Pnin

Having only read [Lolita], my perspective on Nabokov was narrow. I thought of him as a difficult author to read, with dark humor (if any). Then I read [Pnin], and my impression did a 180.

Everyone at the small college where Timofey Pnin teaches thinks he is a ridiculous figure with his humorous language faux pas and bumbling ways. In the era of McCarthy, teaching Russian is as low on the academic spectrum as it is possible to go, and neither his colleagues or his few students respect him. Pnin stumbles through life with bemused good humor, and it is only when he is with his fellow Russian emigre compatriots that we see the well-spoken, confident intellectual that lies below the surface.

[Pnin] is a story of estrangement and belonging, show more assimilation and cultural difference, good-humored self-deprecation and simmering anger. It′s also a story within a story. There is an unnamed narrator telling Pnin′s story, and at the end of the novel, the motives of this narrator are called into question, and the reader is left wondering if this really is Pnin′s story after all.

Metafiction creates a tension between the protagonist and the writer. In most novels, there is a lulling sense that the protagonists true self is being revealed, but in metafiction this is disrupted. We are constantly being reminded that we are reading fiction, fiction created by a biased author, even when the author is claiming to be reciting the facts.

Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We fell cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically. Had I been reading about this mild old man, instead of writing about him, I would have preferred him to discover, upon his arrival in Cremona, that his lecture was not this Friday but the next. Actually, however, he not only arrived safely but was in time for dinner—a fruit cocktail, to begin with, mint jelly with the anonymous meat course, chocolate syrup with the vanilla ice cream.

By professing to tell the truth, rather than his own inclinations, and following that with an account of a mundane act too detailed not to be true, the reliability of the narrator is made more questionable, not less. The writer doth protest too much, methinks. But Nabokov handles this tension playfully and hides how much of himself is reflected. Certainly he, like both the narrator and Pnin, was a Russian emigre educated in Paris and a professor at small colleges in the United States. Is one aspect of Nabokov′s ego poking fun at another aspect?

On the surface, however, [Pnin] is a delightful romp with delicious descriptions and laugh-out-loud humor.

...Judith Clyde, an ageless blond in aqua rayon, with large, flat cheeks stained a beautiful candy pink and two bright eyes basking in blue lunacy behind a rimless pince-nez, presented the speaker…

Marriage hardly changed their manner of life except that she moved into Pnin's dingy apartment. He went on with his Slavic studies, she with her psychodramatics and her lyrical ovipositing, laying all over the place like an Easter rabbit, and in those green and mauve poems—about the child she wanted to bear, and the lovers she wanted to have, and St. Petersburg (courtesy of Anna Akhmatov)—every intonation, every image, every simile had been used before by other rhyming rabbits.

Blue lunacy and rhyming rabbits, I love it. show less

Timofey Pnin is a professor of Russian literature at a middling college. He is not a great teacher or a great thinker, and indeed both daily living, and the English language, have a tendency to get on top of him. It was the world that was absent-minded and it was Pnin whose business it was to set it straight. His life was a constant war with insensate objects that fell apart, or attacked him, or refused to function, or viciously got themselves lost as soon as they entered the sphere of his existence.

His story is told through a number of episodes in his life, often comedies of errors or embarrassment, like the time he caught the wrong train to give an important lecture and ended up losing his notes along the way. Towards the end we learn show more why it is being told through episodes, and we question whether this was in fact an accurate portrayal of Pnin - but in the meantime, this is a bittersweet tale of a hapless man, as well as a satire on US college life, and the lives of emigrés and exiles in the US, which often had me laughing out loud. show less

Pnin, like much of Nabokov's work, is simply brilliant. The novel is a character sketch of Timofey Pnin, a Russian scholar teaching in America. Each chapter is an episode from his time teaching at the fictional Waindell College. Pnin is a rather hapless figure, and his exploits are commonly comedic. Indeed, this is a really funny book, and could be enjoyed simply on that level. Nabokov is not just a poetic writer, he is unmatched in his literary wit. There are always more subtle jokes and turns of phrase to pull out of the text.

