PEKKA TAMMI: LX

One of my favorite quotations from one of my favorite experts on Vladimir Nabokov:

"Each of these readings has its merits (especially the third), and it seems hardly timely to start resolving the debate here <...>. For the purpose of the present discussion it is sufficient to adopt a somewhat more straightforward view formulated by Robert Alter in what may be the most lucid analysis so far published of the novel: "Exegetes of [Pale Fire] ... have tended to complicate it in gratuitous ways by publishing elaborate diagrams of its structure. ... This is not a Jamesian experiment in reliability of narrative point-of-view, and there is no reason to doubt the existence of the basic fictional data--the Poem and its author, on the one hand, and the mad Commentary and its perpetrator on the other, inverted left hand." <...> In other words, the reader of Pale Fire may do better than promote unprovable thesis about "authorship" in the novel. The more rewarding question to ask is not whether Kinbote has invented Shade or Shade Kinbote--or even the postmodern query whether both are inventing each other. Rather, we should look more closely into the characteristically Nabokovian problem of hidden links between the diverse parts of the text and consider their possible origin" (Tammi, P. Pale Fire // The Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov / Ed. by Vladimir E. Alexandrov. New York; London, 1995. P. 576).