Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic Art of Discovery by Brian Boyd. Princeton University Press, 303pp., $16.95 paper
Antioch Review, 2002.
Nabokov's Pale Fire is a fictitious edition of a poem by John Shade with commentary by an egocentric critic, Charles Kinbote. Boyd offers detailed analyses of patterns in the poem, performing the work that should have been done by Kinbote. He also provides excellent commentary on Kinbote's work. Boyd then looks at the patterns occurring between Shade's and Kinbote's contributions, which have led several critics to argue that the whole of Pale Fire was written by one deceptive meta-author. Boyd once argued it was Shade. Now he claims it was Kinbote possessed by the ghosts of Shade and Shade's daughter. Boyd overstates his case somewhat by not making clear distinctions between patterns that could be attributed to one of the living authors and patterns that require a meta-author: e.g., the fact that Kinbote's commentary echoes themes in Shade's poem is not an uncanny coincidence; the fact that Shade's poem seems to prophesy his own murder is.
Boyd dedicates considerable space to Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery, claiming his own "theory" about Pale Fire is falsifiable in Popper's sense. However, Boyd is mistaken. Poetic interpretations, like any postulation about supernatural beings, are precisely the kinds of assertions that cannot be falsified. As Pale Fire itself demonstrates, art and belief are the effects of ambiguity and coincidence.
All the same, Boyd is right: there do seem to be ghosts afoot. But it appears to me that Boyd has only swallowed Kinbote's bait. Kinbote wants readers to think his commentary is supernaturally inspired. Boyd discounts Nabokov's warning that Shade has learned not to believe in "domestic ghosts." Shade's subtler discovery, which Boyd has missed altogether, is that certain kinds of poetic patterns tend to suggest a meta-author, and similar patterns in real life tend to suggest supernatural meta-authors. Nevertheless, Boyd's discovery of Kinbote's planted clues advances Nabokovian scholarship considerably. My criticism should ultimately only strengthen the better part of his thesis.