How does Pale Fire challenge the usual beginning-to-end structure of a novel?

Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire challenges the traditional, sequential structure of a novel by abandoning the conventional expectation of beginning at the start and progressing linearly to the end.1

Instead of a standard narrative, the book is composed of a 999-line poem written by a fictional academic, John Shade, followed by an extensive commentary provided by Charles Kinbote, a neighbor and colleague suffering from paranoia. Because Kinbote uses this critical apparatus to project his own delusions—believing the poem is a secret history of his life as an exiled king—the reader is forced to navigate the text through his biased, unreliable lens rather than a straightforward plot.21

By presenting the work as a parody of literary scholarship, Nabokov effectively "liquidates" the old sense of direction, requiring the reader to synthesize the poem and the commentary to uncover the story. This experimental approach asks readers to reconsider the essence of fiction, as the novel functions as a complex, non-linear puzzle rather than a simple chronological account.1