work.
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# ? Aug 7, 2016 18:32 |
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My favorite novel of the century. Whenever I teach it, I have students keep a diary of random impressions as they go through, both because it's interesting to see what they pick up on, and because it helps them track their paths through the book. If I can ever get the people now in charge of the estate to cooperate, I'll do a proper digital edition of it at some point. Also at the end of most semesters that I've taught this class, I assign everyone to reread one book from the semester and write an account of their rereading. A lot of them opt for Pale Fire.
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# ? Aug 7, 2016 19:54 |
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Any novel interpretations of your students' that you'd like to share?
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# ? Aug 7, 2016 20:14 |
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Tree Goat posted:Boyd is certainly silly (I think one of the essays linked in the OP accuses him of going "an exegetic bridge too far" which sounds about right), but from things like The Vane Sisters we can see that Nabokov is not above playing the kind of games that Boyd uses for evidence, and the theme of the supernatural floats around consistently enough without a satisfying referent, that it's tempting to play New Criticism style games with the work, even though the Author is stone cold Dead. I think Kinbote's unreliability functions very differently as a device than, for instance, Humbert Humbert, so reducing them both to just lines on a TV Tropes page cuts off some interesting approaches to tackling the work. I think this book was definitely intended to facilitate interpretations of every shape and size, more so than an average unreliable narration. But I've seen there's a fine line between having fun with subtext and suppressing some actual meaningful discussion. Sharing different interpretations could enlighten your fellow readers and challenge them to see new details, but then it can also devolve into some kind of juvenile "picking sides" where the emphasis is put on who can back up their own reading. Then I get suspicious if someone actually thinks that Hazel is the key figure of the book or if they're just trying to have a unique stance.
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# ? Aug 7, 2016 22:49 |
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So less "I think it's silly to try to read too much into this book" and more "it's silly to call oneself a 'Shadean' and get tribalistic about close readings?" I can get behind that.
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# ? Aug 7, 2016 23:01 |
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I think the Hazel interpretation is fun to consider but lower on the totem pole of "what likely happened"
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# ? Aug 7, 2016 23:45 |
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elentar posted:My favorite novel of the century. Whenever I teach it, I have students keep a diary of random impressions as they go through, both because it's interesting to see what they pick up on, and because it helps them track their paths through the book. If I can ever get the people now in charge of the estate to cooperate, I'll do a proper digital edition of it at some point. I love this idea of keeping a diary along with it. Even though I've read Pale Fire before, I'm sort of delighted that this book is the BotM here for August. That along with the diary idea is a good enough reason to finally reread it. Thanks for posting this idea!
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# ? Aug 10, 2016 23:12 |
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I wonder if the commentary, taken as a whole, is poking fun at lengthy critical examinations that Nabokov might consider to be exercises not in analyzing a poem for the sake of sharing knowledge and love of poetry, but of showing off one's own intellect and academic skills. By making the commentary so blatantly focused on the commentator, Nabokov could be saying that his commentator is doing what every commentator does, just more obviously: writing about himself, for himself.
blue squares fucked around with this message at 03:44 on Aug 12, 2016 |
# ? Aug 12, 2016 03:01 |
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Right, it's definitely got the same satirization of close reading that you also see in, for instance, Lem's Gigamesh. And it's hard not to want to transfer Kinbote's narcissism and single-mindedness onto the academy as a whole. But I think it has more moving pieces than functioning just as satire. It is certainly more successful structurally than a lot of other books that attempt the story+gloss conceit (like, heaven help us, House of Leaves).
