Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire:

The Lost ‘Father of All Hypertext Demos’?

ACM Hypertext 2011

9th June 2011

Simon Rowberry

Simon.Rowberry@winchester.ac.uk

Zembla, Zenda, Xanadu:All our dream-worlds may come true.Fairy lands are fearsome too.As I wander far from viewRead, and bring me home to you.

One possible new model?

Pale Fire offers the familiar paratext, but with a new dicta…

Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader’

504 explicit connections37% notes referring to the poem63% notes referencing other notes69% of all references coming from the index