Pale Fire

By: Vladimir Nabokov

Narrated by: Marc Vietor, Robert Blumenfeld

Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

A 999 line poem in heroic couplets, divided into 4 cantos, was composed - according to Nabokov's fiction - by John Francis Shade, an obsessively methodical man, during the last 20 days of his life.

©1962 Vera Nabokov and Dmitri Nabokov (P)2010 Audible, Inc

Critic reviews

"This centaur-work, half poem, half prose . . . is a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth. Pretending to be a curio, it cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the great works of art of this century." (Mary McCarthy, The New Republic)

"Of all [Nabokov's] inventions, Pale Fire is the wildest, the funniest and the most earnest. It is like nothing on God's earth." (New York Herald Tribune)

"A monstrous, witty, intricately entertaining work . . . done with dazzling skill." (Time)

Enhanced by Reader

The reader does a great job showing the humor in this book. I like Nabokov and think his prose is intricately surprising, but I was not a huge fan of this book because of the 3rd section: the mock literary criticism of the canto.

Deep (too deep?)

The book is very deep, possibly too deep. Nabokov seems to write in knots that require more than one read through to understand. I do not recommend this book for someone reading for leisure. If you’re looking to flex your literary guns, Pale Fire is a demanding read. If you’re looking for a story and a leisure read, I would avoid it. The book feels like the author flaunting his intellect and talent in a way that deliberately has been crafted to confuse the reader. I didn’t enjoy myself, like one would feel about completing a mountain climb they didn’t intend to undertake.

Cherished colleague or relentless stalker?

This is the second Nabokov work I have read. The first was Lolita and this, Pale Fire, are on the Modern Library's Top 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.

Like Lolita, Pale Fire is drenched in sex and self reference (Lolita makes a cameo as a hurricane) and hints at the obsessive nature of the author whose alter ego stands in as narrator. Published in 1962, the story takes place over a few months in the summer of 1959 and focuses on a Four Part Canto of 999 lines written by John Shade, an American poet of some note who is on the faculty of a small university in Appalachia. The narrator is a visiting scholar, Professor Charles Kinbote, from the fictional country of Zembla who, upon Shade's death, secures the original manuscript of the Canto, written out on a series of index cards, and the right to publish along with his commentary.

Though they've only known each other for a few months, Kinbote informs the reader of the deep intimate connection between the two scholars unaware that he reveals how barely tolerated he is by both the poet and his ever present wife who serves as gatekeeper.

To Kinbote, this long canto isn't just Shade's work but a collaboration between them as, through his commentary, he desperately tries to link words and comments to his own experience which he insists Shade has masqueraded with other seemingly unrelated words.

It is hard to discern where narcissism ends and psychosis begins but, it is obvious that Kinbote lives in a world of his making. While he tries desperately to hint of his true identity, it seemed to me that the fanciful and important person he wants you to see, may all be figments of his imagination.

Reading upon on Nabokov's backstory, the similarity to the demise of the poet and the death of Nabokov's own father suggests that he is still playing out alternatives to that drama which he was unable to influence by suggesting that his narrator, in a futile attempt of self sacrifice, did not change the outcome of a strong father figure character. Both Kinbote and Nabokov seem to so desperately want to be heroic characters they are unable to live up to.

Pale Fire is strange, sexual and off times very amusing. Perhaps in Kinbote, we might be able to see that univited guest we are all known to encounter and, sometimes, unwittingly become.

Great Book, Not Fit for Audible (get text)

Great Book, Not Fit for Audible (get text)

This is a great book, but this novel just did not work in audio. The book is very funny, clever, and interesting, and is a twisty tale revealed only by following the footnoted references (which are sometimes references to other footnotes). Understanding all the levels of this story is virtually impossible (unless you have eidetic memory) without a text version available for reference. This has been called a Metanovel and has been used as an example of hypertext linking. Hypertext would be a great way to present this novel...audible is about the worst. Nabokov did a less extreme kind of thing in "Ada, or Ardor" which also did not work in Audible format.

I did not find this book dark at all, it was very funny. At one level it pokes fun at editors and literary critics and literary analysis. At another level it presents a quite unreliable narrator who reveals deeper and deeper levels of unreliability as the story progresses and footnotes are followed and deciphered. It seems to me Nabokov intended this to be pealed like an onion.

The narration was excellent and the book is not bad in audible, but it seems to miss the point and most of the intended fun of the novel.

An amazing feat for such a unique novel

While I highly recommend this selection, I can only recommend it to those who have read the printed novel first. Nabokov's book consists of a long poem written by John Shade, and a rambling, often hilarious, "commentary" written by Charles Kinbote, self-proclaimed king-in-exile from his beloved country of Zembla. As the commentary refers to specific lines of the 999-line poem, I was curious as to how the producers of the audiobook would handle these two distinct components. I was delighted by the choice to employ two narrators, Robert Blumenfeld for Shade and Marc Vietor for Kinbote. Both are excellent, but Vietor's Kinbote is what makes this audiobook so special. His unidentifiable (slightly Russian) accent and self-assured cockiness bring the exiled king (or plain madman) spring to life. Fans of the book should not feel they are wasting a credit by buying a book they've already read. Listening to Pale Fire will bring a new level of appreciation to Nabokov's brilliant novel.

Ingenious, Nefariously Fun Satire

Nefariously Fun Satire of Literary Criticism, Satyriasis and Bold Virilia

Nabokov was such a pure genius in performing brilliant magic with words of the English language, as well as in creating playful and at times side-splitting satire that lacerates the objects of its scorn. In Pale Fire, Nabokov targeted academia of literature and literary criticism and, to a degree, all males' preoccupation with sex .

