Pale Fire

I'll start this review with a confession: I only read this book because of it's role in Blade Runner 2049. In the movie, Joi suggests reading the book and agent K responds by saying that she hates that book, a clear indication that they've had that same conversation in the past. Because of it's role in the movie, and especially because it was placed in between K and Joi, I expected the book to share similar themes of what it means to be human. After reading the book, I recognized that agent K's 'baseline test' in the movie is a derivative of part of the poem that starts the book. 

Considering whatever else it is or even might be, Pale Fire is also one of the most unique books I've ever read. To start, the structure of the "novel" starts with an introduction by a fictional character, then it jumps into the main 'subject' of the book, a 1000 line poem written by another one of the characters, followed by a nominal literary critique of that poem by the delusional neighbor, co-worker and stalker of the author. The critique is by far the longest portion of the book, and where the majority of the story plays out. The character who writes the critique portion of the book, Kinbote, is so solipsistic that he can hardly be bothered to mention the poem in between paragraph after paragraph of his own life story. Clearly a damning and backhanded slight at non-fictional literary critiques. The plot arc is a slow moving car crash, where at the halfway point in the book we're pretty sure that we're going to collide with that tree up ahead, but just like a real crash, we can't take our eyes off it. Kinbote is just a fascinating, lying, self-deceiving ignoramus who stalks his neighbor endlessly. The characters, as compelling as they are, aren't the real gems of this book though. It's the book itself. Nabokov has really crafted something special because he uses the form of the book itself to bring the reader through their emotional journey. When you first start reading it, you take it at face value... somewhat. You know it's fictional, and the introduction you blast through thinking that it is just setup for the form of the book. Then you think the poem is going to be the heart of the novel, it isn't. The poem is the heart of the poet, an old man who's lost his daughter to suicide. The poem has structural and thematic symmetries with Dante's Divine Comedy, but written on the scale of an old teacher who lives in the suburbs. When you start reading it, you're ready for it to be a magnum opus, Beethoven on paper, you prepare yourself to endure lyrical sledgehammer blows, but they don't come. What you get instead is emotional sledgehammer blows. An old man looking in the mirror as he shaves, he can't ever be free from the thoughts of his daughter's suicide. She wasn't a fairy-tale princess, she was just a regular girl. It's not an epic poem. It pulls your heart out of your chest gently instead of ripping it out, it steps on it once or twice but doesn't stomp, it sheds a bit of a tear as it does so. You're left disarmed. You want to hug the old man, but you know it won't be his daughter hugging him. As it turns out, Nabokov is pretty good at this whole poetry thing. So you, dear reader, have finished the poem and now you move onto the critique of the poem. Kinbote starts his critique gushing about the poet and how talented he is, and how his enemies want to keep the poem to themselves because it's so powerful that it will change literature. Nabokov started early, he slipped in seeds and traces of Kinbote's delusion right at the beginning and we didn't even notice it. With each passage and each page, his delusion gets deeper and deeper. Just a few drops at a time, the water gets deeper. Eventually we realize that he's a full on nut case and that everything he says is a story he's telling himself. At this point, dear reader, we'll find ourselves with the book laid on our thigh and ourselves staring up at nothing wondering why on Earth this is the story that he's making up. Kinbote is making up a story about an assassin that kills his friend. He knows details about what the imaginary assassin does in the privacy of his hotel room, and his inner thoughts. He reveals to us too much, he tells us parts of the story that he shouldn't be able to know. We're struck with an immense sense of foreboding. Kinbote starts watching his friend through the window from outside, his friend never knows it. Nabokov, you dastardly fox, you've made us follow along with a psychopath, and we fear that he's going to kill the sweet innocent old man who suffers from his memories. Maybe it will end differently, maybe Nabokov has a twist where the wife finds out at the last moment. Maybe the librarian gets suspicious and thwarts the fictitious assassin. The car is headed right for the tree, and we hope and hope and hope that there is still time to swerve.

The long and short of my thoughts on this book can be summed up in the following: I want to buy a bunch of copies of this book and force my friends to read it, just so I can talk to them about the experience of reading it. What other book can you say that about?