Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov
I recently heard the awesome violinist Alexi Kenney* lead the San Francisco Symphony in Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Although the piece is comfortably familiar and familiarly Baroque, I still know of no other human creation at all like it. I would say the same of Pale Fire, a work of imagination and audacity of the highest order. For my second reading, after many years, I had intended to read it "straight": flipping back and forth between John Shade's 999-line poem and Charles Kinbote's extended commentary on it. In Kinbote's foreword, he recommends a different approach, starting with his notes and then proceeding back to the poem... purchase of a second copy is recommended to facilitate ready access to the notes. Of course, Kinbote is a rather unreliable guide, if he even exists, fictionally speaking. Reliable or not, he can be laugh-out-loud funny, if unintentionally, just as Shade can be a touchingly rich poet, even if his rhymed iambic pentameter is nostalgic and contrived. In the end I read it straight through: Foreword, Poem, Commentary, Index. I reckon I will not wait long before taking another crack at it, maybe next time following Kinbote's questionable advice.
The Sleeping Beauty
Elizabeth Taylor
This was the fifth of Taylor's novels that I have read, and it is a very good one – I'd rank it just a notch below her humble masterpieces, A View of the Harbour and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont. Taylor's middle-class Brits often lead cramped, unhappy lives; her lead characters engage in small acts of heroism that involve the embrace of love over bitterness or honesty over (self-)delusion. When the pursuit of love conflicts with the virtue of honesty... well, that's drama... and comedy.
* Full disclosure: Offspring of blogger.
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