Happy to report I dragged myself over the Zemblan finish line last week. Man, did March get away from me. I’m kicking myself I didn’t have the group assist found here. Still, here’s to finishing. Raising a half-gallon of Tokay for us all. #palefire #springtimeinzembla 🦋
🦋 i did finish about a week ago (minus the index which I'll get to. accidentally ran out of March). Struggled to explain it to someone at a party the other day. another guest asked "did you like it?" "i did" "me too. kinbote is such a messy bitch." he is!! #palefire #springtimeinzembla
#PaleFire readying friends: how do you think Shade actually felt toward Charles? Did he actually enjoy his company, as the narrator would have us believe? Just tolerate him? Loathe him (as Sybil clearly did)? #SpringtimeInZembla 🦋
As today is the last day of the Pale Fire 🦋 read, I wanted to thank all of you for spending #SpringtimeInZembla with me! I notice new things every time I read this book, and reading it with others has been amazing.
I also wanted to generally thank #BSBookclub for being such awesome, curious people.
I totally used to play bass for Jasp Orbicle. #SpringtimeInZembla 🦋
Oh, that's fascinating. I always love to hear what interview subjects are reading. I think you end up learning some things about them you don't through the expected work questions everyone gets. She's definitely spending #SpringtimeInZembla in spirit!
Text from the Lucy Daucus New Yorker interview: "Dacus and I met near the museum’s front entrance. The sky was gray and sagging; the Hudson was chunky with ice. When I arrived, Dacus was reading a copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Pale Fire,” from 1962, a novel that takes the form of a nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-line poem, written by a fictional author named John Shade, with commentary by Charles Kinbote, a deranged and largely unbearable academic. (Kinbote could probably be thought of as a punisher, to borrow the title of Bridgers’s second record—a person who simply does not know when to zip it.) Dacus was into it. “He knows how to write insufferable people,” she said."
Ok, I know the Lucy Daucus New Yorker profile interview occurred in January, but I'm choosing to believe she is also spending #SpringtimeInZembla 🦋
Caught up with #PaleFire for #bsbookclub ! It's a wonderful #SpringtimeInZembla :)
Loving this weird, funny book so far. I was missing New Wye for the last 50 pages or so but Zembla is an intriguing place... 🦋
Unpinning the old schedule post and repinning a new one, just to make sure the schedule is posting correctly.
Hashtags are #SpringtimeInZembla, #PaleFire, and 🦋.
The distracted boyfriend meme, showing a man visibly leering at another woman while the woman walking with him looks on in astonishment and outrage. In this version, the boyfriend is labeled Charles Kinbote, the girlfriend is John Shade, and the other woman is King Charles the Beloved.
Pale Fire annotations are showing signs of a trend. #SpringtimeInZembla 🦋
As someone who has read Pale Fire before...
Now that I'm through with the poem, I feel the anticipatory delight you get at the very very top of the roller coaster.
No spoilers.
#SpringtimeInZembla 🦋
"Later came minutes, hours, whole days at last,
When she'd be absent from our thoughts, so fast
Did life, the woolly caterpillar run."
This bit, and the bit before, resonated with me as a parent whose child died... the slow way grief releases you.
#SpringtimeInZembla 🦋
[Me:] Fuck yeah, 'Pale Fire' book club is starting, LFG
[checks reading schedule, sees that it started on Saturday, not Monday]: oh shit
#SpringtimeInZembla #PaleFire #bsbookclub
“You are a remarkably disagreeable person. I fail to see how John and Sybil can stand you,” and, exasperated by my polite smile, she added: “What’s more, you are insane.”
The first time I read this I thought it was the funniest thing I’d ever read. It still goes hard. 🦋 #SpringtimeInZembla
Y’all, what’s going on with our Zemblan narrator and the student “roomer” who commits “treason” by sleeping with a woman in the narrator’s absence? 😬 Nabokov gonna Nabokov re adults predating? #springtimeInZembla 🦋
Oh BOY. Just getting into the foreword and this is giving me VERY strong Yellowface (RF Kuang) vibes. Anyone else? #springtimeInZembla 🦋
A meme for the #SpringtimeInZembla readalong of #PaleFire 🦋
Since there was some discussion of upcoming #bsbookclub 📖 readings this morning, I thought I'd announce the upcoming March read of Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire.
Hashtags are #SpringtimeInZembla, #PaleFire, and 🦋.
The Cat's Cradle chapter on indexing made me smile and think about our upcoming read of Pale Fire. I suppose the "author" technically didn't write his own index, but that's certainly an index that tells us some things about the person who created it! 🧊 🦋 #SpringtimeInZembla