It is quickly obvious, however, that there is a lot more to the story and to the character of Pnin then the comic story might lead us to believe. His past is only on occasion discussed directly, but it is show more intrusive. Part of Pnin's humor is that he is a "fish out of water," so to speak (not to mention that he follows in the long tradition of the academic with his head in the clouds, as in Aristophanes' play). Yet, the memories of his past, frequently tragic, are a constant reminder that there is an environment in which he does fit more naturally. Not only does it flesh out his character with detail, it makes us take him seriously. Right from the offing, we are not merely laughing at Pnin, but aching for him at the same time. As a result, we are constantly invested in Pnin, we feel protective of him, even as we enjoy the book's charms. As a consequence, the novel works superbly as a character sketch, instead of just a comedy built on a cliche.

The stories are also wonderfully and subtly constructed. Take, for example, the third story. Pnin has been a lodger in a local home (with the family of another Waindell College Professor), and the early parts of the story focus on Pnin's frustration with having to return a library book that has been recalled before it is due (as a fellow academic, I could sympathize!). Yet, it is clear to the reader that other things are a foot with his lodging arrangements, which will obviously come to a head before the end of the story. Nabokov is able to make us aware of this whilst still making the story ostensibly one about Pnin's trip to the library. This comes off beautifully, as we are privy to Pnin's clueless behavior without having the narrator keep reminding us of it.

It's also a moving, at times heart-rending novel. The moment, at the end of a disastrous dinner party, when Pnin thinks he has broken a crystal bowl received as a gift is crushing. The moment that follows, when Pnin realizes it is intact, brings palpable relief. It's the simplest of moments, but told as it is, placed in a story as it is, and with a character we care about like Pnin, it sticks with you. I've found that simple moment on my mind, over a week since I read it.

The novel is also, as we would expect from Nabokov, brilliantly written. It is difficult for me to describe his prose without simply layering on supleratives, so instead I will just quote a pair of passages that reflect his eloquence and playfulness so well:

"Doffing his spectacles, he rubbed with the knuckles of the hand that held them his naked and tired eyes and, still in thought, fixed his mild gaze on the window above, where, gradually, through his dissolving meditation, there appeared the violet-blue air of dusk, silver-tooled by the reflection of the fluorescent lights of the ceiling, and, among the spidery black twigs, a mirrored row of bright book spines" (56).

"On the distant crest of the knoll, at the exact spot where Gramineev's easel had stood a few hours before, two dark figures in profile were silhouetted against the ember-red sky. They stood there closely, facing each other. One could not make out from the road whether it was the Poroshin girl and her beau, or Nina Bolotov and young Poroshin, or merely an emblematic couple placed with easy art on the last page of Pnin's fading day" (101).

The latter passage is particularly brilliant, with the way it moves seamlessly between the narrative and the meta-narrative, with the delightful pun about the "last page," as this is the final sentence of this particular story.

Pnin is fun and it is beautiful, and I recommend it without reservation to any reader. show less

Hagen: “‘Who, for example, wants him’ -he pointed to radiant Pnin- ‘who wants his personality? Nobody! They will reject Timofey’s wonderful personality without a quaver. The world wants a machine, not a Timofey.’” (161)

I ended up liking this novel more than I thought that I would, after the first 50 pages. Pnin seemed like the most unlikely of protagonists, leading a dull academic existence punctuated by institutional humiliation and interpersonal awkwardness. As I read, however, I started to see Pnin’s drive, to sense his motivation, and to see him as an individual looking for a place to belong but being kept on the margins.

Although this novel preceded John William’s Stoner, I sensed some similarities. Some readers show more of Stoner may disagree, but I found Bill Stoner to be a dignified character, the academic equivalent of a dirt farmer who does what he does, not because it is fruitful or life-altering but because it is what he loves. The kind of academic Stoner is portrayed to be is meant, I think, to be a true if unflattering portrait of what he aspired to be. As lowly as Stoner was, it was a life that he chose and there was dignity in the choosing.

