Mindmaps at their Finest

For my American Novel class, I'm reading Vladimir Nobokov's Pale Fire and it has lead to a bounty of educational opportunities (including my parents' introcuding me to "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by The Police/Sting), although I did have to rely on liberal use of Wikipedia in order to understand what exactly was happening. Once you get into it (or in my case, once you get a good overview, a'la Wiki), it is actually fascinating. Brilliant, really! I think it is on the same playing field as William Goldman's The Princess Bride (except I think Pale Fire came first, so the reverse would be true).

The novel is comprised of a foreward, a poem written in 4 cantos of heroic couplets, a commentary, and an index. The best part about all of this is that the poem is written by Mr. John Shade and the foreward, commentary, and index are written by Dr. Charles Kinbot, a close friend and colleague of Mr. Shade. Confusing? Definitely. When it first said the poem was by Mr. Shade, I thought, "Wait a second, isn't this written by Nobokov?" I double-checked the cover to make sure. No, it says Nobokov on the front. Then who is Mr. Shade? And who is Dr. Kinbot? That is the question.

The novel has been widely discussed for its non-linear connections. It was included in a study on hypertext (text that hyperlinks to other texts, or parts of the text, for reference purposes. This blog post would be an example of a hypertext--or any other webpage for that matter.). My further research in trying to locate such a hypertext for Pale Fire led me to a very interesting graph detailing the various connections of Pale Fire. It very much resembled a mind map, only infinitely more complex than anything you might draw for personal "brain dumping."

Unfortunately, I could not locate the copyright information for it and cannot post it here. However, you can view it here along with the abstract of the creator's study. (A larger version of the graph is available on the second page). The full study is much longer, but a very interesting read if you feel like drowning in literary criticism. However, the abstract provides a nice enough (and much briefer) overview. I know I'm geekin' out over here, but enjoy!