Nabokov isn't my favorite author by a longshot, but given his masterpieces in Lolita and Pale Fire, I'm not going out on a limb when I say he is probably second on the list of maestros of English linguistics, right behind Shakespeare. I only include the below lengthy quotes because this is the rare occasion in which the use of the language is as important as what is said.

The novel is split into two parts: first is a 999-line poem autobiographical of a fictional John Shade, a professor of lit at a New England college; then comes the commentary--the large majority of the novel--written by a professor named Charles Kinbote in another department of the college but who lives next door to Shade and his wife.

In reading Prof. Kinbote's extensive exegesis on the poem, it becomes readily apparent that something is amiss with him, really amiss. He implies that he is the exiled king of a country called Zembla, specifically that he is *Charles II, Charles Xavier Vseslav, last King of Zembla, surnamed The Beloved.* As to his assumed name Kinbote, he derived it from the *king-bot, maggot of extinct fly that once bred in mammoths and is thought to have hastened their phylogenetic end.*

Soon you wonder exactly how delusional Kinbote is, given that he believes that Shade's poem brims with references to himself (imaginary as they may seem), transforming through his commentary every few lines of the poem into a frame around himself and his fantasy realm of Zembla.

The novel is also somewhat of a mystery that you must decipher as to who killed John Shade after Kinbote tells us that he is safekeeping the *Pale Fire* poem manuscript and all notecards containing the poem.

Later, the reader learns that "immediately upon John Shade’s demise, [the head of the department] circulated a mimeographed letter that began:

*Several members of the Department of English are painfully concerned over the fate of a manuscript poem, or parts of a manuscript poem, left by the late John Shade. The manuscript fell into the hands of a person who not only is unqualified for the job of editing it, belonging as he does to another department, but is known to have a deranged mind. One wonders whether some legal action, etc.*


Yet, long before this, clues abound of Kinbote's psychosis. For example,

*What would I not have given for the poet’s suffering another heart attack ... leading to my being called over to their house, all windows ablaze, in the middle of the night, in a great warm burst of sympathy, coffee, telephone calls, Zemblan herbal receipts (they work wonders!), and a resurrected Shade weeping in my arms ('There, there, John').*

[In a conversation with John Shade's wife:] *'Speaking of novels,' I said, 'you remember we decided once, you, your husband and I, that Proust’s rough masterpiece was a huge, ghoulish fairy tale, an asparagus dream, totally unconnected with any possible people in any historical France, a sexual travestissement and a colossal farce, the vocabulary of genius and its poetry, but no more,'* and,

*In Zembla, where most females are freckled blondes, we have the saying: belwif ivurkumpf wid snew ebanumf, 'A beautiful woman should be like a compass rose of ivory with four parts of ebony.'*


Additionally, Kinbote has a perverted mind relating to pubescent males, including these Paphian passages in his commentary:

*the little angler, a honey-skinned lad, naked except for a pair of torn dungarees, one trouser leg rolled up, frequently fed with nougat and nuts, but then school started or the weather changed*

'When stripped and shiny in the mist of the bath house, his bold virilia contrasted harshly with his girlish grace.'

I learned a new word, 'virilia.' I'll let you look it up...or guess.


Often hilarious asides to the running *commentary* on the poem hit you out of the blue. Such as Kinbote's significant problems in consummating his marriage to Princess Disa.

'He farced himself with aphrodisiacs, but the anterior characters of her unfortunate sex kept fatally putting him off. One night when he tried tiger tea, and hopes rose high, he made the mistake of begging her to comply with an expedient which she made the mistake of denouncing as unnatural and disgusting. Finally he told her that an old riding accident was incapacitating him but that a cruise with his pals and a lot of sea bathing would be sure to restore his strength.'


Also, Kinbote discloses his frequent infidelities, resulting in problems with Princess Disa.

'He ... solemnly [swore] he had given up, or at least would give up, the practices of his youth; but everywhere along the road powerful temptations stood at attention. He succumbed to them from time to time, then every other day, then several times daily—especially during the robust regime of Harfar Baron of Shalksbore, a phenomenally endowed young brute.... Curdy Buff—as Harfar was nicknamed by his admirers—had a huge escort of acrobats and bareback riders, and the whole affair rather got out of hand so that Disa, upon unexpectedly returning from a trip to Sweden, found the Palace transformed into a circus'


A highest recommendation. My apologies for the size of this; I hope it's not too much to take it all in. It was not nearly as hard as I thought. I am just now coming to realize the depth of Nabokov's cunning linguistics. I wish I could hit that, or even near that level.

Maybe the greatest novel ever written

Would you consider the audio edition of Pale Fire to be better than the print version?

Yes. Poetry is meant to be read aloud, and hearing Pale Fire (the poem) read to me was a different and deeper experience than reading it.

What other book might you compare Pale Fire to and why?

I'm going to go with Pynchon's "Crying of Lot 49." Both are excellent metafictive examples.

Have you listened to any of Marc Vietor’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I think so, and I obviously liked this one better as I recall it.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Several! The book toys with your emotions -- heavy-handed comedy at one point, melodrama at another, and real human pain to chase it all away, before dropping you back into the madcap world of Kinbote's fever-dreams.

Any additional comments?

You owe it to yourself to listen to this.

story not well structured for an audio book

listening to someone read an index from front to back is less than enthralling -

Not recommended for first read-through

Pale fire is obviously not meant for an audio medium. That said, I would absolutely recommend the book in its original form to anyone. If you are familiar with the poem and the way that the commentary interacts with and meanders from it, this audiobook can be very pleasant to listen to.

Not a good book for audio

This is not a book to read on a long car ride. This is a participatory book. You should have either two copies of the book or excellent book-marking skills. You will be leafing back and forth between the poem and the footnotes.