Pale Fire: A Poem in Four Cantos by John Shade

Many think Pale Fire is Nabokov's greatest novel. At its heart beats a 999-line poem, penned by its fictional hero, John Shade. This first-ever facsimile edition of the poem shows it to be not just a fictional device but also a masterpiece of American poetry, albeit by an invented persona. In the novel, Shade's mad neighbor, Charles Kinbote, absconds with the poem, compiling an ostensible line-by-line commentary that largely ignores Shade's text and heeds only his own egotism. Kinbote's commenta…