1. Vladimir Nabokov’s
Pale Fire and the
Problem of Interface
Digital Humanities Congress
8th September 2012
Simon Rowberry
Simon.Rowberry@winchester.ac.uk

2. Anatomy of Pale Fire
• Foreword by Charles Kinbote
• 999-line autobiographical poem by the
late John Shade
• Non- sequitur commentary
• Index with no reference to the actual
poem
• ―Ontological Vertigo‖ – Robert Alter
• A critical edition or detective novel?
• Requires careful rereading
• A limit text (career, modernism, hypertext)
• Marketed as a strange text

3. Pale Fire as Hypertext
• Pale Fire fits the condition of many
definitions of literary hypertext:
• link-and-node network model (1st generation)
• Extensive use of paratextual devices (2nd
generation)
• Both uni- and multi-cursal (ergodic) - Aarseth
• Both modular and continuous
• 3 ways of reading in preface
• Pre-empts many questions in hypertext
scholarship

4. 504 explicit connections
37% notes referring to the poem
63% notes referencing other notes
69% of all references coming from the index

5. The Island Model of Pale Fire
Generalized model of connections in Pale
Fire based on Broder et al’s model
Commentary
(and foreword)
Index Poem
Occasional
unconnected section
2 connections

6. Transmission history
Year Publisher Type
1962 G. P. Putnam’s 1st edn. Hardback
1967 Ted Nelson Demonstration for HES
1994 The Arion Press Artist’s Book
1994 Jimmy Guterman Storyspace
1997-1998 Koichi Nakamura Unknown – pedagogic
1999 S. Kazinin Web
2004 BBC Radio 3 Radio Drama
c.2007 Tiddly Wiki Web
c.2008 Shannon Chamberlain Web
c.2008 Tundra Squid Web
2009 G. S. Lipon Web
2010 Pale Tour Google Earth
2011 Gingko Press Artist’s Book

7. Apocryphal Versions

8. ―Hello, This is my first posting to the NABOKOV list. I work in the
computer software industry, with a particular personal interest in
Hypertext, and storing information and knowledge in computer systems. I
have just completed my second reading of PALE FIRE, and I'm very
interested in exploring the Index of the book by transferring this text to my
computer and generating hypertext links to each line reference in the
poem. I have typed out the first Canto and will complete the remaining
Cantos in the next couple of weeks. Obviously this project has to remain
on my computer because of the copyright of the text, unless I can
persuade the publisher to make it available. A "Pale Fire" CD-ROM would
be a great product in my opinion!... My question to the list is deciding
which lines of text belong to each index card. In the preface, Kinbote
says there are 80 cards containing the poem, and the commentary
indicates a few card numbers here and there. In the meantime I will
make a best guess since it wont be too hard to regenerate my hypertext
as it will be done with a set of Perl scripts. Kind regards, Charles Cave in
Sydney, Australia‖
Apocryphal Versions

9. The Problem of Interface
• Old issues – consider the discourse
surrounding digitizing Ulysses in the
early 1990s
• Quick and dirty
• Most creative remediations for a post-
1922 text?
• Only available versions– mainly on the
Web and unofficial

10. Interface instructions
―Although those notes, in conformity with custom,
come after the poem, the reader is advised to consult
them first and then study the poem with their help,
rereading them of course as he goes through its text,
and perhaps, after having done with the poem,
consulting them a third time so as to complete the
picture. I find it wise in such cases as this to eliminate
the bother of back-and-forth leafings by either cutting
out and clipping together the pages with the text of the
thing, or, even more simply, purchasing two copies of
the same work which can then be placed in adjacent
positions on a comfortable table‖
PF, 28

11. The Arion Press edition
Focus on poem:
“A second volume, providing a second
copy of the poem Pale Fire for
reference, is in the format of the
ostensible manuscript, 4 by 6 inches,
84 pages, with the same type and
paper. Both volumes are bound in full
purple cloth, with inset gold cloth disks
for gold titling, and are enclosed in a
gold cloth slipcase.”

12. Gingko Press
“This attractive box contains two booklets — the poem “Pale Fire” in a
handsome pocket edition and the book of essays by Boyd and Gwynn — as well
as facsimiles of the index cards that John Shade (like his maker, Nabokov) used
for composing his poem, printed exactly as Nabokov described them.”

14. Shannon Chamberlain’s web
adaptation

17. • Why didn't you highlight the parts of the
poem that appear (however tangentially)
in the commentary, like in the Russian
version?
• I've made a conscious decision to play
Nabokov's game and follow Kinbote's
instructions to the letter… If you're going
to read the book Kinbote's way, you should
do what Kinbote says. This means using the
hyperlinks from the commentary to the
poem, not the other way around. Or maybe
I'm just too lazy.

19. University of Washington

20. Tundra Squid

23. N.B. This version is incomplete
and contains no index
Also, not the official translation
by Nabokov’s wife Vera.

24. Tiddly Wiki
• ―This is an experimental hypertext version of an
extract from Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov,
designed to explore the hypertextuality in that novel,
using this remarkable hypertext tool, TiddlyWiki.
This edition is limited to the Foreword, the first Canto
of the Poem, and, of the Commentary and Index,
only entries directly relating to that same first Canto.
It seems like fair use, to me, though the rights
holders may demur. But someone may find it
interesting or useful in the meantime.‖

25. Tiddly Wiki
• This hypertext edition has tried to remain faithful to the original,
printed edition, wherever possible, using the features of
electronic hypertext to suggest enhancements to the analogue
experience. Naturally, mouse-clicks replace the action of
turning the page….
Owing to its great length, I wanted to break the Foreword
into smaller chunks: until a better idea comes along, I have
rendered these arbitrary pages to match the pagination of
the original edition exactly. I know that many people object to
navigating texts arbitrarily broken into web-page sized chunks
— I generally do myself — but I feel that the Foreword is a
special case within the context of Pale Fire. I will continue to
consider the merits or otherwise of this approach. Better still,
perhaps, if I could leave the reader the choice of
pagination, but that's a bit beyond my capabilities at the
moment.

30. In America, a Kindle edition appears to have been withdrawn.

31. Questions raised:
• Should Kinbote’s instructions be
followed?
• How useful is it to attempt to follow
Shade’s fictional composition?
• Does the text require additional
paratextual devices to mirror the
original’s complexity?

32. Year Publisher URL
1999 S. Kazinin http://www.kulichki.com/moshkow/NABOKOW/pa
lefirehtm.txt
c.200
7
Tiddly Wiki http://palefire.tiddlyspot.com/
c.200
8
Shannon
Chamberlain
http://www.shannonrchamberlain.com/palefiremai
n.html
c.200
8
Tundra Squid http://www.tundrasquid.com/palefireindex.htm
2009 G. S. Lipon http://innerlea.com/aulit/paleFire/
2010 Pale Tour https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/johnso73/www/paleto
ur/kinbote.html