Abstract
Abstract: The role that confession plays in Nabokov's fiction remains poorly understood, though the same can be said for confessional fiction in general. Part of the problem lies in the slipperiness of the word "confession" itself, which is why this essay begins by defining confession as a performative speech act through which the speaking or writing subject seeks to form, reform, and transform herself, addressing herself to another who is called to act as a witness to this creative act of self(trans)formation—a process akin to Nabokov's own description of a poet (not a "loony") who "peels off a drab past and replaces it with a brilliant invention" ( Pale Fire 188). Based on this capacious definition, the paper proposes reading Pale Fire , arguably the most elusive of Nabokov's confessional fictions, as the confession of the fictional editor, Charles Kinbote. Examining Kinbote's note to line 550 of the poem, where Kinbote confesses having been "tarrying on the brink of falsification" from the very beginning, I argue that Kinbote's commentary begins to act as his confession, allowing Kinbote to accumulate the kind of moral self-distance that serves as the basis for his reform. This reading is foregrounded by an analysis of two other interpretive strategies that are common in Pale Fire criticism: the "dialectic" reading that seeks to discover the truth of the text and the "paranoid" reading that promises to uncover a secret, a hidden truth. Whereas both of these strategies position the critic as the one who must disclose a truth that is not confessed in the novel, reading Pale Fire as Kinbote's confession in a deconstructive manner, as I propose doing, allows the novel to be endlessly "unfolded," to use Gilles Deleuze's metaphor, bringing to the fore the materiality of the text itself and the interpretive choices it imposes on its readers.
Published Version
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