Editing Pale Fire (section)

==Interpretations==
Some readers concentrate on the apparent story, focusing on traditional aspects of fiction such as the relationship among the characters.<ref>{{cite journal | last = Alter | first = Robert | title = Autobiography as Alchemy in ''Pale Fire'' | journal = Cycnos | volume = 10 | year = 1993 | pages = 135–41}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last = Pifer | first = Ellen | title = Nabokov and the Novel | location = Cambridge, Mass. | publisher = Harvard University Press | year = 1980 | pages = 110–118}}</ref>  In 1997, Brian Boyd published a much-discussed study<ref name=Shadeshape>{{cite journal | last = Boyd | first = Brian | author-link = Brian Boyd | title = Shade and Shape in ''Pale Fire'' | journal = Nabokov Studies | volume = 4 | year = 1997 | pages = 173–224 | doi = 10.1353/nab.2011.0072 | url = http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/boydpf1.htm | access-date = 2006-09-26}}</ref> arguing that the ghost of John Shade influenced Kinbote's contributions.  He expanded this essay into a book in which he also argues that, in order to trigger Shade's poem, Hazel Shade's ghost induced Kinbote to recount his Zemblan delusions to Shade.<ref>Boyd, ''Magic of Artistic Discovery.''</ref>

Some readers, starting with Mary McCarthy<ref name=McC/> and including Boyd, Nabokov's annotator [[Alfred Appel Jr.|Alfred Appel]],<ref>{{cite book | editor-last = Appel| editor-first = Alfred Jr. | year =  1991 | title = The Annotated Lolita | location = New York | publisher = Vintage Books | isbn = 0-679-72729-9}} Appel's annotations to ''[[Lolita]]'' also address ''Pale Fire'', and "in place of a note on the text", Appel reproduces the last two paragraphs of Kinbote's foreword, which discuss poetry and commentary.</ref> and D. Barton Johnson,<ref>{{cite book | last=Johnson | first=D. Barton | title=Worlds in Regression: Some Novels of Vladimir Nabokov | year = 1985 | location = Ann Arbor, Mich. | publisher=Ardis | isbn = 0-88233-908-7}}</ref> see Charles Kinbote as an alter-ego of the insane Professor V. Botkin, to whose delusions John Shade and the rest of the faculty of Wordsmith College generally condescend.  Nabokov himself endorsed this reading, stating in an interview in 1962 (the novel's year of publication) that ''Pale Fire'' "is full of plums that I keep hoping somebody will find. For instance, the nasty commentator is not an ex-King of Zembla nor is he professor Kinbote. He is professor Botkin, or Botkine, a Russian and a madman."<ref name=NYHT/> The novel's intricate structure of teasing cross-references leads readers to this "plum". The Index, supposedly created by Kinbote, features an entry for a "Botkin, V.," describing this Botkin as an "American scholar of Russian descent"—and referring to a note in the Commentary on line 894 of Shade's poem, in which no such person is directly mentioned but a character suggests that "Kinbote" is "a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine". In this interpretation, "Gradus" the murderer is an American named Jack Grey who wanted to kill Judge Goldsworth, whose house "Pale Fire's" commentator—whatever his "true" name is—is renting.  Goldsworth had condemned Grey to an asylum from which he escaped shortly before mistakenly killing Shade, who resembled Goldsworth.

Other readers see a story quite different from the apparent narrative. "Shadeans" maintain that John Shade wrote not only the poem, but the commentary as well, having invented his own death and the character of Kinbote as a literary device. According to Boyd,<ref name=Shadeshape/> Andrew Field invented the Shadean theory<ref>{{cite book | last = Field | first = Andrew | title = Nabokov: His Life in Art | url = https://archive.org/details/nabokovhislifein00fiel | url-access = registration | location = Boston | publisher = Little, Brown | year = 1967 | pages = [https://archive.org/details/nabokovhislifein00fiel/page/291 291–332]}}</ref> and Julia Bader expanded it;<ref>{{cite book | last = Bader | first = Julia | title = Crystal Land: Artifice in Nabokov's English Novels | url = https://archive.org/details/crystallandartif0000bade | url-access = registration | location = Berkeley | publisher = University of California Press | year = 1972 | pages = [https://archive.org/details/crystallandartif0000bade/page/31 31–56]| isbn = 9780520021679 }}</ref> Boyd himself espoused the theory for a time.<ref>{{cite book | last = Boyd | first = Brian | title = Vladimir Nabokov: the American Years | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=C8lF4iqAgRQC&q=Brian+Boyd+American+Years&pg=PP1 | access-date = 2006-09-25 | year = 1991 | publisher = Princeton University Press | pages = 425–456 | isbn = 0-691-06797-X}}</ref> In an alternative version of the Shadean theory, Tiffany DeRewal and Matthew Roth argued that Kinbote is not a separate person but is a dissociated, alternative personality of John Shade.<ref name=DeRewal>{{cite journal | last = DeRewal| first = Tiffany |author2=Roth, Matthew | year = 2009 | title = John Shade's Duplicate Selves: An Alternative Shadean Theory of Pale Fire | journal = Nabokov Online Journal | volume = 3 | url = http://etc.dal.ca/noj/articles/volume3//06_Roth.pdf | access-date = 2009-11-06}}</ref>  (An early reviewer had mentioned that "a case might be made" for such a reading.)<ref name=Diebold>{{cite news | last = Diebold | first = Michael | title = The World of Books: An Exercise in Madness | newspaper = The Pittsburgh Press | page = 9 | date = May 31, 1962 | url = https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=sUcqAAAAIBAJ&pg=4524%2C5142221 | access-date = 2010-04-21}}</ref>
"Kinboteans", a decidedly smaller group, believe that Kinbote invented the existence of John Shade.  Boyd<ref name=Shadeshape/> credits the Kinbotean theory to Page Stegner<ref>{{cite book | last = Stegner | first = Page |title = Escape into Aesthetics | location = New York | publisher = Dial | year = 1966}}</ref> and adds that most of its adherents are newcomers to the book. Some readers see the book as oscillating undecidably between these alternatives, like the [[Rubin vase]] (a drawing that may be two profiles or a goblet).<ref name="Kernan">{{cite book | last = Kernan | first = Alvin B. | title = The Imaginary Library: An Essay on Literature and Society | url = https://archive.org/details/imaginarylibrary00kern | url-access = registration | location = Princeton | publisher = Princeton University Press | year = 1982| isbn = 9780691065045 }} Reprinted as "Reading Zemblan: The Audience Disappears in ''Pale Fire''" in {{cite book | editor-last = Bloom | editor-first = Harold | year = 1987 | title = Vladimir Nabokov | location = New York | publisher = Chelsea House | pages = 101–126 | isbn = 1-55546-279-0}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | last = McHale | first = Brian | title = Postmodernist Fiction| location = London | publisher = Routledge | pages = 18–19 | year = 1987 | isbn = 0-415-04513-4}}</ref><ref>See also  [http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L the archives of NABOKV-L] for December 1997 and January 1998.  That mailing list contains many discussions of ''Pale Fire.''</ref>

Though a minority of commentators believe or at least accept the possibility that Zembla is as "real" as New Wye,<ref name=Tammi/> most assume that Zembla, or at least the operetta-quaint and homosexually gratified palace life enjoyed by Charles Kinbote before he is overthrown, is imaginary in the context of the story.  The name "Zembla" (taken from "Nova Zembla", a former latinization of [[Novaya Zemlya]])<ref>Boyd notes that [[Jonathan Swift|Swift]]'s ''Battle of the Books'' contains "a malignant deity, call'd ''Criticism''" that "dwelt on the Top of a snowy Mountain in ''Nova Zembla''". ''Magic of Artistic Discovery'', p.&nbsp;79.</ref> may evoke popular fantasy literature about royalty such as ''[[The Prisoner of Zenda]]''.<ref name=Kermode/><ref>{{cite web | last = Hornick | first = Neil |author2=Boyd, Brian | date = March 10, 2005 | title = ''Pale Fire'' and ''The Prisoner of Zenda'' | url = http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/hornboyd.htm | access-date = 2008-01-19}}  An exchange from NABOKV-L.</ref>  As in other Nabokov books, however, the fiction is an exaggerated or comically distorted version of his own life{{Citation needed|date=September 2007}} as a son of privilege before the Russian Revolution and an exile afterwards,<ref>Nabokov, ''Speak, Memory''</ref> and the central murder has resemblances (emphasized by Priscilla Meyer<ref name=Meyer>{{cite book | author = Meyer, Priscilla | title = Find What the Sailor Has Hidden: Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire | year = 1989 | location = Middletown, Conn. | publisher = Wesleyan University Press | isbn = 0-8195-5206-2 | url = https://archive.org/details/findwhatsailorha00pris }}</ref>) to [[Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov|Nabokov's father]]'s murder by an assassin who was trying to kill someone else.

Still other readers de-emphasize any sort of "real story" and may doubt the existence of such a thing.  In the interplay of allusions and thematic links, they find a multifaceted image of English literature,<ref name=Meyer/> criticism,<ref name = Kernan/> or glimpses of a higher world and an afterlife.<ref>{{cite book | last = Moynahan | first = Julian | authorlink=Julian Moynahan|year = 1971 | title = Vladimir Nabokov | publisher = University of Minnesota Press | pages = 40–45 | isbn = 0-8166-0600-5 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Bqag980h9sUC&pg=RA1-PA41 | access-date = 2010-01-11}}</ref>