Playing a Game of Worlds : Postmodern Time and the Search for Individual Autonomy in Vladimir Nabokov\u27s Pale Fire

This article enters the ongoing critical debate surrounding Pale Fire, as to whether the apparent structure of the novel can be taken at face value. Do the central characters, John Shade and Charles Kinbote, constitute separate voices within the novel, as poet and commentator respectively, or is one in fact the fictional creation of the other? Arguing that the dispute arises out of a set of critical assumptions that negate at least some of the possible implications of Nabokov\u27s own views of art\u27s purpose and function, the essay asserts that Nabokov\u27s disbelief in objective reality renders the entire Shade/Kinbote debate irrelevant. By focusing upon the consequent challenges presented by radical subjectivity and linguistic indeterminacy in an always-fictional world, the essay suggests that Nabokov\u27s art, rather than being diminished by an exploration of its relationships to post-structuralism, is in fact reaffirmed as a transcendent act of the human spirit