And even as I write this I cannot deny that my own reading of this novel is the product of all of my personal experiences with literature. Pale Fire is thus a complex, and ultimately rather touching, demonstration of the way people have of reading their lives into books and reading books into their lives, like Kinbote. It is an affirmation of the power of literature, of the power of books to help us make sense of our lives, and of the impossibility of distinguishing precisely between life and art. Which I suspect is an iambic line. Pale Fire , 970-976.
Every passionate reader knows such a book, or several such books.
And spare a sympathetic thought for poor Dr Kinbote even as you chuckle at his blissfully-made mistakes. Speaking of confident suggestions . I didn't follow the clues and check Timon of Athens , which Kinbote alludes to more than once. So the joke's on me, perhaps. I'm not sure now.