Pale Fire is essentially a poem with commentary. The way the story goes is that the author of the poem (John Shade) died the day he completed the poem, so his friend (Charles Kinbote) does an intro and commentary on the poem to elaborate. As it turns out, the story is a lot more mysterious. We don't know how Shade died, and Kinbote seems to easily get off track. In the end, you are left wondering who wrote the poem, whether Shade even exists, and if Kinbote really was Shades friend. I would highly recommend reading it, but you would have to read really quickly, probably read the intro and the poem, make some notes about the content of both. Then after you... reset... read the notes you made, then read Kinbote's commentary and keep notes about the threads that Kinbote keeps talking about. It's by Nabakov, the guy who wrote Lolita, but I think it is much better, and it doesn't have the creepy pedophile undertones.
tl;dr crazy story about a poem, sort of a whodunnit and whowroteit. Read while taking notes heavily.
Edit: I also want to say that I admire you for forging forward despite what's happened to you. It's really cool that you've decided to do something with your life, and not get all messy (I sort of love the movie Memento, so sorry if that seemed melodramatic).
ExistentialVox120 karma
Pale Fire is essentially a poem with commentary. The way the story goes is that the author of the poem (John Shade) died the day he completed the poem, so his friend (Charles Kinbote) does an intro and commentary on the poem to elaborate. As it turns out, the story is a lot more mysterious. We don't know how Shade died, and Kinbote seems to easily get off track. In the end, you are left wondering who wrote the poem, whether Shade even exists, and if Kinbote really was Shades friend. I would highly recommend reading it, but you would have to read really quickly, probably read the intro and the poem, make some notes about the content of both. Then after you... reset... read the notes you made, then read Kinbote's commentary and keep notes about the threads that Kinbote keeps talking about. It's by Nabakov, the guy who wrote Lolita, but I think it is much better, and it doesn't have the creepy pedophile undertones.
tl;dr crazy story about a poem, sort of a whodunnit and whowroteit. Read while taking notes heavily.
Edit: I also want to say that I admire you for forging forward despite what's happened to you. It's really cool that you've decided to do something with your life, and not get all messy (I sort of love the movie Memento, so sorry if that seemed melodramatic).
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