I can hardly imagine what it must be like to read Pale Fire without the invaluable preface and commentary of Dr. Kinbote.

What I picked up from a surface-level read was fascinating enough (to someone with hardly any poetry knowledge, at least), with very striking descriptions of encountering death through different stages of life, from almost being enchanted with it as a child (And then black night. That blackness was sublime / I felt distributed through space and time), to the more grounded and terrible (but nevertheless ethereal) experience of losing a loved one (...her look / Spelt imploration as she sought in vain / to reason with the monsters in her brain).

But Kinbote's notes elucidate an entirely new and hidden story told between the lines, of the daring and cinematic escape of Charles II from Zembla all the way to small-town Appalachia. Shade alludes to the infamous tale both in broad strokes that I expect would be obvious to someone more familiar with Cold War -era Zemblan history ("To the sea... Which we had visited in thirty-three)" as well as with references so artfully subtle ("A male [kingly] hand") that I have to complain a little that the layman stands no chance of picking up on them without Kinbote's astonishing contribution.

The relationship between between editor and author is so often obscure to readers, but Kinbote in kind enough to add a lot of color about their close friendship, even relating his humble part in the epic poem's creation by spinning the yarn of Zembla's beloved king and thus inspiring so much of the poem's subtext.

(Yes, I am aware of the conspiracy theories that Dr. Kinbote is actually the deposed king of Zembla. Maybe they made a little sense before the Soviet Union collapsed, but do we actually think that he remained in hiding even after a democratic government was reinstated in Zembla, just so he could go to cocktail parties with medium-famous authors and be around a bunch of teenage boys all the time? Come on, Charles II's real-life story is already crazy enough.)