The structure of Pale Fire provides its meaning and delight…. [Most critics] have used it as a way of unraveling the "plot"—what happens among the three principal characters, John Shade, Charles Kinbote, and Jakob Gradus—and, therefore, have approached the poem and commentary which comprise Pale Fire as separate entities to be studied as two units and then connected, usually by having either poet Shade or commentator Kinbote assigned the authorship of the whole. (p. 103)
In Pale Fire, the form itself—a poem and a commentary on the poem—creates the tension of the whole and should be approached like a character: how are we meant to apprehend it? If Nabokov's method of composition is the hero, the reader's method of perusal determines how the hero will be perceived…. For the first reading, merely alternating between the poem and the commentary provides sufficient involvement in Nabokov's scheme while, at the same time, keeping the movement of both dimensions clear; on second reading … one can start raveling the web.
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