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# ? Aug 12, 2016 03:41 |
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blue squares posted:I wonder if the commentary, taken as a whole, is poking fun at lengthy critical examinations Gosh really? The thought had never crossed my mind. Zorodius posted:How do you guys like the poem itself? Not that much! As you say the rhythm slips - there's several lines ending with what should be unstressed syllables, etc - and the mixing of registers doesn't work for me like I feel it could in prose. And there's bits of the poem that just seemed to be rambling, to me; for instance that long digression on shaving. The stuff about Hazel, though, is brilliant and very painful. There's a lot that's interesting, though. Take the first four lines: Pale Fire 1-4 posted:I was the shadow of the waxwing slain The "reflected sky" is, literally, falsehood, delusion, the imagination. Is Shade saying his whole life was spent in the unreal world of imagination, rather than real life itself? I don't think so 100%, but it's at least partly true - he's a poet, after all. Maybe it's when Shade thinks he began to become a poet. Also, time seems to be "forking" here (line 404) - the real waxwing dies, but the Shade-waxwing lives on; so there's a connection to Hazel's death. Or maybe the Shade-waxwing is just that, a ghost. Something I don't have an opinion on is how unfinished "Pale Fire" is. The number of lines in each canto is symmetrical, assuming it's a 1000-line poem. On the other hand, the last line can't be the first, as it doesn't make sense by itself; and if Shade only had one more line to go, surely he would have written it, or at least jotted some notes, before knocking off for the night? The other big thing that struck me was the number of quotations and allusions in it, including the big one comparing Shade to Robert Frost. I think they're there partly to discuss what artistic creation actually is. The critical matter built on "Pale Fire" is a load of tosh, but "Pale Fire" itself, built on Shade's life, isn't. The one is parasitic, the other may be nurtured by other sources but is able to stand alone. Incidentally, at the end of Canto 3 (lines 806-29), Shade's vision of artistic design in the universe seems almost as if he realises he's a character in some other story. E: I just realised that Hazel is probably reading The Hound of the Baskervilles around line 370 Safety Biscuits fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Aug 12, 2016 |
# ? Aug 12, 2016 05:16 |
House Louse posted:drat, I was hoping to get "first post, what order are we going to read the pages in?" The first time I read it, I read them more or less in order, I think; this time I think I'll read the poem first and then everything else in order. Read the poem only, then stop
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# ? Aug 12, 2016 05:20 |
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House Louse posted:Gosh really? The thought had never crossed my mind. I meant my more specific point about the narcissistic aspect of critical analysis. Of course it is satire.
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# ? Aug 12, 2016 05:40 |
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By making his commentator a lecherous paedophile, homosexual, and vegetarian, is Nabokov enhancing the derisory aspect of his satire, or is it simply characterisation? 🤔
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# ? Aug 12, 2016 11:34 |
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blue squares posted:I meant my more specific point about the narcissistic aspect of critical analysis. Of course it is satire. I think you're half right. Kinbote is partly showing off. But on the other hand, he misses tons of opportunities to do so and hardly mentions any of the clever references. It's more that he's so obsessed with Zembla he's unable to properly read or comment on the poem.
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# ? Aug 12, 2016 13:07 |
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How certain are we that Zembla actually exists? I'm assuming it's impossible to know
blue squares fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Aug 12, 2016 |
# ? Aug 12, 2016 13:09 |
blue squares posted:How certain are we that Zembla actually exists? I'm assuming it's impossible to know i had just assumed it to be wholly a product of his delusions
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# ? Aug 12, 2016 16:39 |
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blue squares posted:How certain are we that Zembla actually exists? I'm assuming it's impossible to know I can't think of a way to answer this that isn't spoilery or just saying it's open to interpretation.
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# ? Aug 12, 2016 17:39 |
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zembla Despite the ultimate entry, note the penultimate. But even there, of course, that's *new* Zembla. And even then, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novaya_Zemlya_effect And don't forget https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner_of_Zenda This work is fractal. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Aug 12, 2016 |
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# ? Aug 12, 2016 17:52 |
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fridge corn posted:By making his commentator a lecherous paedophile, homosexual, and vegetarian, is Nabokov enhancing the derisory aspect of his satire, or is it simply characterisation? 🤔 Nothing wrong with being a vegetarian!
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# ? Aug 13, 2016 00:09 |
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I must say, I found the work quite Engazhay and compelling.
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# ? Aug 13, 2016 06:08 |
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House Louse posted:Something I don't have an opinion on is how unfinished "Pale Fire" is. The number of lines in each canto is symmetrical, assuming it's a 1000-line poem. On the other hand, the last line can't be the first, as it doesn't make sense by itself; and if Shade only had one more line to go, surely he would have written it, or at least jotted some notes, before knocking off for the night? I feel certain that Line 1000 is exactly the same as Line 1. Yes, as you point out, that doesn't make sense: why not just scribble one more already-written line? But it's perfect poetic irony to snatch those mirrored death-words from his mouth, and Line 999 sets up exactly that rhyme. Nabokov knew it didn't make sense, but he couldn't help himself.
