Shades of gray at the top of the axis to black at the bottom of the axis. At right is displayed the web color "Gainsboro" "Gainsboro" is a pale tone of gray. Prior to standardization as a web color, "Gainsboro" was included as one of the X11 color names. It was, however, absent from the original 1987 version of the list, but present in Paul Raveling's version which added, amongst other things, "[l]ight and off-white colors, copied from several Sinclair Paints color samples". At right is displayed the web color "light gray" Displayed at right is the web color "silver" This color is
Pale Fire see Charles Kinbote as an alter-ego of the insane Professor V. Botkin, to whose delusions John Shade and the rest of the faculty of Wordsmith College generally condescend. Nabokov himself endorsed this reading, stating in an interview in 1962 (the novel's year of publication) that "Pale Fire" "is full of plums that I keep hoping somebody will find. For instance, the nasty commentator is not an ex-King of Zembla nor is he professor Kinbote. He is professor Botkin, or Botkine, a Russian and a madman." The novel's intricate structure of teasing cross-references leads readers to this "plum". The Index, supposedly