A Merman of the Deep: Mary McCarthy on Nabokov’s Pale Fire

The real, real story, the plane of ordinary sanity and common sense, the reader’s presumed plane, cannot be accepted as final. The explanation that Botkin is mad will totally satisfy only Professors H. and C. and their consorts, who can put aside Pale Fire as a detective story, with the reader racing the author to the solution. Pale Fire is not a detective story, though it includes one. Each plane or level in its shadow box proves to be a false bottom; there is an infinite perspective regression, for the book is a book of mirrors. ... http://lithub.com/a-merman-of-the-deepmary-mccarthy-on-nabokovs-pale-fire/

Mary McCarthy, The New Republic, June 4, 1962