Timofey Pnin is another academic, living a different but still tough, marginalized existence. However, his alienation and isolation is less chosen than imposed upon him. Nevertheless, Pnin carries himself with a dignity that comes through despite attempts by the narrator and the characters in the book to deny it. The narrator presents us with the bumbling, hapless Pnin, the émigré who never fully adapted to the culture or norms of his new home. He’s out of synch with people and institutions. Unlike Stoner, who is consumed by the institution, Pnin is kept out and pushed to the margins, never really allowed membership. His department at Waindell is marginalized and on the verge of non-existence. Pnin is a 9-year assistant professor, which even by 1950’s standards is a long time. His social interactions, with his neighbors, colleagues, wife, son, are strained. He is a stranger in a strange land, but he still carries on. show less

There’s a term for this kind of literature. And I must confess, I had to go back to the Introduction to find it: ‘the campus novel’ is what it’s called. David Lodge, who wrote that Introduction, allows that “there are some austere readers…who consider it a trivial and introverted subgenre” (p. xiii) — and well it might be. But as most of the readers of Pnin will, I suspect, themselves have attended a comparable institution and spent a spring (or four )spread out on its shapely lawns or carousing in its comely quad, the notion of a ‘campus novel’ will not come as a rude shock or even as an unwelcome guest into an evening’s reminiscence upon those days of college lore.


That said, I must confess that this was not an show more easy work to read. There were many times when I wondered whether it was my lack of concentration, my inability to connect the dots, or simply my lack of intelligence. Don’t be dismayed if Pnin leaves you without a clue. Stylistically speaking, I assume that you’ll quite agree with me: Nabokov (properly pronounced naBOkuv, by the way) is sui generis. But where the integrity of this particular work is concerned, I’m at a loss.


And so, let’s instead take a look at Nabokov’s style.


The first paragraph of Chapter 3 gives us this delicious little characterization of the eponymous hero of our novel:

“During the eight years Pnin had taught at Waindell College he had changed his lodgings – for one reason or another, mainly sonic – about every semester. The accumulation of consecutive rooms in his memory now resembled those displays of grouped elbow chairs on show, and beds, and lamps, and inglenooks which, ignoring all space-time distinctions, commingle in the soft light of a furniture store beyond which it snows, and the dusk deepens, and nobody really loves anybody. The rooms of his Waindell period looked especially trim in comparison with one he had had in uptown New York, midway between Tsentral Park and Reeverside, on a block memorable for the wastepaper along the curb, the bright pat of dog dirt somebody had already slipped upon, and a tireless boy pitching a ball against the steps of the high brown porch; and even that room became positively dapper in Pnin’s mind (where a small ball still rebounded) when compared with the old, now dust-blurred lodgings of his long Central-European, Nansen-passport period” (p. 44).

Or — much later in the novel — say, at a point at which we might have a slight craving for an academic’s inside (and somewhat sardonic) observations on the animal instincts of other tillers (i.e., colleagues) in the fields of academe, we have the following:


"'He received a grant of ten thousand dollars,' said Joan to Betty, whose face dropped a curtsy as she made that special grimace consisting of a slow half-bow and tensing of chin and lower lip that automatically conveys, on the part of Bettys, a respectful, congratulatory, and slightly awed recognition of such grand things as dining with one's boss, being in Who's Who, or meeting a duchesse" (p. 115).


When I read the prose of Vladimir Nabokov, the word “gossamer” comes to mind. I don’t know why, but it does. The man had a deftness and dexterity with the language that few native speakers/writers possess — and this alone makes his work well worth reading.


RRB
4/16/14
Brooklyn, NY show less

matters appear hysterical on goodreads these days. Ripples of concern often appear daunting to the literate, cushioned by their e-devices and their caffienated trips to dusty book stores; why, the first appearence of crossed words often sounds like the goddamn apocalypse. Well, it can anyway. I find people are taking all of this way too seriously.

I had a rough day at work. It is again hot as hell outside and I just wanted to come home and listen to chamber music and read Gaddis until my wife comes home. Seldom are matters that simple. It is within these instances of discord that I think about Pnin. I love him and the maestro's creation depicting such. I situate the novel along with Mary and The Gift in my personal sweet cell of show more Nabokov, insulated well away from Lolita and Ada, perhaps drawing strength from Vladimir's book on Gogol, though certainly not his letters with Bunny Wilson. It is rare that I can think about Pnin washing dishes and not tear up. I suppose I'll survive this day as well. show less

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