Veronica’s Reviews > Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery > Status Update

I love scholarship that is saturated in unapologized-for personality

I’m sorry!!! Brian Boyd citing the essay he wrote on pale fire when he was “only seventeen!” is way cute to me and I am taken by it!!!! And I love the little anecdotes about Nabokov writing “NO!” In the margins of his masters thesis. Guys what am I gonna do when pale fire is over. I have to suspend it over my life even more like a rain-cover carcass

“…palace to Iris Acht’s dressing room. Or in chess terminology, the key move is Iris Acht, Iris ACHT (German “eight”), i8, from the h8 square in the corner of the board to i8, a king’s one-step move, but now off the board.” AHAHAHAAHAAHAHASH. YES. TRANSLATE YHE WHOLE TEXT INTO CHESS MOVES AND MAKE ME READ IT BACK. I LOVE NABOKOVIAN SCHOLARSHIP

1/2 thro & reading stuff like “The number 1888, saliently recurring through the episode, seems to reflect the numbering of chess ranks from one to eight, and the layout of the chessboard, eight squares by eight. The key to the problem posed by the King is the closet surmounted by the picture of Iris Acht, the closet that leads into the tunnel that once took Thurgus the Third from this corner room in the square-