History Literature / PaleFire

According to Wiki/TheOtherWiki: "The interaction between Kinbote and Shade takes place in the fictitious small college town of New Wye, Appalachia, where they live across a lane from each other, from February to July, 1959. Kinbote writes his commentary from then to October, 1959, in a tourist cabin in the equally fictitious western town of Cedarn, Utana."

* PrettyBoy: Kinbote describes both the teenage king and the teenage king's best friend as being this, as {{Fanservice}} for himself, as it were.

* PostModernism

* {{Expy}}: Professor Pnin (from Nabokov's previous novel) makes a brief appearance near the end, [[ShoutOut as does "Hurricane ]]Literature/{{Lolita}}."

** Despite John Shade mentioning Robert Frost as a fellow poet, it seems clear that Nabokov based him on Frost -- they are almost alike in appearance, share a vocation (university lecturer teaching literature), and have similarly evocative surnames.

* DieForOurShip: Kinbote absolutely adores Shade, while looking for every opportunity to put down his wife Sybil, including claiming certain parts of the poem are not about her ''when they explicitly are''.[[invoked]]

** Although, comically, he accuses his academic opponents of this, including his fellow teacher Gerald Emerald.

* StylisticSuck: Kinbote flatters himself that he can accurately ape the prose style of many other writers, but professes to be horrible at writing verse. Some of the "variant lines" which he claims were left over from earlier drafts of the poem -- the very lines that give him the excuse to bring in his otherwise irrelevant stories of Zembla -- seem suspiciously un-Shadeian, so to speak.

-->'''John Shade''', opening lines

-->'''Professor Charles Kinbote''', "Foreword"

** Kinbote is perplexed by the use of the name "Lolita", [[CompletelyMissingThePoint commenting that it is a popular name for Spanish parrots but mentioning that there was no hurricane called Lolita in 1958]].

** And this ShoutOutToShakespeare is, by Kinbote, [[spoiler: mistranslated into English from a Zemblan copy of ''Timon of Athens'' without the ArcWords, so he's CompletelyMissingThePoint]].

* MeaningfulName: Many, some overlapping with SignificantAnagram.
* {{Metafiction}}

* NobleFugitive: King Charles the Beloved.

* ShoutOut: MANY.
* SignificantAnagram: ''Very'' significant.
* SmallNameBigEgo: Kinbote again.

''Pale Fire'' is a 1962 novel by Creator/VladimirNabokov. It ostensibly concerns a 999 line poem by nationally famous poet John Shade, which appears in the book with extensive commentary by Shade's neighbor and fellow professor Charles Kinbote. Once the commentary gets underway however, it is clear Kinbote's interpretation [[UnreliableNarrator differs wildly]] from the information available in the poem itself, which is soon eclipsed by the mad, paranoid, telescoping story that emerges from Kinbote's intrusion. Shade is unavailable to correct the work, having been [[AuthorExistenceFailure shot dead]] by a man who was likely trying to kill someone else entirely.

* AuthorExistenceFailure: In-universe. Shade is killed before he can write Line 1000 of his poem, but Kinbote helpfully tells us what it must have been. [[spoiler:It is also implied that Kinbote is spiraling down toward suicide; once his edition of Shade's poem is finished, he will clearly have nothing left to live for.]]

* CompletelyMissingThePoint: Kinbote throughout the entire book.

* DrivenToSuicide: Hazel Shade after being ditched by her jerkass blind date whom she had seen as her one chance for finding love.

** Although, comically, he accuses his academic opponents of this, including his fellow teacher Gerry Emerald.