![]() ![]() The Judge’s Rationale: Pale Fire is the most Shakespearean work of art the 20th century has produced, the only prose fiction that offers Shakespearean levels of depth and complexity, of beauty, tragedy and inexhaustible mystery. And (insert 21-gun salute here) my award for Novel of the Century goes to Nabokov’s Pale Fire, with Ulysses and Shadows on the Hudson taking the silver and the bronze. The book that prompted these reflections and confirmed me in my choice for Novel of the Century was Brian Boyd’s remarkable, obsessive, delirious, devotional study, Nabokov’s Pale Fire (Princeton University Press). And then the arrival of a book I’d long been looking forward to, a book which suggested my first Edgy Enthusiast End-of-Century Award, the one for Novel of the Century. But a couple of things changed my mind: calls from two networks and a newsmagazine on the Hitler question–was he the “most evil” man of the century? should he be Man of the Century, period?–started me thinking in those terms. I admit I was reluctant to get into the whole Man -of-the-Century, Movie-of-the-Millennium enterprise. You know, the Century-Slash-Millennium List Game. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |