Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt M  A Pale Fire question, since it's come up more than a few times recently: I read the foreword and the poem itself, and I've started on Kinbote's commentary...should I be skipping ahead when he refers me to a note that comes much later? I tried that with one of the first references to Kinbote's gardener, and it led to a note involving the gardener getting shot...which, coming as close as it did to the end of the text, felt almost spoilerish...like I was 'cheating.'
On a first read, is it better to go straight through the commentary, or is the labyrinthine jumping around and the disjointed revelations that produces part of the fun of the first read?
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Assuming you haven't already finished, there's no "correct" way to read books like
Pale Fire, so you can attack it any way you want. I wouldn't worry too much about spoilers, since the Kinbote plot is only part of the book's appeal (maybe even a very small one, depending on whom you ask).
It's a book that demands either re-reading or secondary texts to get some of Nabokov's little twists. Heck, there's even a single, seemingly inconsequential conversation in the book, which, along with some unusual index entries, can lead to an entirely different (Nabokov-confirmed, BTW) interpretation of the poem's authorship, the identity of the main characters - pretty much the whole novel. But you'll never get everything on a first read.
By the way, if you enjoy
Pale Fire, I can't recommend
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle enough. It's like Nabokov's
Ulysses - long and tough-going in spots, but beautifully written. I think I've read all of the Nabokov novels originally written in English except for
Look at the Harlequins, and
Transparent Things is probably the only one that didn't really grab me on a first read. The Russian stuff, of which I've only read a couple, seems to be a little more hit and miss, at least in translation.
What I'm reading:
Virgil's
Aeneid (Fitzgerald translation) - I forgot that the second half gets bogged down in Iliad-esque introductions and preparations for war, so it's been slow-going. Still, I wanted to review before reading Le Guin's
Lavinia, which sounds great.
Daniel J. Levitin's
This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession - Promising, but I haven't made much progress on this. I like that Levitin's interest in how the brain interacts with music developed out of his work as a sound engineer and musician.
Roth's
The Human Stain - I love Roth, but I've missed some of his important stuff, so I'm trying to remedy that. With all of the non-fiction (and ancient poetry) I've been reading, it's nice to alternate with some straight-up, modern fiction, and Roth's language lends itself to easy digestion.
) and his others and will post in the McDonagh thread when I'm done reading. For now I'll say that Beauty Queen is awesome and would have been awesomer had I not already read The Pillowman and been expecting the sudden burst of violence. It still faked me out and came earlier and from a different source than I expected, though. Good stuff.
