'Of course he intended it to be taken seriously because it was, and is, a supreme example of his art, the parodic art. To paraphrase myself: Like Lolita and The Gift, like all his best work, Pale Fire is parody. “[Nabokov] used parody as a springboard for leaping into the highest region of serious emotion,” Brian Boyd, VN's biographer, has remarked. Precisely; this is the case with Pale Fire. Nabokov himself, rejecting the label “satirist,” said, “Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.” And he was nothing if not a player of games'--Roger Boylan.
'Of course he intended it to be taken seriously because it was, and is, a supreme example of his art, the parodic art. To paraphrase myself: Like Lolita and The Gift, like all his best work, Pale Fire is parody. “[Nabokov] used parody as a springboard for leaping into the highest region of serious emotion,” Brian Boyd, VN's biographer, has remarked. Precisely; this is the case with Pale Fire. Nabokov himself, rejecting the label “satirist,” said, “Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.” And he was nothing if not a player of games'--Roger Boylan.
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