Writing about Abraham Socher‘s article in the Times Literary Supplement on Vladimir Nabokov‘s Pale Fire , (available in the July 1 print edition only), The New York Observer’s Ron Rosenbaum draws attention to the importance of a debt that Nabokov owed to poet Robert Frost. In his Observer column, Rosenbaum observes that Frost’s little-known 1958 “Of a Winter Evening” may have the inspired the famous first lines of Pale Fire. These lines read: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane; / I was the smudge of ashen fluff—and I / Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky” and are supposed to be the words of fictional character John Shade. Socher, a lecturer at Oberlin College, thinks some of these words are played off language in Frost’s poem and shows why and how Nabakov might have adapted some of Frost’s language. Rosenbaum, however, stresses that the adaptation was widely successful. He even thinks that the poem, even though it is embedded in Pale Fire, is “perhaps the greatest American verse work of the 20th century . . . . In fact, taken on its own, it surpasses in every respect anything that Frost has ever done.”

• RELATED: Rosenbaum also discovers and highlights the work of Mister Quickly, an “Amazon epicurean” from Victoria, BC, who writes deadpan, and purposefully clueless, reviews of the world’s great literature. His review of Nabokov’s Pale Fire, for instance, reads: “Fire — a timeless subject. Perhaps rivaling the wheel in terms of its importance in human development, fire has been an important companion in our teleological quest towards perfection. This book didn’t really directly tackle the subject of fire as poignantly as would suit my tastes. If you’re interested in furthering your knowledge of fire I recommend the movie ‘Quest for Fire,’ or the song ‘Fire’ by Arthur Brown, and ‘Backdraft.'” 49 such reviews by Mister Quickly are posted on Amazon.