Amid news about tempests of sand in Bagdad and Michael Jackson's wake in Neverland, I remembered that today we also celebrate the birthdays of John Shade, Charles Kinbote and Gradus. 

 

Here is a quiz recovered from the internet (at www.gradesaver.com/pale-fire/study-guide/quiz1)

 

Study Guide

 

Pale Fire Quiz 1
1. Where is Charles Kinbote when he writes his commentary to "Pale Fire"?
 Zembla
 New Wye
 Harvard
 Cedarn
2. What is the "crystal land"?
 Zembla
 New Wye
 Russia
 Appalachia
3. When does Charles the Beloved's rule as king end?
 1936
 1939
 1945
 1958
4. What is Charles Kinbote's other identity?
 Gradus
 Charles X
 Pius X
 John Shade
5. When is John Shade's birthday?
 December 24
 August 7
 July 4
 July 5
6. Which of the following characters lives in exile?
 Gradus
 Sybil Shade
 Jacques D'Argus
 Charles Kinbote
7. Who allegedly stars in "The Case of the Reversed Footprints"?
 Alfred Hitchcock
 Hercule Poirot
 Sherlock Holmes
 John Shade
8. Who attempts to commit "a frozen stillicide?"
 Gradus
 Sybil Shade
 Charles X
 Aunt Maud
9. Who wrote "Friends Beyond"?
 Christina Rossetti
 Thomas Hardy
 Charles Kinbote
 John Shade
10. From what text is the title of John Shade's poem, "Pale Fire," derived?
 Timon of Athens
 Man and Superman
 Damnum Infectum
 Two Gentlemen of Verona
                         

Here is an excerpt and bonus for today's celebrations, now Boyd on Pale Fire and autobiographical transformations ( from www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/boyd-pale.html )

"In a kind of postscript to Speak, Memory that he withheld from publication during his lifetime, and that has just been published for the centenary of his birth, Nabokov dons the mask of a reviewer of his autobiography, and writes, among amusingly disparaging comments, of the "retrospective acumen and creative concentration that the author had to summon in order to plan his book according to the way his life had been planned by unknown players of games." Shade writes his autobiographical poem in exactly the same spirit. Conscious, after the fountain-mountain confusion, that his very quest to explore the beyond makes him seem a mere toy of the gods, he derives a sense of the playfulness hidden deep in things, and feels that he can perhaps understand and participate a little in this playfulness, if only obliquely, through the pleasure of shaping his own world in verse, through playing his own game of worlds, through sensing and adding to the design in and behind his world."

 

There is also a reference in P. Meyer and Jeff Hoffman's article "Infinite Reflections in Nabokov's "Pal Fire": the Danish Connection

( Hans Andersen and Isak Dinesen), found through: linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0304347997852076