In this essay on Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and Pale Fire, Zack examines how Nabokov’s narrator-protagonists, Humbert and Kinbote, fail to “accept the contradiction between life and art and go mad struggling to actualize the ideal in the real world.” Paying close attention to the novels’ imagery, Zack argues that Nabokov’s protagonists “distort and deflate Romantic principles…to justify their solipsistic disinterest in the plight of other people.” – NM