Nabokov: Pale Fire

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 16 Apr 2003, 16:10 · from urth-v0304.mbox · original

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From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <katbarx at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Nabokov: Pale Fire
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 09:10:10 -0700
Message-ID: <urth-v0304-3195 at digest.urth.net>
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Rostrum writes (excerpt, excerpt):

>I was also surprised that [Pale Fire] was not a hard book to read,
>certainly not as hard as some of Wolfe's.

Alternative view: I tried three times to read PALE FIRE and never
once succeeded in getting more than 20 pages into it. It is, to me,
one of the most opaque pieces of writing in the world. Which was a
damn shame, as I could see that there's a lot of stuff in there that
I would enjoy -- would "tickle the Wolfe pleasure centers" -- but
Nabokov's writing lies in a range that I can't process for some
reason.

(I'll try again in a few years, I'm sure. Sometimes things like
this suddenly clear up. The first few times I tried to read Charles
Harness's THE ROSE -- which, by the way, I recommend very, very
highly -- I had the same experience; when I turned 30 it suddenly
became a transcendant reading experience. Some things I just have
to grow into, I guess.)

>The only drawback is it might make you more self-conscous about spinning=20
>theories about Wolfe's stories.

I suppose that some people might consider this a drawback. 8*)

Hey, has anyone mentioned THE NAME OF THE ROSE as a rather Lupine
book in many ways?

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