Acknowledgments xi Introduction 3 PART ONE - THESIS: READING STORY AS DISCOVERY 15 1. Foreword 17 2. Poem 25 3. Commentary 37 4. Index 63 5. Pale Fire 67 PART TWO - ANTITHESIS: REREADING IN SEARCH OF THE STORY BEHIND 75 6. Intrusions of the Real: Shade 77 7. Excursions from the Real: Kinbote 89 8. Problems: Shade and Kinbote 107 PART THREE - SYNTHESIS: RE-REREADING DISCOVERY AS STORY 127 9. Transformation 129 10. From Appalachia to Zembla: A Woman Spurned 149 11. "Pale Fire": Origins and Ends 173 12. "A Poem in Four Cantos": Sign and Design 188 13. From Zembla to Appalachia: The Contrapuntal Theme 207 14. "Pale Fire," Pale Fire, palefire: The Spiral Unwinds 233 Conclusion 247 Notes 263 Bibliography 291 Index 299
No one knows more about Nabokov and his works than Brian Boyd does, and this book is obviously a work of passion. It enlivens our sense of a marvelous novel, it encourages generous close reading, and it makes the best case possible for the general human value of Nabokov's fiendish cleverness. -- Michael Wood, Princeton University, author of "The Magician's Doubts: Nabokov and the Risks of Fiction" Brian Boyd is Nabokov's ideal, astute, and observant reader, paying attention to every detail which, for Nabokov, was the essence of all writing and all reading. Boyd does so not only intelligently and thoughtfully but also lovingly. -- Galya Diment, University of Washington This is a remarkable piece of literary detective work. Brian Boyd brings to bear on Nabokov's most elaborately encrypted novel an acute attention to textual detail and a vast fund of relevant learning, coupled with endlessly resourceful ingenuity. The result is a provocative thesis about the structure and meaning of the novel-seemingly a "solution" but, as he himself grants, really grounds for continuing discussion, and in any case, a vivid demonstration of the excitements of skilled reading. -- Robert Alter, University of California, Berkeley
Brian Boyd is a Professor of English at the University of Auckland. New Zealand. He is the author of the prize-winning Viadimir Nabokov The Russian Years (Princeton) Viadimr Nabokov: The American Years (Princeton), and Nabokov's Ada The Place of Consciousness. He has also edited Nabokov's English novels and autobiography for the Library of America and Nabokov's Butterflies for Beacon Press.
One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2000 "My award for Novel of the Century goes to Nabokov's Pale Fire ...The book that prompted these reflections and confirmed me in my choice for Novel of the Century was Brian Boyd's remarkable, obsessive, delirious, devotional study..."--Ron Rosenbaum, New York Observer "It seems impossible for any scholar to write about Pale Fire, Nabokov's novel disguised as a poem and a pseudo-scholarly consideration of that poem, without appearing to be offering a mimicry of the great work. Nabokov's Pale Fire is no exception. Writing with an intensity that would suit Pale Fire's own narrators, Brian Boyd, a leading authority on Nabokov, gives an exquisitely detailed reading of the book and advances a new thesis about which fictional character (or characters) is supposed to have written the book."--Publishers Weekly "Brian Boyd's strength as a critic ... is that his compendious knowledge of Nabokov's biography and writings, especially those in English, is matched by his level-headedness and attention to detail."--Catriona Kelly, Times Literary Supplement "[Boyd] is far and away Nabokov's best-informed and most subtle critic... [He] bases his new interpretation on a staggering wealth of textual and extratextual detail and is clearly right on every major argument."--Choice "A readable, elegantly written and witty guide through [the] process of discovery to which Nabokov himself invariably invites us, in what is arguably his finest novel..."--Helen McLean, The Globe and Mail "This critical study ... is not merely a brilliant search for the 'truth' of Pale Fire--it is also a study of the way we read texts and think about existence."--Irving Malin, Review of Contemporary Fiction "[E]ye-opening... Boyd's singular reading ... suggests a novel that is in fact startlingly harmonious, one in which life and death blend in seamless unity."--Daniel Zalewski, New York Times Book Review "Writing with an intensity that would suit Pale Fire's own narrators, Brian Boyd, a leading authority on Nabokov, gives an exquisitely detailed reading of the book."--Publishers Weekly "This startling new theory is not only hard to refute--it makes it impossible for anyone to see Pale Fire under the same light... For the discoveries that lie ahead we are now indebted to Boyd's scrupulous research and pertinent interpretation. Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery is truly the essential companion/mode d'emploi to one of the greatest masterpieces of the 20th century."--Alexandre O. Philippe, Bloomsbury Review "Boyd's Pale Fire will change how we read Nabokov's. Boyd brilliantly shows the intensity with which the three parts of the novel 'recall' one another... Above all, Nabokov's Pale Fire is a manifesto for close reading. There can be no better recommendation than that."--Eric Naiman, Slavic Review
One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2000 "My award for Novel of the Century goes to Nabokov's Pale Fire ...The book that prompted these reflections and confirmed me in my choice for Novel of the Century was Brian Boyd's remarkable, obsessive, delirious, devotional study..."--Ron Rosenbaum, New York Observer "It seems impossible for any scholar to write about Pale Fire, Nabokov's novel disguised as a poem and a pseudo-scholarly consideration of that poem, without appearing to be offering a mimicry of the great work. Nabokov's Pale Fire is no exception. Writing with an intensity that would suit Pale Fire's own narrators, Brian Boyd, a leading authority on Nabokov, gives an exquisitely detailed reading of the book and advances a new thesis about which fictional character (or characters) is supposed to have written the book."--Publishers Weekly "Brian Boyd's strength as a critic ... is that his compendious knowledge of Nabokov's biography and writings, especially those in English, is matched by his level-headedness and attention to detail."--Catriona Kelly, Times Literary Supplement "[Boyd] is far and away Nabokov's best-informed and most subtle critic... [He] bases his new interpretation on a staggering wealth of textual and extratextual detail and is clearly right on every major argument."--Choice "A readable, elegantly written and witty guide through [the] process of discovery to which Nabokov himself invariably invites us, in what is arguably his finest novel..."--Helen McLean, The Globe and Mail "This critical study ... is not merely a brilliant search for the 'truth' of Pale Fire--it is also a study of the way we read texts and think about existence."--Irving Malin, Review of Contemporary Fiction "[E]ye-opening... Boyd's singular reading ... suggests a novel that is in fact startlingly harmonious, one in which life and death blend in seamless unity."--Daniel Zalewski, New York Times Book Review "Writing with an intensity that would suit Pale Fire's own narrators, Brian Boyd, a leading authority on Nabokov, gives an exquisitely detailed reading of the book."--Publishers Weekly "This startling new theory is not only hard to refute--it makes it impossible for anyone to see Pale Fire under the same light... For the discoveries that lie ahead we are now indebted to Boyd's scrupulous research and pertinent interpretation. Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery is truly the essential companion/mode d'emploi to one of the greatest masterpieces of the 20th century."--Alexandre O. Philippe, Bloomsbury Review "Boyd's Pale Fire will change how we read Nabokov's. Boyd brilliantly shows the intensity with which the three parts of the novel 'recall' one another... Above all, Nabokov's Pale Fire is a manifesto for close reading. There can be no better recommendation than that."--Eric Naiman, Slavic Review
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