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Zulieka's Reviews > Pale Fire
Pale Fire
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Whoop-dee-doo, five stars to Mr. Nabokov. Do you also feel silly clicking on the ratings? You throw gold stars into Pale Fire and the vanity of star-ratings is exposed.
We here are a community trying to reclaim our authority over writers who for pages have manipulated our thoughts and beings. Generals get stars, good students too, and my 2-year-old every time she uses the potty. Only the higher-ups get to hand them out, but c'mmon, is there a higher-up for Nabokov? Whoever can, hand him a real star from the sky.
There's a profound difference between clever writing and brilliant writing, and I don't know how it happens that in Pale Fire there's no shame or hiding from clever devices, and yet the outcome is brilliant. It could so easily, it seems, have been awful or unreadable. You don't expect a farce, a contrived "set-up" (the writing of the reader of the writing, and god knows which is the narrator) to be dizzy with beauty. It's alarming to pass cantos and watch what starts out as a prank turn into the masterpiece of the century.
We here are a community trying to reclaim our authority over writers who for pages have manipulated our thoughts and beings. Generals get stars, good students too, and my 2-year-old every time she uses the potty. Only the higher-ups get to hand them out, but c'mmon, is there a higher-up for Nabokov? Whoever can, hand him a real star from the sky.
There's a profound difference between clever writing and brilliant writing, and I don't know how it happens that in Pale Fire there's no shame or hiding from clever devices, and yet the outcome is brilliant. It could so easily, it seems, have been awful or unreadable. You don't expect a farce, a contrived "set-up" (the writing of the reader of the writing, and god knows which is the narrator) to be dizzy with beauty. It's alarming to pass cantos and watch what starts out as a prank turn into the masterpiece of the century.
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
September 7, 2007
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Votec23
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Aug 25, 2009 07:01AM
That was a beautiful review
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Votec23 wrote: "That was a beautiful review"Thanks. It was a beautiful book.
You must be kidding - "The Masterpiece of the Century." Really, what else have you read? Nabokov seemed to be having fun at our expense and didn't care if we liked his work or not. Seemed to me he was thumbing his superior, self-indulgent, academic nose at us. Reminded me of Revolution #9 on the Beatles White Album. Just a little too full of themselves.
Oh dear, Nabokov may have been "having fun at our expense." An expense I am happy to have invested. By the way, I really liked your comment about "stars" -- there's a whole bunch of work out there that it seems especially silly to "rate" like so much consumer content.