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# ? Aug 13, 2016 06:13 |
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I read PF in a college lit class where the MO was bizarrely over analyzing and obsessing about literature in pretty much exactly the manner that PF seems to mock.
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# ? Aug 13, 2016 23:49 |
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Boof Bonser posted:I read PF in a college lit class where the MO was bizarrely over analyzing and obsessing about literature in pretty much exactly the manner that PF seems to mock. Over analyzing the book is the fun part, though. It's when you start taking your interpretations deadly seriously that you get into idiot territory.
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# ? Aug 14, 2016 00:36 |
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Zorodius posted:I feel certain that Line 1000 is exactly the same as Line 1. Yes, as you point out, that doesn't make sense: why not just scribble one more already-written line? But it's perfect poetic irony to snatch those mirrored death-words from his mouth, and Line 999 sets up exactly that rhyme. We agree it doesn't make sense (either narratively, or because line 1 is the first half of a couplet and has nothing to do with line 999) and the person advocating this idea is Kinbote, so... I don't see how it can be. Maybe, though, 999 is the last line? It would be pretty bathetic but Canto 4 is a let-down... Or maybe we just have no idea how much is missing. Kinbote mentions other professors in the Introduction saying we don't know how long it should have been, or how reliable the text is, so he raises the possibility that he's got things totally wrong even on a basic, literal level, never mind predicting how long it should be.
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# ? Aug 14, 2016 08:23 |
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Finished this; was a pretty cool book
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# ? Aug 14, 2016 10:10 |
Ok who's readin this and who was just frontin'
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 04:40 |
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I liked Canto One a lot, which surprised me, because I typically don't go for poetry. The other three I mostly just sat through, thinking that once I got to the commentary the real fun would start. But after several entries, I'm bored. When I read an individual entry, often there are funny or interesting moments, but when the book is sitting closed on my desk, there is nothing pulling me back to it. I'm all about narrative, so the other novels I am reading grab my attention much more when it is reading time. Plus, Pale Fire seems to be entirely intellectual pleasures and not emotional ones. I take much more to books with strong emotional aspects. That's why my recent read of Aquarium was so engaging. That book was a powerful emotional experience. Pale Fire is not. I doubt I'll finish it or even read much more.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 05:21 |
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blue squares posted:I liked Canto One a lot, which surprised me, because I typically don't go for poetry. The other three I mostly just sat through, thinking that once I got to the commentary the real fun would start. But after several entries, I'm bored. When I read an individual entry, often there are funny or interesting moments, but when the book is sitting closed on my desk, there is nothing pulling me back to it. I'm all about narrative, so the other novels I am reading grab my attention much more when it is reading time. There is very much a narrative in the commentary, and it is almost entirely character-driven, and the emotional journeys of those characters is of central importance. I think us being glib earlier itt about the book's status as parody and/or puzzle box might give the impression that the central appeal of the book is as a serious of humorous vignettes with an optional mystery to solve and that is not a great place from which to go at Pale Fire, especially given what I know of your preferences from the TBB lit thread. I also think that Nabokov plays a similar trick here as in Lolita, where some of the affect from the characters whose emotional arcs are arguably central (Shade, Lolita) get waylaid by the intellectually exciting narrator. Lots of people talk about Humbert Humbert as a character, but Lolita herself can be somewhat erased from the novel (as per https://newrepublic.com/article/121908/lolita-cultural-icon). Similarly, there's a tendency to focus on Kinbote and his exact reliability regarding Zembla/royalty/assassins/etc. that can serve as an emotional distraction from Shade's loss and his mourning process. e: am I supposed to spoiler poo poo? idk how this works. Tree Goat fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Aug 19, 2016 |
# ? Aug 19, 2016 06:33 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 18:42 |
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It's really hard to talk about what's attractive about this book without spoiling it. It took me a long time to get through it the first time I read it, for the same reason - the commentary unfolds itself so slowly that it feels like there's not a lot of reason to come back, but once you kind of start to piece together what happened (very gradually) the possible interpretations start to open up and it becomes a fun thought experiment to look at it from different angles. After that happened I found it much easier to read.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 08:41 |